What To Do If You’re On Day 127 Of Your Kid Being Home Sick
by Carolyn Firestone
Hi. If you are here, I suspect you are a parent of someone who still lives under your roof. Someone who perhaps goes to a crowded school where they share desks and doorknobs and sink faucets and airspace with a bunch of other warm, well-intended viral sanctuaries we also refer to as our children.
And for that reason alone, before I say anything else, I feel like I should say, how are you?
Because if you’re experiencing anything like my family, my siblings’ families, my friends’ families, my coworkers’ families, you are currently riding the world’s longest, most crazy-making streak of having your kids out sick from school.
Or maybe you’re not, in which case I need you to tell me your secret. Like HERE is our Instagram. Tell me! Is it a vitamin? A lifestyle hack? A diet rich in some odd vegetable only people from an island off the north shore of Asia eat on the regular? An elixir you bought from a shop owned by two beautiful sisters in a seaside New England town who live with their kooky aunts and may or may not be suspected of murder? (Extra points for guessing which movie I watched last time I was sick in bed.)
Anyway, more likely than not, you too are experiencing the heinous hellscape that is flu season. And I use the term “season” while knocking on wood and swallowing the thickest grain of salt you can imagine, because at this point, the notion that there could be an end in sight is something I’d rather not risk jinxing
Here in California, where I happen to be, this swell of sickness has been riding the same tide as a slew of heavy rainfall, which is NOT to complain about the weather, but rather to say that we are inside a lot. Like March 2020 a lot. Like Grey Gardens a lot. As I write this, I am loathing every inch of my house even in its rare state of being both clean and empty because I’m the only one (thankfully) who’s currently sick.
None of this is anything new. We are all bored of being cooped up. And we are all equally bored of talking about it. But having our kids home sick is something different. Something…heavier. And my suspicion is it’s tied to a feeling like we can’t move past something - like all our muddled efforts to get our kids back to some semblance of pre-pandemic “normal” are failing. Like every step forward is met with a weighted shove to our ever-wheezy chests.
Because even though we have little choice in the matter, as parents, we still get to feel guilty for keeping our kids out of class and away from friends. We feel bad about pouring money into dance classes and little league admissions for which their attendance is less than 40%. In the back of my mind, there’s this persistent sense that my son’s 6 and 7 and 8 and now 9-year-old life isn’t as colorful as it should be. There are too many gray days he spends staring at my back while I work from his bedroom desk, the only available workspace in our full, work-from-home household.
From time to time, I used to let this feeling tip me over the edge. By the third weekend in a row of being stuck at home with whatever illness was all the rage, I’d whine to my sister like a grounded teenager, saying dumb things like “That’s it! I’m taking him out of school. I can’t do this agaaaaain!” Basically, in a world where everyone I knew was going through the exact same thing, I insisted on feeling sorry for myself.
And then, something happened. It didn’t come from a lengthy conversation or a deep introspection. It came from one not-even-sunny mid-morning on a street I walked on every day back when I worked from an office at a coffee shop I’ve visited thousands of times. In line with my family, it suddenly dawned on me that in that exact moment, everything was fine. I was “allowed” to be out in society. I could walk inside this coffee shop, order a warm drink, sit on the café table outside, and watch other people stroll down the street. It was a thrill akin to docking along the coast of Italy.
Even the janky little comic bookstore my husband and son wanted to go inside after felt stupidly romantic. I waited outside for them, practically having to pull myself back from swinging around the lamppost like some deranged Gene Kelly in yoga pants.
I’m curious if others have experienced this intoxicated awe after being released from the mundane prisons that are sick days (or weeks). For me, I believe it comes from two things. Two things that we’re told to do ALL the time but that we either forget…or it feels forced… or just hard. And they are: 1. Live in the moment and 2. Practice gratitude.
If I lost you there, I don’t blame you. These things sound annoyingly broad and cliché. But living so contingently at the whim of this “new” weird world where our plans are so often changed and canceled, where everything feels iffy and unstable, we’ve been forcibly thrown into a state where we have no choice but to live exclusively in the now.
When I was first adjusting to this world, I was tortured by how precarious everything felt. How small my window seemed before I’d be back to stockpiling “Boogie Wipes” (IYKYK) and trying to talk my son into playing a video game so I could work. More than anything, I dreaded being trapped at home amidst my own anxious thoughts.
Fearing the cycle itself, I never really saw light at the end of the tunnel. That is until I got used to it and accepted that there wasn’t going to be an “end” to the tunnel. There was just going to be outpours of light along the way.
Sure enough, each time my family is healthy enough to do something, I feel an unorthodox amount of joy and gratitude for that thing. And the times when we aren’t, I’m also better able to appreciate (or at least experience) the small precious things – the highly creative “sick kits” my son insists on making me, the cozy routines we’ve created, the glorious recipes we’ve mastered - rather than honing in on what we might be missing.
If it sounds like I’m making more of sick days than I should be, I should say the days I spend at home with my family are hardly the dark ages I may have made them seem. They’re full of funny, sweet, lovely moments. The challenges mostly come in tedious or small inconveniences. The waiting out of symptoms. The shuffling of plans. But the prolonged feeling of being isolated, separate, or “other?” That’s what takes a toll.
And I know everyone has felt that. Parents sheltering at home with their new babies. People who struggle with chronic illness. All of us during lockdown. The feeling isn’t new. But it does feel more universal. And maybe that universality is what we can use to have a little more patience and compassion for ourselves. For this time.
Researcher and psychologist Dr. Kristin Neff talks about the three pillars that make up self-compassion as being self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity. For most of us, self-kindness tends to be a work in progress. One could argue, our forced state of being present and grateful could take care of mindfulness. But the third thing: common humanity, which, as Neff defines it, involves “recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience,” that’s something we have to actively remind ourselves of when we’re feeling alone at home with sick kids.
For me, that reminder comes from Zoom calls where pretty much every single one of the women I work with is in the exact same position of having kids under 12 somewhere in the background waiting to be made a sandwich. And it comes in those precious trifecta moments when every cousin is healthy, no one has a Covid exposure, and the roads aren’t flooding, so my sisters and I get to bring our kids together to play.
So while this article didn’t exactly leave you with 25 novel activities to try with your sniffling, stir-crazy kids who don’t want to do any of the 500 things you typically suggest, I hope it at least leaves you with that. The sense that there are others in this same boat. Not doing it any better than you are. And hopefully, it reminds you to make space to more richly enjoy the stops it’s making. Be it on the coast of Italy, the coffee shop around the corner, or any square-inch of your home you can currently stand.
carolyn firestone
Carolyn is a freelance writer and editor. Her favorite thing to do is to write about her favorite things, especially when they have even the slightest chance of making someone else’s something (mood, relationship, travel plans, or toiletry kit) a little better. You can find more of her articles here.
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