Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

Some kids scream for candy, some scream for cookies, some just scream.  But Tre, well he’s a little different.  The boy LOVES to take medicine, and I feel partly responsible.  When I was a kid, I used to have an ear infection, strep throat, or pink eye at least once or twice a month. I don’t know if the medicine that they use to treat those illnesses are still the same, but the pink stuff they gave out back then sure was good!  It got to the point where my parents had to request tablets because when I got older, I’d sneak into the kitchen and throw back a shot of the pink stuff.  Ah, my first drug addiction: pink liquid antibiotic medication.  I was eventually able to shake the habit, but there were a lot of cold sweats, tremors, and intense pain involved.  Okay maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but that was my childhood story and now I’m afraid Tre is following directly in my footsteps.

When he has a fever, toothache, or he’s getting on our nerves, we medicate him. Kidding about the “getting on our nerves” part by the way, don’t send CPS to my door.  But seriously, Tre doesn’t need medicine often and in the beginning there was a typical child/medicine relationship present.  We’d fill that little baby syringe with the appropriate amount and try to distract him long enough to insert it and administer the medication.  Most of the time this ended with Infant Motrin running down the side of his cheeks, or even worse, being spit back out at us.  Getting that kid to take his medicine was a tough job that usually required two of us for successful completion, but hey it was normal behavior so we just fought through it.  Then a little after he turned a year old, things changed drastically!

I remember the first time that I witnessed Tre’s medication addiction begin to unfold.  He was teething very badly one night and we were in the process of trying to get him in the bed for the evening, but it was literally impossible.  He was just crying and crying and throwing an overall fit.  Fefe noticed that instead of sucking on his pacifier that he was chewing it, so we suspected tooth pain.  We were all out of baby oral gel, so opted for the next best thing to soothe his pain; we got the baby Tylenol and prepared for our two man process that was required to administer it.  He fought us tooth and nail in an attempt to not take the medicine, but then something strange happened.  He took the medicine stopped crying immediately, I thought to myself, “damn, that stuff works fast”.  Then it happened, Tre uttered a quiet “more” and started reaching for the syringe.  An immediate montage flashback of my childhood years played in my head after hearing my child request more medicine.  After the shocking images of my pink liquid antibiotic addiction played in my head, I let out a howling Noooooooo and ran away to cower in a corner, shaking nervously because my past was now threatening to resurrect itself in my son’s future.  Okay, I went a bit heavy on the theatrics there, but I did tell Fefe that she better watch out because he’s gonna be a medicine lover.

My prediction was totally accurate! Since that day, instead of screaming and crying to not take his medicine, the boy screams and cries hoping to get more.  I swear, half of the time I think he goes and hides in a corner and holds his breath so that his temperature will rise, just so he can get “a hit”.  He’s pulled all kind of tactics in an attempt to get more medicine.  He’s done things like drink half of the medicine from the syringe and then throw it in on the floor and saying “uh oh, more”.  I guess he  was hoping we wouldn’t give him a half full syringe after washing it off.  Sorry bud, doesn’t work like that.  Sometimes after giving him medicine, he’ll refuse to give the syringe back, trying to suck every last drop out of it.  Or he’ll follow Fefe around pretending to cough, thinking that will get him a second dose.  It’s a sad sad sight, seeing a toddler go through withdrawal.  Does anyone know the minimum age requirement for rehab facilities? lol

There’s a new toy review today so don’t forget to check out Tre’s Thursday Toy Review.