After the Illness

When Grace is sick I cater to her every wish (with the exception of giving medicine, but I'll get to that later). Thankfully now she's feeling better. But now life must get back to normal and first on the list is behavior. When she is sick she whines if she wants something. Now that she is well she demands it and I am not kidding. The last couple of days her favorite words have been NO and STOP IT. The capital letters infer yelling.

She has spent many minutes in time out today. I am very pleased to say she even cried when I put her in time out. I am not saying that to be mean, but time out has never been very effective for Grace. Normally she will busy herself by poking at her belly button, playing with her shoestrings, etc. You know that it is not working when your child is giggling to herself while she is in time out. Well today she was upset. Not to the point of being sorry for her actions, but just being sorry that she got caught. It is a definite improvement. We are getting back on track with bedtime. She is still resisting going to bed, but tonight it only took about five minutes of crying and pleading before she gave up and went to sleep.

Her eating habits are back to normal. She would not eat or drink while she was sick. The drinking part worried me tremendously. I could not get her to drink anything. She ate pedialyte freezer pops ok, but that was about it. **WARNING** BAD MOTHER ALERT - I was so concerned about her lack of fluids that I tried everything I could and I found one thing that she drank. Yoo-Hoo. Terrible I know, but she did drink it.

Grace has always taken medicine well. She is older and more mature now, she is not going down without a fight. I tried to get her to drink it herself, you know make her feel like she had some control. No way, if I wanted her to have it I'd have to give it to her. She was poised to spit it out as soon as she saw me coming toward her. I had to hold a struggling child, tilt her head back, give her the medicine and blow in her face so she'd swallow. Did anybody ever see the HBO movie with Hillary Swank about women's suffrage? Her character was on a hunger strike and they forced a tube down her throat to force feed her. That is the image that was going through my mind everytime I had to give her medicine. Fortunately her antibiotic is sweet and I put it in a little cup with a straw and tell her it's a milkshake. Deceptive but it works. Here she is feeling better and enjoying her chocolate. Chocolate it the one thing she automatically says please for, she sees you with it and she walks up and says please!