Compassionate Mom....strikes again!!!

[WTMindy]

My 11yod broke her toe last night. Did I know that she broke it? No. Was I sympathetic? No. Did I think she was overreacting? Yes. Did I tell her to stop crying so hard? Yes. Did I feel horrible when she woke up with it all swollen this morning? YES!!!!!! The doctor said it is broken but all we can do is just keep it iced. Nice!!! I did the same thing when my ds broke his toe last year. I also did the same thing when ds broke his arm when he was 3. I'm always really compassionate once I realize the bones are broken, but I fail the initial compassion test.

[Elaine]

My 11yod broke her toe last night. Did I know that she broke it? No. Was I sympathetic? No. Did I think she was overreacting? Yes. Did I tell her to stop crying so hard? Yes. Did I feel horrible when she woke up with it all swollen this morning? YES!!!!!! The doctor said it is broken but all we can do is just keep it iced. Nice!!! I did the same thing when my ds broke his toe last year. I also did the same thing when ds broke his arm when he was 3. I'm always really compassionate once I realize the bones are broken, but I fail the initial compassion test.

 

:grouphug:Mindy, it's OK.

[Philothea]

Isn't that a mark of being a mother, thick skin?

 

When we were over at a friends house recently, dd was jumping on their furniture, she slipped and fell off. My friend was all worried/concerned about her, but I was yelling at her for jumping on the furniture!

[Plucky]

My 11yod broke her toe last night. Did I know that she broke it? No. Was I sympathetic? No. Did I think she was overreacting? Yes. Did I tell her to stop crying so hard? Yes. Did I feel horrible when she woke up with it all swollen this morning? YES!!!!!! The doctor said it is broken but all we can do is just keep it iced. Nice!!! I did the same thing when my ds broke his toe last year. I also did the same thing when ds broke his arm when he was 3. I'm always really compassionate once I realize the bones are broken, but I fail the initial compassion test.

 

Awww, it's okay. I do the same thing. Tonight I poo-pooed dd's headache until she started screaming and threw up. It's so hard to know what is really serious sometimes by the way they act. Ugh. :grouphug:

[Ann@thebeach]

Don't feel bad! My son broke his wrist at a playdate and I said "it's OK, just take a little rest" and I went back to my friends. :ohmy:

After about 20 min he came back holding it like a broken wing and since it had no swelling and no bruising I continued to think he was just over reacting.

Then after another 20 min he came back red faced and saying it really hurt so I started to feel bad but still not convinced it was broken.

Called DH to take him to the xray while I stayed with our other kids.

Get a call an hour later that I had an appt the next day to get a cast put on his broken wrist! :blushing:

Oh ya, I felt terrible for a long time!

So don't beat yourself up, we do the best we can ;)

[abbeyej]

Oh, Mindy, I'm sorry! I'll join you though in the Compassionate Moms Club. Just a couple of weeks ago, we were standing in line at a taqueria when ds told me he needed to go sit down. I snapped at him that he could stand there and be patient for just a few minutes! (There were tons of people in line and not really enough tables to go around, and I thought he was just being whiney.)

 

Well, the kid got me back. He said, "But I'm dehydrated and dizzz..." faint. Just melted to the floor. (I did catch him at least.)

 

Oh, man. Talk about feeling like a horrid mama! My poor baby...

 

(He's okay now, btw, despite his incompetent, unfeeling mother. And the ped confirmed that there was nothing more serious wrong...)

[Jen500]

Mindy, I've had more than a few episodes like that in my house too, don't feel bad. Like the time ds had yet another cold, and me, tired of running to the ped for 'just a cold', waited, and he had pneumonia. I've also taken the kids to the Dr. so many times and it's turned out to be nothing.

Give your daughter some extra TLC!

[Suzanne in ABQ]

Hey, I broke my OWN toe a couple of weeks ago, and I had no idea I'd done more than cut it. Man, was I surprised later when it swelled up like a roma tomato, and half my foot turned all magenta and purple, and half the toenail came loose!

 

I had no compassion for myself either. I didn't even ice it. I just put a bandaid on it to keep it from making a bloody mess on the floor.

 

Give yourself a hug. Toes are weird. Give dd some ice cream, and eat some yourself, and know that everything will be okay. :grouphug:

[Only me]

It's a little different story but I still feel really bad about it. My dh was away on a business trip. At this time my ds was 8 months old and his older sisters were 3 and 6. We were bored so I decided to take a bunch of pictures. My dh loves his girls but was very happy to have a boy. First we put on one of my dh's shirts with a tie, etc. and took a picture. He looked so cute. Then as a joke I decided to dress my ds up in one of his sister's dresses and put a bow in his hair. Keep in mind that my dh has been bombarded by pink, dresses and bows for the past 6 years until he finally got his son. I thought it was a great joke but I noticed that my son was getting really fussy. I put him back into his own clothing and only then realized that he had a fever. By morning he was burning up. Oh by the way, we were in the middle of a blizzard and I couldn't drive to the hospital. I sat up and held ds all night and in the morning my parents drove us to the doctor's office where they diagnosed him with pneumonia. I felt so bad!!!!

[Tracey in TX]

:grouphug::grouphug: If it weren't true, it'd make a great sitcom episode! Broken bones are difficult to detect without the telltale signs of major bruising or bone misplaced and sticking out. I did the same thing with DD (who fell off a jump house slide!!) and broke both bones in arm. Even ER nurse who was a party told her to get over it. (Still laugh at the sympathy she received from everyone, including me.) I broke my toe this spring and it bruised and swelled within minutes. DH laughed when I called to tell him. How many times do we or our children cry wolf before we yawn and ignore?

Somewhere in all the maternal chaos we have to indulge in humor. This is your turn!

In the mean time, wear shoes just in case!

[Chris in CA]

:grouphug:

[manylilblessings]

My sons have had 3 broken arms (all together). It took till the 3rd one to actually get to the doctor that day for an x-ray. 3rd time's the charm I suppose! IDK... broken bones are funny. The only thing that distinguishes most of them is that they still hurt a long while later.

 

My neighbor wins the prize though... she waited a week. Oops!

 

Hugs... and ice cream. That works!

[Brindee]

Awww, it's okay! As you see, many others have done the same!

 

Hope your dd's toe is better soon! Go on over to that other thread and get rejuvenated! :D

 

Oh and the icecream is a great idea too! :)

 

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

[Mom2boys]

I did the same thing once with my older son when he hurt his finger. I was not at all sympathetic until his entire finger turned purple. Another time I waited four days to take him to the doctor and it turned out he had scarlet fever. It's just so hard to know sometimes how sick or injured they really are. I think we've all been there. Don't be too hard on yourself. :grouphug:

[Emmy]

I'm so accustomed to the many (imagined) injuries in my house I'm sure it would be the same thing here....I swear I spend my days calling out SHAKE IT OFF and YOU'RE FINE......so I sympathize! I think we get used to dealing with all the bumps and scrapes and trying to NOT make a big deal out of it and then occasionally it's a real injury....don't feel guilty, it'll be fine.

[Rose in BC]

My words of comfort were "the harder you cry, the more it will hurt". I had no clue it was broken and only decided to take him to the doctor that same afternoon (2 hours after he fell) because it was New Years eve and I just wanted to check. I felt like such a failure when the doctor INSTANTLY said "broken clavicle" the second he saw my son. Six weeks in a sling, strapped to his body. Even required orthopedic surgeon care.

 

And I thought he was over reacting!

 

I had a hard time trusting my judgment after that and felt quite inadequate as a parent. (I'm over it now. :) And so is he!

[Vida Winter]

Mr. "un"-compassion, the ER doctor. He's fine with his patients but with his family he assumes we are all faking it unless there is blood involved, or an obvious broken bone. :mad:

 

To give him the benefit of doubt, however, my children do complain about every ache and pain known (and unknown) to mankind. My favorite complaints are "growing pains" -- they move around, come and go, and notoriously crop up when there's work to be done.

 

With so much faking it going on at our house, it is easy to overlook "real" problems.:glare: So we do the best we can. I think you are doing just fine.

[dangermom]

Yeah, I lack compassion too. I'm always trying to tell them that since they scream and howl for every little thing, I can't tell when they're actually injured. I'm still waiting for them to believe me.

 

I wasn't even very nice when my kid was running in the house with a fuzzy blanket wrapped around her and slipped on the hardwood floor because she stepped on the blanket. She whanged her head into the corner of the wall so hard she dented the metal thing inside the plaster. (I swear, she should have been in the ER with blood all over her, and she barely had a bruise.) I didn't see the dented wall until after I'd looked her over, so what I mostly did was yell at her for doing something so idiotic. I got the Bad Mom award for the day, but really, that was a truly dumb thing to do!

[Jean in Newcastle]

When my brother was a teen he had a friend over for a week. They were wrestling in the living room and his friend broke his leg. My mom told him to stop his whining! Boy, did she feel bad the next day when she finally took him to the doctor and found out it was broken. . .!

 

Looking at all the stories here you can see that having kids who over-react on a regular basis has made us all immune to showing compassion (at least until we know that it is a real problem!)

[LunaLee]

It's okay Mindy, really. I know you feel bad, but what's a mother to do sometimes.:grouphug:

 

Both of my parents were Marines, so there was NO sympathy in my house. I have tried to break the cycle, but it is just hard sometimes. I guess we just do the best we can and then we have these little incidents to humble us for a little while. For instance:

 

Last year dd broke her wrist snowboarding with some friends. She was casted for about 4 weeks then recieved the okay that she was all healed and she could resume her sporting ways. I kid you not, not even 3 weeks later, she slid into second base and "hurt" her thumb. So here I'm telling dd "Shake it off...get back in the game...you're okay..." I'm thinking she just jammed up her thumb, no biggie "C'mon, stop whining." Insert disclaimer here: DD is one of those kids who has a history of complaining and making up ailments for attention-end disclaimer. Anyway's it takes a bit for it to start swelling and me going "it's just jammed get back on the field" before I relented and she did sit the rest of the game. Needless to say Monday rolls around, because I am NOT paying for an ER visit for a jammed thumb, and I take her to the Dr's where we are sent to x-ray to find out ARE YOU KIDDING ME...her thumb is broken. This break, the ortho said, was not related in anyway to the first, just rotten luck.

[TammyinTN]

:grouphug: Hang in there! Sometimes being the mom stinks...this is one of those times! I've done exactly the same thing.

[Lizzie in Ma]

I am Queen Compassion! NOT. Shake it off it our family motto. Especially withe the hypochondriac 12 year old we have. Of course, she is the one who has actually injured herself many a time but I still go with shake it off first.

Err on the side of NOT going to the ER again, that's what I say. Especially on a holiday weekend.

I will pamper you silly if there is a real injury or illness, but determining that can be iffy.

[DB in NJ]

:grouphug:

[Kathleen in VA]

I'm kinda the opposite of y'all - I always want to run to the ER or ped and dh says wait. I once called 911 because ds (about 6 at the time) screamed so loudly from the backyard I was sure he had been bitten by a copperhead (we see those a lot around here). Turns out he saw a very large, hairy spider :blushing:.

 

I think I may have become like this because when I was about 13 I got a very bad stomach ache and kept throwing up all day. I begged my mom to take me to the doctor. (I was kicking the walls I was in so much pain.) We lived on a small island where the only way to get to the hospital included a ride on a ferry. While we were sitting on the ferry waiting to get across the harbor my mom kept saying, "You had just better be good and sick!" I laugh now about it. Turns out I had appendicitis and they removed my appendix within about an hour of arriving at the ER. It was about to burst according to the surgeon. I never let her live that down;). I think she beats you all hands down!

[sleepy]

Mindy, you're a good mommy! We can't always get things right. I hope you (and your dd's toe) are feeling better this morning. :001_smile:

[Quiver0f10]

I have done the same thing. You're a good mom! :grouphug:

[Andie]

My 11yod broke her toe last night. Did I know that she broke it? No. Was I sympathetic? No. Did I think she was overreacting? Yes. Did I tell her to stop crying so hard? Yes. Did I feel horrible when she woke up with it all swollen this morning? YES!!!!!! The doctor said it is broken but all we can do is just keep it iced. Nice!!! I did the same thing when my ds broke his toe last year. I also did the same thing when ds broke his arm when he was 3. I'm always really compassionate once I realize the bones are broken, but I fail the initial compassion test.

 

 

Oh, Mindy. I'm so sorry. (And relieved. This is SO something I would do.) Poor dd! I hope it heals quickly!