Turning Sick Days Into Childhood Memories
A version of this article originally appeared on the author’s personal blog, Not A Hipster Mom.
Winter is brutal when it comes to children and illness. Runny noses, itchy throats, bellies sick from too much rich food—the season is the perfect storm for a sick kid. A few weeks back, I spent three days at home with my daughter who was sick with a sinus infection. Let’s just say that it was nice to converse with other adults again once she was feeling better!
I’ve had many challenges since I became a single mom, but by far the greatest challenges have been health-related. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely fortunate to have a healthy child (my Jewish upbringing dictates that I ward off the evil eye here, pupu). I can’t imagine what it must be like for the parents of chronically ill children. But out of necessity, my daughter started going to daycare full-time when she was 14-months old, and since then I have been playing a game called, “How long can we go before she gets sick again?”
No parent likes to see her child feeling ill, but when you are a single parent who has a challenging career this experience can be devastating. When my daughter gets sick, there is no one else to watch her. I don’t have a spouse to trade off with; I don’t have the option to be a stay-at-home mom. In my case, I don’t even have family that can step in to take care of her. When my daughter gets sick, I am forced to take a sick day. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if it was only every once in a while, but as anyone with children in daycare or preschool knows, little kids get sick a lot. My daughter’s immune system is finally starting to build up after more than a year in daycare, and she now gets sick much less often, but for a while there, it was really tough.
The problem is that every time I call in sick, I fall behind at work. In the past I have missed meetings and fallen behind on deadlines—this causes me major stress. Each time it happens, I ask myself what I can do differently to prevent rapid reoccurrence: getting her a flu shot early in the season; being sure she eats a healthy, balanced diet; encouraging an almost OCD dedication to hand washing. But what I have learned, of course, is that no matter what I do, she will get sick, because that is what children do. It is part of childhood. And as a philosopher once said, we cannot control what happens to us, we can only control our reaction.
It was with that mindset that I approached her most recent bout of sniffly-feveritis. Something clicked in my mind, and I had a revelation. I realized that I had been approaching the situation all wrong. I couldn’t always prevent her from getting sick, but I could control what those sick days were like, for both of us. I thought back to my childhood, and what I wanted from my parents when I was home sick. I remember wanting nothing more than to spend the day watching TV in bed, eating comfort food, and being allowed to sulk in my misery while having my every need attended to. I didn’t have that experience as a child, but when I became a mother I told myself that I would do everything in my power to make my childhood dreams my daughter’s reality. Why not dreamlike sick days too?
With this in mind, I thought about what I could do to make her days at home as special as possible. I decided that she could watch as much TV as she wanted (though I tried to discourage her from watching back to back “Mickey Mouse Club House.”) I offered her any food her heart desired, tripped over things for her amusement, and pretended to be a baby, which really cracks her up. In short, I dedicated those days to her.
It may have taken me a while to figure this out, but the only thing I can truly control about my daughter’s sick days is the quality of day I create for her at home. Work concerns will always be there, and that won’t go away, but her childhood will. Day by day, she is getting older, and this is my chance to create her childhood memories. I know now that it is a waste to see it any other way.
Ariana Brookes is a professional writer and single mom who works in Marketing in San Francisco. A lover of all things literary, she received her MA in Journalism from New York University, and now spends her days writing copy and nights writing Young Adult fiction. When she isn’t writing, Ariana and her two-year-old daughter are busy eating their way through the Bay Area and searching for the ultimate toddler playground. You can follow Ariana’s adventures on her blog, notahipstermom.blogspot.com, where she writes about the toddler years, single momhood, momhood in general, the work/life balance, getting back out there, having a social life… and anything else remotely related to those subjects.
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
