While you're busy discovering your children's love language, and learning style, and personality type, don't forget to categorize your child's sickness style.
DOB is a Sleeper. Give him a good strong sampling of virus (he doesn't get sick over little things), and he will go to bed for twenty-four hours. Ask him how he is and he will moan faintly. This scared me for the first few times it happened after we were married, but now I know to just keep his water bottle filled and the children at bay and he will be perfectly fine tomorrow.
I'm a Martyr. I can pick up little bugs, too, but no matter how small or large the illness I insist on dragging myself through the daily routine, sniveling all the way. I am never completely out of commission, but the sickness drags on and on.
After observing the rounds of sickness since we moved in (moving always seems to mess up our immune systems), I have concluded that D1 is another Sleeper. When she had roseola, she barely dragged herself out of bed for a drink of water and a couple of bites of vitamins. Two days of that, and she was fine again.
D2, alas, is a Martyr. His fevers come and go, and he wants to do everything just like normal, except with considerable beefing up of the Attention and Nursing portions of the day. Also like me, he doesn't sleep well when he's sick.
The really unfair part is that in general illnesses we Martyrs will always be stuck taking care of things while the Sleepers sleep. No wonder we're so cranky.
4 comments:
Nice classifications. It's amazing to me to note how sickness seems to improve the character of some children (at least it makes them more angelic and easy to deal with) and worsens the character of others.
There's another classification: Sleeper/Drinker.
I'm a sleeper/drinker.
I believe sleep and fluids heal.
The problem is they don't go well together. So I'm actually more of a sleep-for-90-minutes-then-make-a-trip-to-the-restroom-then-drink-a-quart-of-water-or-juice-then-sleep-for-90-minutes... Lather, rinse repeat. Type of person.
We're all Sleepers here. That is, I WANT to be a sleeper, but that's hard at this stage of life. I usually feel a little guilty when A&S sleep more than usual and I enjoy the break.
Darren tries to be a Martyr but he's better off in bed.
-- SJ
SJ~Right, a true Martyr is no better off in bed; they still can't sleep and now they're bored, too. Maybe Daphne will grow up to be a Martyr and can look after things for the rest of you.
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