Parenting Solutions
Better than a “spoonful of sugar”
Mary Poppins suggests a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, but I think that some playful parenting can help even more (without the sugar!). Here’s an example that doesn’t involve medicine, but rather an unpleasant medical procedure, but the same type of playful approach can work for taking medicine, trips to the doctor, or any unpleasant event in a child’s life.
A father from Hawaii wrote me about his young daughter, who had a bad cold and needed her nose drained with a bulb syringe, which was very painful and upsetting for her. He said that no amount of cuddling or talk would calm her down after this procedure, and that his wife had taken a break, “to calm her nerves.” I know that feeling very well, and I would guess most parents know it too.
This Dad decided to play a basic role reversal game with his daughter to help her recover from the ordeal. He got a clean bulb syringe and handed it to his daughter, asking her to have her bunny take care of the baby bear. She knew just what to do (and so did he). The Dad described how “her bunny got to doctor to her baby bear (played by me) while the baby bear put up all kinds of resistance. She became very calm and nurturing to the bear and explained why this process was needed. Then she used her own bulb to pull out all the "gunk" and make her bear feel better.”
He went on to describe his wife’s reaction: “My wife was stunned to hear silence and came in to see what was happening. She was amazed to see our daughter playing happily on the bed when she'd been inconsolable just moments before. I described the game we had been playing, and in a whisper, I heard her say to me "that was brilliant". We played this game over and over for the next several days and each time our daughter became more amenable to the bulb. I'm pleased to note that baby bear also made a wonderful recovery.”
It’s important to note that this game is very different from bribing a child in order to “cheer her up.” Instead, it is a jumpstart to a child’s natural process of using play--especially reversing the roles, becoming the doctor instead of the patient, or the buzzing bee instead of the scared child--to recover from the little upsets of life.
