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Happy When They're Sick?

Posted on March 30, 2010
Tags: kids, parenting, sickness, happy

Okay, this one won't win me any father of the year awards.  Tommy (one of our 4 1/2 yr. old triplets) was sick this week.  Now, Tommy is the best and worst of children from minute-to-minute.  He loves being a helper.  He helps fold clothes, washes himself in the shower (better than his 8 yr. old brother), likes to clean up, etc.  He is a worker.  I firmly believe Tommy will have his own business one day.  He likes learning new things.  At the same time, Tommy gets very angry when he is wronged.  He never complains to mom & dad about what one of the other kids did to him.  Instead he pinches, pushes, or screams and yells.  So he is quite a package.

Early this week while Colleen and I were taking our nightly hour to unwind in front of the television - this usually finally happens around 10 pm - I heard someone in the bathroom upstairs.  We arrived on the scene to find Tommy, with a wad of toilet paper in his hand, cleaning up bits of vomit that were on the floor.  He had put most of it in the toilet, but some had made its way to the floor, and here was Tommy, feeling terrible, still with more to go, cleaning up the bits that had fallen on the floor.  You feel so terrible for them when they are throwing up.  You know how awful you feel when you are having those moments yourself, and then to have your little one, so helpless, probably scared of what's happening to them, huddled over the porcelain in such a sorry state.   

So we helped Tommy, had him come lay on the couch while we watched some TV and he finally got a good night sleep.

The next day Tommy wasn't feeling that great and he laid around most of the day.  He took a nap in the afternoon, he didn't fight with anyone.  It was kind of peaceful.  Now, unfortunately, this was also during spring break, so while I was away at work, Colleen had three other kids around the house who were feeling fine and wanted to be running around, etc. Because Tommy was stuck inside there wasn't too much Colleen could do for them.  So it wasn't as peaceful as we had hoped.  That's when I said, it would really be nice around here if they were all sick.

Of course I don't want all of our kids to be sick.  But is it so wrong to enjoy the peace that comes from them not having the energy to constantly be terrorizing each other and their parents?  And let's face it, usually when one gets sick, the others follow.  There's nothing worse than that coming in stages.  If they could all get sick at once, maybe, for the first time in four years and eight months, we could all get caught up on our sleep.