For 12 years, I worked in close proximity to my home, my kids’ schools, their various doctors and activities. When they needed to go home sick, I could be at their school in 10 minutes, take them home, get them settled and be back at my desk before my lunch break was over. Nowadays, I work 45 minutes from home and it is no longer a luxury for me to pick up my kids, and head back to the office. So I tend to ask this question of them – “Just how sick are you?” Follow-up question – “Can you make it through the rest of the day?” As teenagers, everything hurts and they are always tired so it is hard for me to determine what level of sick they are and what we would consider to be growing pains. So far this year, I’ve had to pick up the kids from school for a possible concussion (which thankfully turned out to be a false alarm), a stomach bug and a migraine headache–and it is only October. So when one of my kids had a lingering cough, I let it go for a while without a doctor’s visit hoping it would just clear up and go away. It didn’t. It has been about a month now and because I haven’t been feeling well myself, I made the decision to take the day off and get both of us checked out. The end result – she has bronchitis and I have a nasty cold with a side order of mom guilt. And the winner of the bad mom award for the day goes to…..
