Mini Meltdown

I’m afraid I had a mini meltdown this morning.  I actually cried in front of my middle son’s teachers.

We’ve had a lot going on just recently with mom having had the hip operation and running errands for her.  This had in part started to slow down with mom taking her dog on mini walks and me just keeping up the rear on the larger walks.

Saturday morning I had a phone call from mom saying she had been really ill in the night.  So I went round and ended up staying all day with her and overnight as I was worried about her.  I have never seen mom so wiped out from being ill as she was on Saturday. 

We’re not sure if she had a bug, a touch of food poisoning or what.  I’d been with all day Friday and in fact we’d had a great day.  She’d had good news from the hospital about her progress and doesn’t have to go back for 9 months and we celebrated by having lunch out at a local restaurant.

It was such a shame as we’d arranged to take her out in the car over the weekend for her to have her first go at driving in over 7 weeks.

I left hers on Sunday, just coming back to walk the dog in the afternoon.

She then had a relative visiting on Monday so I didn’t see her which was just as well as my eldest son was poorly.  He was full of cold but he goes pale and yellow (hereditary spherocytosis) so decided to keep him off.

Tuesday morning he seemed better although he complained of not feeling good but he got ready for school.  Got to the school gates and he appealed to me to not go in.  He’d had some medicine before leaving the house but when I felt his forehead he was hot.  I made the decision to take him home.

Before doing that I had to take my other two children to school.  When we arrived my middle son started crying and complaining of stomach ache.  My feeling was he didn’t like the idea of his brother being at home, plus  he’d had three days off the previous week poorly with stomach ache and temperature.  (Don’t you just love it when they go back to school and bring everything home with them?).

I was in a dilemma.  I made the decision to let him stay at home and while a friend watched the car for me I took my youngest into school who went without a fuss.

I got the two boys home, sent them upstairs to get changed and they had a nice quiet day.  My youngest son actually did sleep most of the afternoon, so was not tired at bedtime.

At this point my eldest was no better so I told him that he wouldn’t be going into school the next day either.  My youngest son was actually bright as a button, jumping around etc so he knew he would be going to school today.

So it came to the point of getting ready and my youngest son went back up to bed, refusing to get dressed and basically pulling at my heart strings to let him have today off.  He said he was feeling ‘terrible’, but I knew he was just tired from the night before.

I managed to get him dressed and in the car to go to school.  He refused to get out of the car (which I managed to overcome), then he refused to go into class.

I sat him outside the classroom while I went in to explain  to his teacher (and get some help).  One of the other mothers was keeping her talking.  The longer I waited, the more anxious I got and when they finally asked me if everything was okay, I just burst into tears!

Luckily a friend of mine (whose son is a good friend of my son) was outside talking to him.  And his friend was outside with his arm around him.  When the classroom assistant went out to get him, he came in without any fuss.

It’s a horrible feeling knowing that your children don’t want to go into class but I knew this reaction was because his big brother was at home combined with tiredness.

But goodness it makes you feel like you’ve betrayed them.  I certainly don’t like knowing they’re upset but sometimes you have to take the firm stance and say this is how it is.    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem keeping them off school, but I didn’t want him to think that he could just click his fingers and I’d do it.

I still feel guilty sitting here now.  But boy, they never wrote about this side of parenting in the manuals did they? 

Posted in General | 4 Comments »