Hoodwinked

I’ve been hoodwinked, duped and had the wool pulled firmly over my eyes.

Our seven year old came into our room this morning, complaining (in a carefully staged croaky voice) that his head hurt and his chest felt tight.

Now, ordinarily, my husband and I are of the school of, ‘Go to school, see how you feel, and if you’re still not well you can tell your teacher and come home.’  This morning, however, he cleverly caught me at the vulnerable stage of pre-caffeine semi-consciousness, so I made the fatal mistake of giving him the option.

‘Are you well enough to go to school or not?’ I asked.  My husband understandably sniggered and looked incredulous, predicting the obvious, no-brainer response of a seven year old boy being given the choice NOT to go to school.

Cue lots of puppy dog eyes, dramatic swooning onto the bed and grasping of the throat and head to really drive the point home.

‘I…don’t…think…so’ the ‘poor lamb’ managed to gasp.  Bless.

Now, I know I might sound soft, but said child had bronchiolitis as a baby and it makes him very prone to chest infections that can be severe enough to need inhalers and steroids.  I also had the drama with our three year old last week and the knowledge of lots of other children absent from school with a variety of nasty bugs and viruses and so, for once, I was sympathetic, gave him Calpol and told him to get back into bed, with a view to making a doctor’s appointment this afternoon.

He temporarily forgot his ‘illness’ to look absolutely AMAZED that he’d been allowed to stay off school with so little fuss but had the good sense to scuttle off to bed quickly before we changed our minds.

In hindsight, though, it turns out that whilst he may be feeling a bit ‘off colour’, the only types of ‘itis’ he seems to be displaying symptoms of are, ‘jump-on-the-band-wagon-itis’, ‘attention-seeking-itis’, ‘milking-it-itis’ and now that he’s bored of being made to stay in bed, ‘look-at-my-amazing-recovery-itis’.

Looks like I’m suffering from my own affliction; ‘gullible-mum-itis’.  I hope there’s a cure 🙂