Читать книгу A Spoonful of Sugar - Liz Fraser - Страница 33

Your primary role as a parent is as carer, whether your children are well and ill, absent or present. A child who is unwell needs their mother or father there to care for them – and no job should come in the way of that.

Clearly we can’t just drop everything every time Jack or Josephine comes home from school with a chest cough. But it’s a heartless parent indeed who honestly thinks it’s OK to pump her child full of Paracetamol and pack him off to school when quite clearly he needs to be in bed, warm, comfortable, and with whoever it is who normally looks after him to make him feel better.

I would like to add one thing about illness and families: while I agree that we need to calm down a little and not panic at the first hint of a cough, it is of course vital that if you really think your child needs medical attention you seek it as soon as possible. Also, prevention is as important, if not more so, than cure, so banish soggy, bacteria-laden hankies and use tissues instead, don’t cough all over each other, get a flu jab if someone in your family is particularly at risk and wash your hands regularly. These simple things can stop infections spreading like wildfire through a household.

The jury is still out as to what caused my entire family to fall foul of the vomiting bug all those Christmases ago. But my money’s still on the salmon mousse.

GRANNY’S TIPS

When your child is ill and needs looking after, one of his parents must be there to look after him. And let him be ill – don’t expect him to get up and get dressed!

Many illnesses just get better within a week or so – don’t rush to the doctor immediately, unless you are really concerned.

Know basic first aid and how to treat the most common ail ments yourself.

And one secret remedy? For bad skin infections, a bread poultice works miracles. I used one on Ken to draw out the poisonous pus in a nasty shoulder infection, much to the astonishment of the local doctor when it worked like a dream within twenty-four hours. Boil some water and when it has cooled from boiling to hot, pour onto thick slices of white bread. Lay the bread on the infected area and wrap in a clean sheet and then some oil silk (OK, since you ask, it’s silk treated with oil to make it water-tight, such as raincoats are made of. You learn something new every day …) to keep the moisture in. Leave overnight and in the morning, when you remove the bread, you’ll find all the poison has been drawn out into the bread and sheet.

–––– LIZ’S TIPS ––––

Make your work work for you: Many employers have a policy that states employees are allowed to take time away from work to care for dependants – make sure they stick to this and do NOT force you to take it as annual leave.

If your child is looked after by a nanny, make sure you have agreed how you’d like your children cared for when they’re ill, which medicines they can take and so on. And if you can’t take the day off to be with your child, that’s fine, so long as they’re happy to be looked after by the nanny. We don’t need you wallowing in guilt!

Sending a child to school who is ill is not only cruel to that child, it is also irresponsible. Children seem incapable of keeping more than five millimetres apart from each other for the entire school day and of not coughing, sneezing and wiping their germs over everything that moves – and everything that doesn’t too. I don’t want your kid’s bugs in my family, so keep them at home please!

‘Feed a cold’ is one of my mum’s favourites. If your child has a cold, try to keep him warm and resting, offer plenty of fluid (water or juice with high vitamin C is best) and regular snacks. And yes, home-made chicken soup really is a good place to start!

For gastric problems, avoid offering fatty foods or anything spicy or ‘complicated’. I used to get dry toast (no butter, as it’s hard to digest), plain white rice or just dry biscuits until it passed. Extra fluid is vital to avoid dehydration.

Remember that a raised temperature is actually performing an important function: by raising its core temperature the body is trying to kill off some of the bugs. If you cool it down all the time, this can’t work. If a child has a temperature it’s a good idea to try and keep it down if it is prolonged, using something like Calpol or Nurofen for Kids. My granny tells me they used to use Baby Aspirin, which is considered unsafe now, so who knows what they’ll find out about our current methods of body temperature and pain control in years to come. Use medication wisely, and only when necessary.