B. has been under the weather a lot recently. Boy do I hate it. I hate when my kids are sick. And what I hate more is the uncertainty and doubt about whether they truly are sick enough to miss school or therapy. I always tend to think they are faking it or making it out to be worse than it is. I don't know why - I don't particularly remember trying to fake sick as a kid. But for some reason, with my older son, I am always second guessing. Does he just want to stay home? Do I make it too easy on him when he says he's sick? I just don't want it to become a habit for him to say he's sick when he wants to get out of something. So, recently, he (6-year old big brother) said he had a tummy ache and couldn't go to school. After MUCH deliberating and negotiating, I got him to agree to "try" going to kindergarten and that I'd come get him immediately if he was really sick. So, we drove to school and started walking in. He broke down in tears and thanked me profusely when I agreed to bring him home. Not 2 hours later, he started the first episode of stomach flu puking. Bad call, Mom. I should have just let him stay home from the beginning.
With B, it's even harder. I can never tell if he is sick or if he just doesn't want to work. Unlike his big brother, he doesn't try to "milk" it. He has worked through lots of different sicknesses like a trooper. Which honestly is far worse than if he were faking it. He can't tell me and I really just never know if he's truly sick. I'm always hesitant to cancel therapy and it often results in a lot of guilt after we make a poor little sick dude work through it all day. One of my biggest mom guilt issues is when I took him on an airplane TWICE with a WEEK in between while the poor kid had a double ear infection. He had just gotten tubes in - I didn't think ear infections were possible -and I just couldn't figure out why he was such a mess.
Last week, B had a rough day. He was crying and screaming a LOT. But in between, he was seemingly so much better than fine - running around and laughing like a maniac. So we kept going. But those down times were really down. He cried in a way we hadn't heard before. The worst part was after he went to bed. Hubby and I heard him cry out in his room (a first) and both of us ran in thinking he had hurt himself. He just lay there crying and didn't want either of us to touch him. We brought him out to the couch and he ended up falling asleep on my lap. It was heartbreaking. What if something was really wrong? Did we need to take him to the dr.? The emergency room? I have never been more desperate for him to be able to talk.
Considering the very limited language he has, B actually does a pretty good job of getting his point across. Except when it comes to things like this. And this is the hard stuff. It kills me knowing how frustrating it must be for him to be so miserable and so incapable of telling us. We do what we can. And I take comfort in his sweet little voice saying "you're ok" over and over as he snuggles in. He may not be able to tell me what's wrong but he does find a way to let me comfort him as much as I can.
