We were told that after a tonsillectomy, the patient would have at least two weeks of discomfort, plus or minus a few days depending on the patient. If this is true, I'm going to beg for your prayers again. Last night was rough, rough, rough! How do you convince an overtired three-year-old who is in obvious pain that he needs to take his medication?! You can be polite and gentle. You can be firm and unrelenting. You can be down right nasty (I'm confessing!). But the only thing we've found to consistently work is a simple bribe. "Take your medicine and you can have two teddy bears." The boys earn little paper teddy bears that equal 5 minutes of computer or video time. I'm not sure why it works (especially since I've been very lax in enforcing Timothy's computer time the past few days), but it does! Tonight I thought we were going to have to take him to the ER because he was screaming so badly, telling us he couldn't breathe, etc, etc. I said, "Timothy, take this medicine and I'll let you go get two teddy bears right now." You'd have thought I was talking to a totally different child in a split second! He downed that Tylenol and literally bounded over to the teddy bear chart and gave himself two new teddy bears, counting his stash and telling me which computer game he was saving his bears for!
Our question is: Is this encouragement or a bribe? Is it helping him make wise decisions, or are we bribing him to get him to do something we want him to do? We can justify both thoughts, but right now I'm going to just accept the blessing of those little teddy bears and I'm going to keep letting him earn them for taking his medicine! It's worth it, in my opinion. If the statistics are correct, we only have a little over a week and a half left to go before he can go without feeling pain. That seems soooo long right now, but "I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me!" Now ... good night. I'm crashing early because I'm afraid I'll be up for several hours again tonight like the last two.
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7 comments:
I think that there are certain instances where "bribes" are definitely okay....he's not holding out for the bribe, but the bribe works! We've learned with our kids, when they're overly tired and there's not much dealing with them, we still don't allow certain behaviors, no matter how tired, sick, whatever. That's the important (and tough) thing.... working on self-control and proper behavior even in the rough times!
Who cares?! He's a little boy in pain- the rewards are negligible- and it isn't like these are normal circumstances- so use teddy bears or ingenuity and relax. Most children don't need an iron hand, just loving,consistent parents who aren't bound by arbitrary rules.
What ever works to get him to take the Tylenol is ok! At his age, he doesn't understand it takes care of the pain. Actually from a nurses' standpoint on pain management, he should have the tylenol on a routine basis before the pain becomes so intense he "looses it" and the medication is NOT as effective. The earlier in the pain cycle it's controlled the better of the patient is, and in this case, the better off the parent is also! And you might even get more sleep at night.
Keep up the good work. We're praying for all of you.
We consider bribing essential to parenting.
Don't feel guilty about the teddy bears. I wouldn't! Actually, Justin had to take some really nasty medicine for a serious condition and Liz rewarded him with timbits. Personally, I think rewarding for taking medicine is totally okay. -Jenny
Peg made an excellent point, give him the pain meds regularly to maximize it's effectiveness. Is Timothy not wanting to the take the medication b/c of the taste? Is he also on antibiotics? In either case, you can mask the taste by putting the medication in a juice that he likes to drink such as o.j but make sure he drinks all of it to get the entire dose or even mix it with some jam and put the jam on a cracker and have him take it that way.
Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions and comments. I've been trying to keep ahead of the pain threshold, but it's the mornings that are brutal. We've tried all the hiding tricks, but somehow he KNOWS when we've hidden some pain relievers in his drinks, milkshakes, yogurt, cereal, whatever!! I found out today that offering a small piece of chocolate or a story with Uncle Oscar also works as well as a teddy bear for encouragement. We'll get there eventually! I have faith!
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