Being a parent has prepared me to the daily challenges of life, and getting used to illnesses and minor complaints has just been one of those things. But lately I can’t help but notice that my children and husband seem to complain a lot more when it comes to being ‘ill’, and without being sexist men are the worst offenders when it comes to being hypochondriacs.
When they have a cold, they swear they have the flu leading to pneumonia, indigestion can be interpreted as a heart attack and of course a headache can lead to aneurysm. To be fair, my husband is not a wimp, but there was a time when he must have eaten something rancid which caused him to have a bad tummy, which lead to unbearable wind.
At first my sympathy was endless, of course we all know what it’s like to have a tummy bug, so armed with everything that I can get hold from the chemist I nursed him hoping that he will get better in an hour or so, little did I know that this would last for a whole day which you would probably think is not so bad, but when he couldn’t go for a minute without having to ‘let off’ then my sympathy quickly turned into anger.
“Would you stop letting off, it’s really pissing me off!” I would scowl at him.
“You know I can’t help it!” he would reason out while cradling his stomach, somehow looking for a little sympathy which ran out about 12 hours ago.
There’s nothing I hate more than people complaining endlessly about their illnesses, whether it would be a cold or just a bad back. Ok, it hurts, you’ve told me, now let it go and deal with it, and avoid situations where I am expected to ask how someone is, for the fear of the boring rendition about how they are feeling that day, to be honest sometimes I just don’t give a monkeys. Heartless as it may seem you can see I don’t offer much patience for drama queens. So, I’m determined that my kids are raised to toughen up when it comes to minor grazes and sickness.
But like most children, my kids can win countless Oscars on their performances whenever they hurt themselves. The other day my little boy came home from school with a graze on his elbow.
“Look mummy look…. I can see my bone! I really think I broke it this time!”
From his dramatic reaction you would be lead to believe that his arm would actually drop off, but in most cases I will need to put on my glasses to see the offending scratch.
My daughter however, is a walking chemist, there was a time when she had a mouth ulcer and I never heard the end of it. So knowing that it wouldn’t kill her, I pointed her to the direction of my medicine cupboard and told her to find something in there to put on it. Only to find out a few days later that the contents of my cupboard were missing and I only had to follow the strong smell of TCP to find that she has taken all of my medicine and put it in her bedside cabinet for future use. She carries around a ‘medicine bag’ and loves the idea of putting plasters on anything that resemble a ‘bite’.
I can’t help but think that maybe my unsympatheticness (if there is such a word) has led my children to become the future whiners of the world. Maybe I should pay more attention to their whimpers or maybe they will just grow out of it.
The sudden disappearance from my blog during the last few days was unavoidable. Sam’s 1st birthday was a success, and it’s been great celebrating it with family and reminiscing the last year about how fast he has grown. We also have been enjoying his first steps, though I’m amazed how quickly he has taking to walking.
I am also on cloud nine when I learnt that my little brother (well, not so little anymore) became a first time dad on Wednesday, when his partner Alex gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Finally, I’m an Auntie!
And to celebrate the new addition, I have been in the company of my sister in law and a few friends last night knocking down glasses of wine like it’s going out of fashion. So, it’s only normal for me to suffer the consequences this morning when I woke up with a huge hangover and swore to myself that I’m never going to drink again.
I guess it’s only normal for me to excitedly show off the new addition to our family, welcome to the world baby Alexander…
I’m just getting used to the benefit of EntreCard. EC is a great traffic generator and blog/site promotion, so I’m planning to do a weekly plug for the top 5 EC droppers on my site.
Enjoy!
It has caused so much controversy in the last few days when the FPA (Family Planning Association) published a sex education pamphlet. The comic style information book is aimed for children of 6-7 year old and teaches them about the concepts of growth. It uses pictures and stories to help children identify their sexual organs and apparently help them to identify the physical changes they go through as they grow up.
The FPA is promoting to start sex education early on British children, a comic called “Let’s grow with Nisha and Joe” will be shown to pupils unless parents opt out. Some parents have condemned the idea and stated that this kind of information is too much for a 6 or 7 year old to handle.
The UK has the highest teenage birth rates in Western Europe – twice as high as in Germany, three times as high as in France and six times as high as in the Netherlands. So is this the governments plan to for a ‘quick fix’? Catch them young as they say?
There are often arguments on the root causes, and also suggestions on how to prevent our ever rising teen pregnancies, from promoting family values and encouraging openness about sex and relationships. So would this pamphlet help ‘cure’ our problem or is this just another example of our ever growing ‘nanny culture’ and how our government creates social engineering to lower the ever growing statistics?
In my opinion sex does not need to be taught in our schools, sex becomes a natural interest in children as they grow up, and it is up to us parents to educate them and to give them simple honest answers. Not only that, but subjects like periods, contraception and relationships should be slowly introduced as a form of gradual communication between parents and their children and these should be based on a need to know basis, if the situation occurs or a question was raised then you will know that it is the right time to discuss such matters with them. My children are comfortable in approaching me with anything that regards to sex, whether it would be the names for their body parts or other peoples sexuality. I have never found it uncomfortable or improper. In a way, I’m pleased to know that they can confide in me.
I remember one situation when my daughter was 5 years old and she asked me where babies came from. She listened intently as I explained the biologies of human creation. I didn’t sugar coat it with storks or birds and the bees, she wanted to know the facts not some fairytale story about finding babies in cabbage patches, and as a parent it is my role to educate her. There was also a time when she asked me what is the proper name for ‘private parts’, I think it’s important to tell them the correct terminology rather than giving them pet names such as ‘peepee’ or ‘thingy’. I think some parents feel uncomfortable with anything that’s got to do with sex, and would rather avoid the subject in fear of their own embarrassment.
Teaching them morals, self respect and how to take responsibility for their actions are also more important than straight forward sex talks, it does not matter about how much they know about sex, if they didn’t know how to integrate the above when starting a sexual relationship then all this knowledge is just a weapon towards promiscuity. The same as naivety can lead to more teenage pregnancies.
Having not read the comic myself, I cannot judge the amount of details that they contain, but from listening and reading to what other parents say, I can only assume that it’s an over load of information about sex for children under 7. Is it right to burden our children with this much detail. How do you embed these in young immature minds? Society has forced our kids to grow up too quickly and were hanging by a thread to preserve what innocence they have left.
The media bombards us with ‘sex’ everyday, from homosexuality, teen pregnancy, abortion, sexual abuse which usually comes in the form of many popular soap operas. It worries me that these programs are shown before the watershed, obviously watched by many children including my son and daughter. They are more aware of the word ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘sex’, compared to when I was at their age. Judging by this over exposure, do we really need to add to it by teaching our 6 year olds sex education? Surely there’s a point where we have to draw a line and let our children be children.
Here I am awake at 5:00 am, Sam decided that this ungodly hour of the morning is the best time to wake up and play. To be honest, I’m running on caffeine and totally exhausted. For the last week or so sleep has been a distant memory.
I’ve started to think that having a full time job away from home is easier than looking after a child, at least in a ‘conventional job’ I get to wake up at a decent time and get hourly breaks. Since waking up and in the space of one hour, Sam has decided to;
- Decided to open a bottle of Mirin and smear it all over the floor.
- Emptied my kitchen drawers
- Managed to get himself inside the drawers (again)
- Turn the washing machine on… while it’s empty
- Reset the dishwasher, so it’s gone full cycle twice!
- Opened the portable compost bin and emptied rotten vegetables all over the kitchen (may I say my kitchen absolutely stinks!)
Anyway this will be a short post as I can’t think of anything constructive to say today, I’m just overly tired.
Thank god for coffee!
