Child Development

It’s a sad occasion when your child is sick. The runny noses, coughing, the fever, and the helplessness experienced as a parent being unable to take the illness yourself and having to watch the kids suffer on. Of course, as the child gets older they’re able to tend to themselves to some extent. While that may help to ease the parental burden of providing care as the child becomes more self-sufficient, the mental burden remains with the inability to remove the child’s pain. But even in illness there are occasional thresholds worthy to note.


2006

Our boy was five years old and had been feeling punk, as Pop Klem is apt to say. We were having supper and the boy came to a momentary pause. As a parent you know your child’s expressions and body language.

“Do you want to throw up,” I asked him.

“Yes,” he replied calmly.

“Can you make it to the sink in the bathroom?”

He hopped off his chair and sprinted down the hall into the bathroom. Emission completed and sink rinsed.


Sure, it’s a bummer about the sickness, but hey, no clean up! Let’s hope future vomit episodes meet a similarly tidy fate.
-klem