Cold & flu season
BeforeI had kids, I would get annoyed at how people with kids reacted to cold and flu season.
Simply put: I thought they were treating a time of year when many people had to deal with an inconvenient transitory illness like a bigger deal than it was.
Today, I’ve got four kids, the oldest is close to seven and the youngest not much over one year old. And everyone in the house has a cold.
Not COVID, RSV, strep, or the flu. Just a cold.
Having a cold makes everything even the most mundane task of daily life (sleeping, moving, talking, etc.) go from things that I don’t need to think about to things that require noticeable mental and physical effort.
When it was just me who had to endure this rottenness, it was uncomfortable, but it was definitely bearable. This is probably why I thought that people with kids were overreacting to cold flu season before I had kids. I was was assuming that my subjective experience of discomfort and difficulties that are part of being sick were representative of what they would be going through.
Now, as I experience having to deal with
- my own sickness induced discomfort and
- how my kid’s sickness induced discomfort (which makes them act in ways that are not fun)
I realize how sawfly cold and flu season is for people with kids! Having to manage the discomfort of others makes my discomfort become far more uncomfortable.
It also makes me more aware of something I talk about in my podcast —how getting older (and more experienced) has made me far less judgmental than when I was young (and less experienced).
