It occurred to us that Charlie doesn't get many requests for play dates from his classmates. It's not like he doesn't have friends. He gets along with everyone in his class. He's actually fairly popular. Still, the invitations to come over houses are scarce.

It makes us wonder if the parents think it would just be too difficult. Or maybe they just assume we could never just leave him somewhere without someone trained in diabetes care keeping an eye on him. Well, they wouldn't be wrong if they thought that. We want to let him do things without us hovering over him like low-gliding seagulls, but how can we? He doesn't test himself yet.

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At a recent family get-together, I gave a subtle "psssssst" to my mother and pointed over to the kitchen where Charlie was hunched over, lining up the pricker against his pinky. She had never seen him test himself.

She watched with a tear in her eye.

This brings up something I've been wondering about. Now that Charlie has decided to start testing himself, does that mean we just hand the responsibility over to him full bore? He is only 7. When is the right age to relinquish a task like this to a child? Different for everyone, I imagine. We have basically continued to test his blood sugar throughout the day and Charlie takes one or two if he's up to it.

I suppose the gradual approach is the right way to go about it with Charlie as he made it perfectly clear recently that he wasn't ready to prick his fingers on a full-time basis. (READ MORE)