Trying to decide whether a child is sick or not when they can’t tell you themself is very difficult. When said child also has a tendency to be a trickster to get out of unpreferred activities, it makes it even more of a guessing game. For the most part, Eddie loves going to school, but on occasion he knows it is a lot of work. These days I have to decide if he is really sick or acting sick to take a “personal day.”
Today was one of those days. He didn’t really want to wake up. Yes, he did have the stomach flu over the weekend, but yesterday he was fine. No, he didn’t have a fever, or any symptom signifying impending doom. However, he really didn’t want to get out of bed, or to eat breakfast (which is really unlike him).
After rethinking the morning, I decided that he didn’t really go to bed when he was put there since I did find him sleeping in the middle of his room (not in bed). That is usually a dead give-away that he wasn’t sleeping all night. After deep thought, I decided to send him to school.
This means the whole time he is there I worry about the phone ringing. Sure enough, it rang. Eddie had thrown two major tantrums, but it was the same part of the day he threw tantrums the last time he was at school. Here we go again!
Is Eddie throwing a tantrum because he doesn’t feel good? Or…is he trying to get out of another unpreferred activity? The ongoing dilemma…