Man Flu

Give…me…strength.  Our eldest son has learnt the art of ‘man flu’…and he’s only seven.

Yesterday he was complaining of earache, which I know is a horrible, horrible thing and can be very painful, but, as the evening progressed, by far the most painful thing was listening to Josh wailing like a cat being slowly strangled…FOR TWO AND A HALF HOURS.  Non-stop.

We’d done the usual – Calpol, cotton wool in his ear, liquids, keeping his head warm, cuddles…the only thing left was for him to try and go to sleep, which he’d become too worked up and over-tired to do.

My sympathy is in fairly short supply at the best of times but when he told me (after three incoherent attempts through his blubbering) that he was ‘praying to Jesus and God to take the ‘ear infection’ away’ my eyes rolled involuntarily and I had to break it to him that maybe a sore ear wasn’t quite at the top of His list.  Oh, brother.

Now, before you start wondering how I manage to stand up straight without my weighty heart of stone pulling me down, I really must point out that I live in a house with four males.  Four.  All of them male. Therefore a certain indifference to the over-reactions around me must be adopted or the last shreds of my sanity would flutter merrily away on the breeze.

When they are ‘ill’, one is grumpy, sighs heavily, leans melodramatically on various pieces of furniture and generally gets in everyone’s way; one acts as though it’s Armageddon; one has screaming tantrums and becomes more repetitive than usual and one is too young to have yet learnt the art of milking it (but it’s only a matter of time).  I’ll let you decide who displays what behaviour.

In the absence of these symptoms and when quiet lethargy replaces them, I know to be worried but before that point is reached I’m about as compassionate as Hitler.

As a result we cajoled, comforted and then eventually got cross with our son and told him that he was ‘making it worse by crying’ and that old chestnut, ‘it’ll be better after a good night’s sleep.’

Lo and behold, with those words and the threat of not being able to go to football practice if he was off school, he miraculously managed to stop crying, soldier through the pain and sleep all night…and get up this morning with enough energy to eat breakfast, wind his brothers up and get to school with hardly a word about earache.

So what have we learnt here today, ladies and gentlemen?  That I was standing at the back of the line when they were handing out altruism?  Nooo.  We have discovered that sympathy and mollycoddling spreads man flu.

So this is a public health warning – ladies, if you spot the signs of man flu, act fast: tough love is the ONLY way to stop the epidemic.  It’s too late for me – my family are all infected so SAVE YOURSELVES BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE FOR YOU, TOO! 🙂