On the Care and Feeding of Sick Children

This being the 6th year I have had child in school, so I am well versed in illness. But wait, let me back up. Today is my oldest son's 11th birthday, and he was a very sickly child. He started getting ear infections when he was just a few months old. He got everything that went around, sometimes twice. Roseola, 5th disease, croup, hand foot and mouth, strep throat, stomach viruses, pneumonia. From the start, I was very inept with and unsympathetic to illness. Which is unlucky, since I ended up having five children and for some reason, the little buggers get sick a lot! So, over the years, I have developed some strategies to deal with illness, and even prevent it (at little).

First of all, don't be too clean! I can't stress this enough. Overly clean moms have kids who are always sick. And have allergies (which I don't believe in, but that's a whole other day). Why do they do this to their kids and themselves? It just makes extra work and it doesn't help anything.

Next, don't go to the doctor. In appearance, the Dr's office is an overly clean place, but naturally it is crawling with germs, most likely different from the germs your kids have. And you just know the doctor is going to make you wait and wait and wait, and you will go home empty handed with advice on fluids that you already knew. Or, even worse, go home with an antibiotic your child doesn't need.

When your child has already succumbed to some sort of illness don't coddle them. School nurses especially tell the children how sick they are and tell the parents how serious it is on the phone (so the parent will come pick them up). So by the time you get your kid from school, they are probably convinced they're dying. The first thing I do when I pick up a sick kid from school is tell him how fast he will get better in a very matter of fact way. Then go home, and if it's cold outside, open the windows. Fresh air is very good for sickness and germs don't like the cold. Living in the south, we also have our very own natural humidifer and vaporizer--outside! Save money whenever you can, you'll need it for your wine.
Here is some other advice:

Don't let a sick child out of doing chores. They need to learn what life is really like and in the real world you work when you are sick. (Unless of course you are a man and then you lay around and do nothing when you are sick the day after your wife was sick and you claimed to not be able to miss work).

Tell stories about how children used to die from strep throat, etc. This always cheers my children up.

Tell labor and deliver stories. This will make your child (or son) so uncomfortable, he will want to get better as fast as possible to get away from you.

Most importantly, don't lose your cool, but I have no advice on how to do this, having lost my cool with sick kids many , many times.