Apparently doctors want us parents to suffer whenever our little dudes do. So, misery really does love company. And will do just about anything to spread itself around. Sort of like cold germs that way. Speaking of cold germs: A group of drug companies and pediatricians recently recommended that parents don’t give over-the-counter cold remedies to kids younger than 4.
This is just plain cruel. I mean, do they really want us, as parents, to let our darling little ones dribble and snort and cough and slobber and whine and whine and whine. . . ahem. Sorry. I meant to say, what the pediatricians are recommending for the little tykes is to just comfort them. Give them plenty of fluids and plenty of loving care. Good God that brings me back.
With our first little dude, when he got a stuffy nose, that’s exactly what we did. We’d actually use one of those nose spouts to pour warm, salty water into his nose to flush it out. I think I still have bruises from trying to make him hold still for that one. I remember one especially memorable cold he wouldn’t sleep because when he sucked on his binky, he couldn’t breathe because his nose was clogged when he lay down. So, I strapped him into his car seat and took off into the Florida night. We drove for hours and I think the only other people out driving that late were other fathers driving their cold-ridden kids around. I still remember exchanging looks with another dad at a stoplight. By his haggard look, puffy eyes and slightly open, drooling mouth, I could tell this wasn’t his first night. The good thing about it was that the cold lasted so long and his nose was so plugged, my little dude gave up his binky that week without a complaint.
By our middle little dude, we were still over-cautious parents, but we’d unbent a little and removed a couple of sticks from our. . . ah, um. . . fundaments? Yeah, fundaments. We gave him a couple of infant nose drops when he got a cold. By the time our youngest little dude was born, we were so relaxed we could have given Jell-O a run for it’s jiggling money. If that kid even looked like he was going to sniffle and interrupt our night’s sleep, we whacked him out on so much cold medicine he looked like he was one of the crawling dead. (Get it? Like walking dead? Only crawling? Never mind.)
Maybe that says more about our parenting style than it does about the need for cold medicines.
Anyway, no more cold medicine for kids under 4. The pediatricians wanted the age limit to be 6, but got shot down by the industry-friendly FDA. Big surprise there.
Oh, no. I just had a terrible thought. What if the FDA ever said you shouldn’t give benadryll to kids? Think of all the family vacations that would be untaken if parents couldn’t whack their kids out on benadryll in the backseat. The travel section of the economy would go under in a flash.
– Richard
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