Yesterday I got the call. We were due, really. It had been two weeks, and of course, like clockwork, it was time for our kids to get sick.
Mia grabbed their bunnies and blankies so that she could make a bed. Mia loves to parent Everly, it melts my heart.
Everly’s daycare called letting me know that she hadn’t been acting like herself and she had a mild fever. I took a deep breath, dropped what work I had planned for the day and raced to pick her up.
Although Illness is very common when you have young kids, it has probably been the biggest source of tension in our home.For a long time, whenever a crying, sick child would wake us, or hours would pass and no matter how much consoling we did, and we couldn’t seem to soothe our child, those moments would make us snap.
Mike and I are pretty great parents, in my opinion, but it somehow seems like to too much when our kids are sick.
It is an unpredictable, messy, pressure cooker situation. A wrench into our world. A situation that we can try to help, but cannot fully control. It pains us to see them in pain. Mix that feeling of helplessness with exhaustion and you have a recipe for bickering.
We are working on this, and I am seeing progress. This morning we walked into a sick bedroom. We both stayed calm and knew what task was who’s. No freaking out. Just action, communication and making decisions as a team for our sick child.
That kind of teamwork is a big deal for us. We are growing, both as parents and as a couple.
We know that a couple of events that occurred when we first became parents, have made us hyper sensitive to any time our kids are ill, or struggling.
You can read ‘My Traumatic Start To Motherhood And How It Changed Me As A Parent’ here.
For a long time we couldn’t grasp a healthy perspective when our kids got sick. We would turn on each other and release our worry, stress and helplessness on the other person.
But with time, experience, patience and communication, we are handling these common real-life parenting experiences with strength and calm.
We are no longer letting illness allow our world to come crashing down. Heaven forbid, if we are ever confronted with a real crisis, we will now be able to face it as a team.