Dads: your child is sick. End of the world, right?
Of course not! You do all you can to get that child feeling better as soon as possible.
The only issue is when that child is your 18 month old son, you can’t quite give him extra strength Nyquil. You can’t just toss a couple shots of Chivas Regal Scotch whiskey in some boiling water, and give him a hot toddy in his sippy cup. You can’t tell the poor boy to blow his nose, or even hock a loogie, when you hear the phlegm build up congestion in his nasal passage too deep for the aspirator to be effective. Well, you could… but he wouldn’t understand what a loogie is, and you probably don’t want him taken away from you while you serve your prison term.
So, what do you do? You call the doctor, and give him no more than the recommended dosage of the approved <24 month old child medication.
In my son’s case, that included infant acetaminophen and ibuprofen in alternate four to six hour intervals to break the fever; saline spray mists to drain the mucus from his nose; baby vapor rubdown on his chest and back to keep him comfy as he sleeps; and a warm steam vaporizer to help loosen congestion. Not quite a hot toddy… more like a lukewarm toddy.
As most parents do, I often take stock of my memories of my own childhood, and how my parents took care of me when I fell ill. Surely, I don’t recall them using syringes to give me medication when I was a toddler. However, I have clear recollection of the vaporizer, which was used all through my childhood. My family’s Jamaican background was big on natural medicinals, and would always use the vaporizer with eucalyptus oil.
We’d had the vaporizer and oil at hand from a cold that I nursed my wife through several months prior. So, I just made sure to set up the small unit at the side of the crib. Every night for almost a week, Gummy Bear watched as I went through that routine of adding water to the unit, dropping some eucalyptus oil to the reservoir, and plugging it in. We’d then say our prayers, and I’d put him to sleep.
A few days after his cold had finally cleared up, the tiny eucalyptus oil bottle was sitting on the hamper, which is right at his eye level. I knew it was closed tight, so I didn’t immediately grab the bottle filled with highly potent liquid from him. I did, though, get ready to pounce when I saw him take the bottle across the room. I watched as he crouched down, and simulated dropping some of the oil into the vaporizer’s reservoir.
I don’t think it had hit me as hard before that moment. But, it was a ton of bricks crashing on top of me right then. Our children truly pay attention to everything we do, even when we don’t realize it, and will mirror those same actions when given the opportunity.
“Do as I say, not as I do” is a stale, outdated, and irrelevant doctrine.
I usually keep at least a 6-pack of beer in the refrigerator. While I’m not a heavy beer drinker, I am a cheapskate. There was a huge sale at my grocery store recently, and I picked up a couple cases. So, I’ve been drinking beer a bit more frequently of late. I’ve been noticing my son intently watching me drink from these bottles, and he’s even attempted drinking from, and actually picking up the bottles himself, once the bottles were empty, of course!
Earlier today, I saw this great video of a baby and his pop breakdancing together.
These are all eye openers for me to the fact that our children are paying attention. Not only do they resemble us (“Look at the eyes, Maury!”), but they are reflections of our direct actions. It makes me wonder sometimes what else he’s paying attention to.
I watch a lot of television. I eat a lot of food. I do almost no physical activity. I’m a fat dad with a fat wife, but neither of us wants fat kid. Hmmm… #reevaluation
Anyway, Happy New Year!
Cheers,
Pop