Yesterday I went to a seminar on ethics, and at one point in the program we were supposed to write down something we would NEVER do.
This really made me uncomfortable, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about parenting in the past nine and a half years, it’s to never say never. It made me think about all the things I would have been horrified (or at least very judgmental!) by years ago that don’t seem like a big deal to me now.
I’d like to go back in time and tell inexperienced-parent me to calm the heck down, that sometime in the not-so-distant future…
— I’d feed Sam full-sugar birthday cake on his first birthday (my apologies to Kate for making her eat cream cheese on whole wheat toast on her big day).
— Sam would suck his thumb at age five, and I would not do anything to stop it. (It’s comforting to him! And it’s really stinking cute.)
— My kids would drink pop on occasion, like on Sundays at great-grandma’s house.
— I’d let Kate pick out her own clothes starting in kindergarten, and she’d go to school in some very interesting attire.
— Sam would sleep in our bed pretty much every night.
— We’d secretly be just fine with Sam sleeping in our bed pretty much every night.
I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what I’ve come up with so far. What things did you say you’d never ever do?
So, Jonah is sick with a bad cold. It is just that, a bad cold. Low fever, bad cough, lots of snot, nothing a doctor can do anything about. And what else does he have that a doctor can’t fix?
A mother who is super, super OVER IT. This is day 5, people. DAY FIVE. At the outset I can be super-cuddly-let-me-soothe-you-my-poor-baby Mom, but by now I’m like suck-it-up-and-quit-your-whining-a-cold-is-no-excuse-for-tyranny Mom. OH MY GOSH!!!!
Jonah is my kid who gets, pardon my French, SUPER-PISSED when he’s sick. My usually cheerful boy wakes up mad at the world and screams about anything and everything for the first hour or two of his day. Especially if one of the other two kids opens their mouths or approaches him. So this morning I’m like, at the end of my rope on DAY FIVE, yelling at the other kids to QUIT TALKING, because it makes Jonah mad. Yes, that’s right. The Snot King demands ABSOLUTE SILENCE. And he would also prefer that you don’t look at him. Avert. Your. Eyes.
Part of the reason my fuse is so short is because when something hangs on this long, worry sets in. Every coughing fit causes me great anxiety. Last night his temperature went up half a degree and I was mentally on my way to the emergency room. I try to push the panic aside as I forge ahead slathering Vicks (silver lining: I LOVE THE SMELL OF VICKS!) all over his chest, which makes him scream, which makes me irritable and shortens that ever-shrinking bit of nerve I’ve got left. Every time I take his temp or – God-forbid – give him medicine, I have to wrestle him into submission. It. Is. Exhausting.
His cough has woken him up, kept him up, and shortened his much-needed naps, which does nothing for either of our moods. And all of it, the lack of rest, the worry, the irritation, has made me pretty much non-functional in other areas. My house is a wreck, I can barely write a coherent thought, and it takes a huge amount of effort to do the dishes or make a peanut butter sandwich or OH MY WORD, help the big kids with HOMEWORK. As a matter of fact, my head about explodes when the older two walk in from school. Meeting the demands of Angry Toddler while trying to meet the needs of the other kids almost undid me last night. My ability to multi-task is NIL at this point.
In addition, Jonah has missed his toddler speech class (you know, the one he hates but HAS to get used to before preschool??) for two weeks in a row because he also had a weird one-day fever last Tuesday, which is his class day. So that causes me stress as well. If he is not better for his regular speech therapy session tomorrow, you will find me standing on the edge of a bridge.
I know this is just a cold. I know it is not a big deal. I know it could be much worse. I ALSO KNOW I CAN’T WAIT FOR IT TO BE GONE. I know I have lost most of a week. I know I miss my cheerful boy. I know it is going to be very difficult for me to wean him back off of TV. I know I am really, really, glad I bought a 2 Liter of Mountain Dew on my escapade to find homeopathic cough medicine last night. I know this too shall pass.
This is my darling son, Joshua. Remember him? The boy who cries over the anticipation of a fire drill and asks me ten times a day if I’ve signed his school notebook because the thought of losing 5 minutes of recess over an un-signed agenda makes him cower in fear? The one who hysterically cried last year when we switched him from first carpool to second carpool (It’s practically like we moved him cross-country!!) My darling Joshua, so very conscientious that the thought of doing poorly in school has caused him to nag me to email teachers about every last detail of project requirements just to make sure we’re doing it right?
Well. That kids has decide to relax in one area of life. Math.
Normally I’d be super-happy that Paranoid Pete has decided to loosen up a little bit, BUT!! BUTTTT!! He picked a bad area to xanax-out in. You see, after several years of getting by on just his smarts, Joshua now has to study for 4th grade math. But he doesn’t really think he has to study, so it’s kind of a problem. For some reason the confidence that I hope he develops in all areas of life has decided to start with his math prowess. And it’s not that he’s not good at math, he is – he’s just not careful. He races through things without reading directions, lets his mind wander and starts adding in the middle of a subtraction problem – things like that. So he needs to study and practice to kind of help get his habits on track.
Which is why I was not pleased when he said as soon as he walked in the door from school yesterday, “Mom, I have a math test tomorrow but I forgot to bring home my book. Sorry.”
After I FLIPPED OUT, he says, “Don’t worry, we did the review in class.”
Me: How do you know you got the review questions right?
Joshua: I just know how to do them.
Me: Well, last time you had a test we did the review together and you missed a bunch and had to do them over again.
Joshua: This time I know how! Don’t worry mom, I promise. I promise to read all the questions carefully and double-check my work.
Me: I don’t understand why you’re not more worried about this.
(Translation: It’s TIME TO FREAK THE HECK OUT, KID!!!!!!!!!)
I am SO IRRITATED AT HIM! If he doesn’t do well on his test, it will be because he didn’t bring his book home to study. And he needs to CARE about that. Ugh.
In other 4th-grade homework related news, I kind of chuckled when I got this text from Emily last night:
Um, we were just kidding about the child abuse there…
I didn’t have the heart to tell Emily that Joshua wasn’t overreacting LIKE HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN! Perhaps if we’d been able to merge Joshua and Kate into one forgetful 4th-grader…we would’ve gotten the proper reaction.
