Pulling back the curtain a bit, it’s no secret that Harrison is non-speaking. I’ve written about it before, but I don’t think people always grasp how far beyond just “not saying words” it goes.

Because of his joint contractures — elbows, wrists, fingers — and the low muscle tone that affects so much of his body, he can’t use his arms or hands in a typical way. He can’t point. He can’t sign. He uses his eye gaze device and touches options with his head when we offer them. But even then, the communication is limited.

So there are things I just don’t know. His favorite color. His favorite animal. Those little things that most parents of four-year-olds are beginning to pick up on as personalities blossom, I’m still in the dark on so many of them.

And then, something like yesterday happens.

Harrison was outside playing at his water table: his current obsession. Usually, that means dunking his head in the water, splashing around, and playing with a toy or two. He was doing his thing, happy as ever… and then, out of nowhere, something changed. He started to cry. Loudly. Instantly.

We went from calm to chaos in seconds, and we had no idea what was wrong.

He wasn’t favoring a leg or foot. No visible bite marks or stings. No blood. No redness. Nothing we could see. He was sitting a little oddly in his chair, but that was it. We brought him inside, and after a few minutes, the crying stopped. Everything settled.

Then, maybe 20 minutes later, Jenna asked, “Does his lip look swollen to you?”

At a glance, maybe. Maybe he bumped it. Maybe he fell forward into the water table and hit his mouth. It didn’t look bad. No blood. No split lip. We figured it was minor, maybe just the cause of the earlier crying.

But a little while later, he walked up to me, wanting to be held. I picked him up, looked at him, and his lip was definitely swollen. He kept rubbing it, using his tongue to push against the inside. And then I saw something dark.

A stinger.

Buried on the inside of his lip.

It took both of us a minute to process it. But there it was, a full-on stinger from what we assume was a bee or wasp, stuck inside his lip, and we had no idea. We got it out, and thankfully, there were no reactions beyond the swelling. But the realization hit hard: our son had been walking around with a stinger in his mouth for over 30 minutes, and we didn’t know.

Because he couldn’t tell us.

He couldn’t point.

He couldn’t say, “It hurts.”

He just cried… and then tried to move on. Because that’s who he is.

And I can’t lie, moments like these weigh me down.

There are days when everything feels heavy. And yesterday was one of them. I’ve recently been told by a physical therapist to relax my shoulders, and truthfully, I didn’t even know how to when he asked. I walk around with my shoulders up and my gut clenched more often than not, and I don’t realize it until something like this brings the weight crashing down.

Unless you live this, unless you are a parent to a non-speaking child, you don’t really understand the emotional calculus involved. The constant scanning. The detective work. The guilt.

The guilt that you didn’t know.

The guilt that your child was in pain and you didn’t fix it, not because you didn’t want to, but because you couldn’t.

That sting? It’s something most kids go through, a summer classic. A bug bite. A bump. A scrape. Most kids come running inside crying, pointing, telling you what happened.

Our version is different.

And this isn’t to make anyone feel sorry for us. That’s not the point. But it is one of those moments where the isolation of parenting a non-speaking child becomes crystal clear. The weight of it. The heartbreak.

So if you’re a parent in a similar place, if you’ve had moments where your child couldn’t tell you what hurt or how to make it better, just know you’re not alone. I see you. I understand. I’m standing in the same shoes.

And for everyone else, this is just a peek behind the curtain.

Because sometimes, even the smallest sting can leave the biggest impact.