Parenting 'fail' that haunts Sydney mum: 'Much worse than forgetting to introduce them to Vegemite'
By Jo Abi|
Now and then I am reminded of my biggest parenting 'fails' จC one of the worst being forgetting to introduce Vegemite to my two youngest children when they were toddlers.
I had fed my eldest Vegemite as soon as he could eat solids and he loves it to this day, but for some reason, I completely forgot to feed it to my younger children so they hate it and attempts to try it never go well.
Another parenting 'fail' that haunts me is when I forgot to teach my son how to flag down a bus.
I taught him everything else จC which app to use to find out bus times, where to wait, where to sit, and Opal card etiquette จC but the part where you have to lift your hand so the bus stops for you, I completely forgot to mention.
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"Mum, the bus just drove past me," he told me after his first day of TAFE, before I explained how to get it to stop.
But this week, an even worse parenting 'fail' has come back to haunt me: I completely forgot to teach my two younger children how to swallow medication.
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I taught my eldest using Tic Tacs, and I had mentioned this from time to time with my two younger children, but I didn't properly monitor the process to check they had managed to do it.
Now, all three of them have been struck down with this horrible flu that is going around.
My daughter is the worst. She's had it on and off for four weeks and we've been to the doctor four times as well to check she hadn't developed any infections.
During our most recent trip to the doctor, we were told she should take some medication considering how long she had been sick and how blocked up she had become.
When I told the doctor she couldn't swallow medication, they said, "They are really small."
They are not really small, and my daughter couldn't swallow any of them.
We were left to white-knuckle it through with tissues, water, juice and a wet tea towel I was putting on her head to get her temperature down.
Wringing out that wet towel every 20 minutes reminded me of watching Little House on the Prairie when I was little, and how they'd do similar whenever one of them was struck down with illness.
I remember dramatic scenes where their fevers would break and the family would celebrate. Sometimes the fevers would not break.
At one stage my daughter fell asleep with her mouth open because her nose was blocked up. She was snoring, and I briefly considered dropping a pill into the back of her throat just to get one of them into her.
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But the trust would be broken and I rightly decided against this course of action.
All three of my children are laid up with the flu this week. They are each in bed with sickness provisions next to them; we ran out of tissues and are onto toilet rolls now. They each have water, juice and wet tea towels.
There is the option of liquid medications for my younger two but due to their size, they have to take quite a bit of it so it isn't realistic.
The very second they recover, I am going to prioritise teaching them both to swallow medication.
Some kids just learn how to do this really quickly but every time my daughter gets close to it she psychs herself out and just can't do it.
"I swallowed a Skittle by accident once so I know I can do it," she told me once.
This flu is the worst, by the way. I had it for a week and that was bad enough. My daughter has been sick for the longest and the boys both came back from a snow trip with it.
She's slowly getting better a little each day. Fingers crossed she turns a corner soon so I can fix this mistake once and for all.
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