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Sick. Also Tired.
18/5/05 09:27Sarcasm Girl has been home sick for the last couple of days, which (to some extent, anyway) has an impact on my ability to get any writing done, since I tend to want to stay close to home when a child is ill--even though said child is 15, and quite able to lie in her bed of pain unchaperoned for a couple of hours.
The kid doesn't get enough sleep, no matter how we try to outsmart her and force her to sleep. She's taking a 7am elective Journalism class, which is wonderful, but means she has to be up at 6am when every molecule in her body is shouting "Nocturnal Teenager, Dammit!" She'd just as soon stay up 'til eleven, when we're chasing her toward bed at nine. This may seem draconian, but she misses a lot of school out of sheer tiredness, which then slops over into not feeling well. Today she's missing a field trip (she was one of ten school reps to a city-wide "youth summit" which she was very jazzed about. And when she's feeling sick her pattern has always been to get all passive-aggressive, which drives me nuts: she'll mope around, pale and wan, angling for someone else to tell her she has to stay home. We have been working with her on this behavior, trying to get her to be upfront about not feeling well, even if that does mean a hazard that we'll tell her to suck it up and go to school anyway. Which we mostly don't do. I'd love to get the child to 1) eat more healthily, 2) sleep more, 3) stress less--the last is important because she avoids her own problems by worrying obsessively about the problems of her friends. ("I'm so afraid Susie isn't going to get her project done on time!" "How's your project doing, kid?" "I don't know. I can't think about it. I'm so worried about Susie!" ARG.)
When I was her age I stayed up until 2 am most nights reading. But I got out of bed (reluctantly) and got through my day without a precipitous decline in function. I am not my child, my child is not me, and my child needs more sleep. Or she's going to be sick. And (since it all comes back to me) I won't get as much work done as I ought.
The kid doesn't get enough sleep, no matter how we try to outsmart her and force her to sleep. She's taking a 7am elective Journalism class, which is wonderful, but means she has to be up at 6am when every molecule in her body is shouting "Nocturnal Teenager, Dammit!" She'd just as soon stay up 'til eleven, when we're chasing her toward bed at nine. This may seem draconian, but she misses a lot of school out of sheer tiredness, which then slops over into not feeling well. Today she's missing a field trip (she was one of ten school reps to a city-wide "youth summit" which she was very jazzed about. And when she's feeling sick her pattern has always been to get all passive-aggressive, which drives me nuts: she'll mope around, pale and wan, angling for someone else to tell her she has to stay home. We have been working with her on this behavior, trying to get her to be upfront about not feeling well, even if that does mean a hazard that we'll tell her to suck it up and go to school anyway. Which we mostly don't do. I'd love to get the child to 1) eat more healthily, 2) sleep more, 3) stress less--the last is important because she avoids her own problems by worrying obsessively about the problems of her friends. ("I'm so afraid Susie isn't going to get her project done on time!" "How's your project doing, kid?" "I don't know. I can't think about it. I'm so worried about Susie!" ARG.)
When I was her age I stayed up until 2 am most nights reading. But I got out of bed (reluctantly) and got through my day without a precipitous decline in function. I am not my child, my child is not me, and my child needs more sleep. Or she's going to be sick. And (since it all comes back to me) I won't get as much work done as I ought.