crazy - my 4 yr old doesn't remember what being sick is

[ktgrok]

My DD turned 4 this month. We were talking about how vaccines work (she's curious about EVERYTHING at this age) and germs, etc. And got into how some germs don't have vaccines, like regular colds, etc. 

Y'all...she has NO recollection of what a cold is, or being sick. Which makes sense, she didn't get sick much before, and now with no exposure, she hasn't been sick since well before the pandemic. She was 2 when we started lockdown. So yeah...no frame of reference she can recall.

I don't say that as a good or bad thing, just....weird, lol. 

[Amethyst]

Wow. Very interesting!! Makes sense, but like you said, weird. 

[mommyoffive]

I think the little ones a lot this last year will leave them with things like that.  My youngest the other day wanted to keep hearing any stories of her or her siblings being sick.  She hasn't been sick at all this whole time and didn't get sick tons either.  Odd for them to go through.  I wonder what it will be like when life is normal and nobody is wearing masks again.  I hope we don't end up being sick the first 6 months of it. 

[kbutton]

I have a 13 y.o. that rarely gets more than a minor cold. Almost never runs a fever. Has never had a GI bug and never barfed unless he's had a migraine. We don't live in a cave in non-pandemic times--he's out an about with other kids multiple times per week, and when he was little, he was in the church nursery with all the other walking vectors (who were often sick and covered in snot). He did get some amazing eye snot a couple of times when he had a cold as an infant (but not pink eye), but I don't think he got feverish. 

No one in our house has had a GI bug since a couple a years before he was born, but we had one heck of one when my older son was little. 

I didn't miss more than a half day of school for years and years, but my brother was sick often. 

DH rarely gets more than a minor cold either, though he got strep two years in a row when he first worked in peds (he's in emergency med now). I wonder if we get exposed to little bits of things from him. 

We're weird! 

[KungFuPanda]

1 hour ago, ktgrok said:

My DD turned 4 this month. We were talking about how vaccines work (she's curious about EVERYTHING at this age) and germs, etc. And got into how some germs don't have vaccines, like regular colds, etc. 

Y'all...she has NO recollection of what a cold is, or being sick. Which makes sense, she didn't get sick much before, and now with no exposure, she hasn't been sick since well before the pandemic. She was 2 when we started lockdown. So yeah...no frame of reference she can recall.

I don't say that as a good or bad thing, just....weird, lol. 

If there's a silver lining, this may be it.  There have been zero illnesses at my house since we locked down last year. The closest thing we've had to a cold has been a headache when the pressure drops.  Maybe we can normalize masks for sick people going forward? Good luck getting her to understand what a stuffy nose is. 😄 She's gonna be very put out when she gets one.

[Katy]

I went to high school with a kid who swore he’d never been sick. Never had a stomach flu or even the sniffles. Perfect attendance at school. I envied his immune system. 

[kokotg]

I remember being struck when we listened to Little House on the Prairie recently with how quickly Ma freaks out when the girls are a little bit feverish (umm, in this case it turned out to be Malaria, so it made sense, but she didn't KNOW it was something serious). Then I thought about how they were almost never around other people, so it WOULD be really unusual for them to get sick.

[klmama]

1 hour ago, Katy said:

I went to high school with a kid who swore he’d never been sick. Never had a stomach flu or even the sniffles. Perfect attendance at school. I envied his immune system. 

My preschoolers used to get sick all the time when they went to Sunday School.  They'd catch something, miss the next because they were still sick, miss the next because it had gotten passed to someone else in the family, and then we'd return again; one of them would inevitably catch the next round a few weeks later.  We kept our last dc out of Sunday School for years, because we weren't willing to go through that again.  When I mentioned it to a friend who wondered why dc wasn't in Sunday School, she was astonished.  She said her dc had never caught anything at church, ever, and that he was rarely sick.  None of them were.  I don't know how they did it.  

[Garga]

I have a few friends whose families catch everything. Everything. I and my family don’t get sick very often. I think it must be some sort of genetic thing outside of a lot of our control. 

[freesia]

That is so funny.  She will be most annoyed the first time she gets sick.

I have two in my family right now, who have always hated to be sick, and go around saying things like, "I am feeling tired and my throat might hurt, but not really, and it's possible my tummy might hurt, but I don't know, do you think I'm sick?"  I feel like saying, "You don't remember what sick is, if you think you are sick!"  but I dutifully feel their forehead and try not to roll my eyes.

[lmrich]

My youngest never got colds. She came to me at 10 and asked what was wrong with her nose... all this gunk keeps running out of it! I about fell over  - my dad, son, and I have not gone a day without using tissue for our sinus issues. Guess she got the good genes!

[Garga]

DH’s aunt tells a story about DH’s grandmother:

One day Auntie (in her 30s at the time) was at home with Grandmother (in her 60s at the time). Grandmother got a strange look on her face and said, “I need to go lie down.” After a few minutes, Auntie went to check on Grandmother and found her crying in her room. Auntie asked, “Grandmother, what is wrong?” 

Grandmother explained that she had a horrible feeling in her stomach and couldn’t describe it, but she was very scared and it was just horrible.  

Then, a few minutes later, Grandmother threw up. 

It was the first time in her life she ever threw up and she had no clue what was happening to her. 

 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Garga

[Lawyer&Mom]

My six year old asked me the other week how we made the special picture on the fridge.  She didn’t know what a *photograph* was!  She knows all about cameras and pictures, but not actual printed photographs!

We used to get them printed for various school projects in the Before times, but this year with Zoom school, everything has just been digital and I think she just forgot. But maybe she never knew about them? 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Lawyer&Mom

[fraidycat]

3 hours ago, Garga said:

DH’s aunt tells a story about DH’s grandmother:

One day Auntie (in her 30s at the time) was at home with Grandmother (in her 60s at the time). Grandmother got a strange look on her face and said, “I need to go lie down.” After a few minutes, Auntie went to check on Grandmother and found her crying in her room. Auntie asked, “Grandmother, what is wrong?” 

Grandmother explained that she had a horrible feeling in her stomach and couldn’t describe it, but she was very scared and it was just horrible.  

Then, a few minutes later, Grandmother threw up. 

It was the first time in her life she ever threw up and she had no clue what was happening to her. 

 

I'm sitting here wracking my brain to try to remember when (if ever) either of my kids have puked (or the other end) since they were babies/toddlers. I honestly can't think of a time. They're 18 and 15.

They have both had cold/flu viruses and have been in bed with fevers/headaches/coughs/snot but no GI stuff. 
 

My 15 year old just had antibiotics for the first time in his life a little over a year ago (at 14 years old) for an infected ingrown toenail.

[Ausmumof3]

I want to say on the down side here where life is back to normal everyone is playing catch up on all the sickness and getting sick a lot!  So once you’re back to normal it’s worth doing all the immune boosting things you can!

[Guest]

12 hours ago, KungFuPanda said:

If there's a silver lining, this may be it.  There have been zero illnesses at my house since we locked down last year. The closest thing we've had to a cold has been a headache when the pressure drops.  Maybe we can normalize masks for sick people going forward? Good luck getting her to understand what a stuffy nose is. 😄 She's gonna be very put out when she gets one.

Same in my household too. Not a single cold or flu-like illness among me, dh and the kids since December 2019 (except for dh now having COVID). This includes my dd, who normally gets at least one severe strep through/sinus infection every cold season. She was also expressing that she hopes mask wearing catches on whenever people are not feeling good. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, fraidycat said:

I'm sitting here wracking my brain to try to remember when (if ever) either of my kids have puked (or the other end) since they were babies/toddlers. I honestly can't think of a time. They're 18 and 15.

They have both had cold/flu viruses and have been in bed with fevers/headaches/coughs/snot but no GI stuff. 
 

My 15 year old just had antibiotics for the first time in his life a little over a year ago (at 14 years old) for an infected ingrown toenail.

I hope I’m not jinxing myself here, but we never, not one time ever had the sort of norovirus-goes-through-the-family I hear about in other households. Like when all the kids and mom and dad are puking, rushing to the toilet, feeling horrible, all stuck with a GI nasty. We have never had that. I only remember one instance when one of my kids had likely salmonella or similar, likely from eating food at the fair. (Only that child ate from that vendor, and only that child got sick.) The was the worst GI bug I can recall any of my kids having. 

[Carrie12345]

I don’t know if they’ve forgotten, but my sister’s kids were ALWAYS sick, especially right before lockdown. They had everything with a name, plus some mysteries. Always at the doctor. And then nothing.  I worry about them in the near future.

On the lighter side, my sister was in a pinch and had to take the 2yo into the gas station minimart. He was AMAZED by the place and keeps asking to go back.

[freesia]

1 hour ago, Carrie12345 said:

I don’t know if they’ve forgotten, but my sister’s kids were ALWAYS sick, especially right before lockdown. They had everything with a name, plus some mysteries. Always at the doctor. And then nothing.  I worry about them in the near future.

On the lighter side, my sister was in a pinch and had to take the 2yo into the gas station minimart. He was AMAZED by the place and keeps asking to go back.

That's the age child I think will be most interesting to watch in the next few months.  They haven't been along for those type of errands unless it can be helped and are only used to seeing their family unmasked.  We've allowed my dd to watch a toddler while masked a few times.  Will he even know her or will he be scared when he sees her mouth.  It's going to be so interesting.

[Elizabeth86]

Isn't that a crazy thing? My baby doesn't remember being sick either. I am SO bad at being sick, I don't miss it one bit. 

I had to take my 3 and 5 year old to the doctor for 5 year old dd routine vaccines and a well child visit for them all and my poor baby has no idea what life is like on the outside.  She was terrified.  She wouldn't even get on the scale or let them listen to her with a stethoscope.  She just screamed and buried her head in my chest and screamed no no no and was smacking at the nurses.  Totally out of character for her.  That same day I took her in the grocery store (she has barely been anywhere this past year) She was sitting in the cart and out of of the blue she said to me, "I hate people." We go to empty parks sometimes and if people show up, she gets scared and runs to me and say "people are coming"  When we first started going back to visit my parents, when we got in our car she said, " we are actually leaving our home.  I don't want to leave our home." My poor baby is terrified of the outside world.  

[Not_a_Number]

Interesting! Now I'm wondering if DD4 remembers. She's almost 5, so she was older at the beginning of the pandemic... 

[sangtarah]

My just turned 4 year old wasn’t ever sick, but one of her big sisters has lots of time feeling sick, so she plays doctor on a regular basis. She took really well to masking and now asks that all her dolls have them too. I don’t know what she will think when we start going to things again. 

[vonfirmath]

On 4/1/2021 at 6:36 PM, kokotg said:

I remember being struck when we listened to Little House on the Prairie recently with how quickly Ma freaks out when the girls are a little bit feverish (umm, in this case it turned out to be Malaria, so it made sense, but she didn't KNOW it was something serious). Then I thought about how they were almost never around other people, so it WOULD be really unusual for them to get sick.

Also remember though -- before antibiotics any illness could be deadly.

[Terabith]

I remember getting hiccups when I was around three and having absolutely no idea what was going on.  I legitimately thought I was going to die.  It's so weird what little kids remember and don't remember.