The concept of “hindsight bias” became popular in psychological research in the 1970s. It’s the idea that when looking back at a series of events, you knew what would happen all along. If you are a caretaker of someone or you are someone who has gone through any form of prolonged medical treatment, you’ve probably had a doctor tell you “There is no crystal ball”. Hindsight bias is the opposite. It’s an overconfidence in one’s ability to predict the outcome once the outcome is done.
When my son Charlie was born, I knew nothing – nothing of his future cerebral palsy diagnosis, nothing about his Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, nothing of the tracheotomy he would need to leave the NICU or the g-tube we would return to get months later. To add to that, he was my first child so I knew nothing about being a mother either.
I walked through a lot with him in those first few years and slowly built up my confidence in how to care for him. I was a pro at clearing the trach, studying the numbers on his oxygen and heart rate monitor, and learning feeding therapy techniques to get him to take food by mouth.
By age two, we entered a relatively stable period and for about a decade, I was the expert in his care. I had no crystal ball, but I thought I had figured out the tips and tricks to make his life easier.
But then Charlie grew. And grew and grew. He began middle school. We discovered that his hip had dislocated. When he had hip reconstruction, I assumed his recovery would look like other recoveries in the past. It did not. It was prolonged and filled with more pain and more emotional trauma because he was now an adolescent who felt angst and fear in a different way.
We hung in there though and against all odds, things seemed to be turning a corner. I learned to position him differently, I could change his clothes by myself again, take him to get a haircut and bathe him. He no longer flinched when I adjusted the pillows around his leg.
And then one day I changed his shoes. They are new shoes – fancy and stiff. The right one came off with no struggle. The left, however, stuck on the heel. He winced. I did too. Then I loosened the laces and tried again. It popped off and he screamed. He did not stop screaming that entire night.
We thought he had pulled a muscle. We gave him pain medicine. There was no bruising. Over the next few days, he seemed to get better, and then he got worse. Finally, we called the hospital, made an appointment at the orthopedic clinic, and took him in. My husband held him in the back seat of the van while he cried and I cried in the driver’s seat.
One x-ray later, they told us it was broken. He would need a boot for four to six weeks on the leg that had just recently been freed of a hip brace. I had broken my son’s tibia while taking off his shoe. I will never forget that moment. He was eating Doritos and watching his iPad. I dropped to my knees and gently kissed his leg. He blew me a kiss and I burst into tears. How do you get over that?
The orthopedist told us this is common in kids with CP who don’t put a lot of weight on their legs in their formative years. He said he had even broken a child’s leg while examining them in the office. That’s how fragile bones can be. When they told us he needed hip reconstruction they had said the same thing – this is common with cerebral palsy.
There is no crystal ball, but I wish someone had given me a hint of what was possible and very likely probable. I wish there were a compromise between the vagueness of “we just can’t know” and the determinism and overconfidence of hindsight bias. I don’t need you to tell me what will happen, just what might.
I am working to let go of the guilt that has followed since his broken leg. I am also doing my research. I don’t want to learn my son’s potential health risks in hindsight. Charlie is constantly changing, as kids do, and it’s my job as his mother to change with him. We will learn and grow together.
Jamie Sumner is a special needs mom and author.
Jamie-Sumner.com
Author of the middle-grade novels:
