Compassion is Very Good Medicine

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in a difficult moment of parenting, trying to figure out how to fix the problem, what to say, what to do, and forget that your child is in need of compassion. That, sometimes, compassion is the only "fix", or the best one.

Yesterday, Maeve was struggling with some constipation. I won't give you the whole icky play-by-play, but suffice it to say things were not moving along her digestive tract in the way we would all hope for.  The root cause could be manifold, but we were getting caught up in the most obvious issue: she did not want to poop because she was afraid it would hurt.

So we came at it from lots of different angles, mainly just making the child sit on the toilet for long periods of time, which caused a lot of crying and screaming and hysterics from Maeve. It was pretty miserable. We applied fiber to the situation, but still, no movement.

When I gave up for the second time on the long-term toilet-sitting, I decided in a moment of clarity that my kid needed more than fiber and toilet time, she might need a real laxative and some comfort. I thought to myself, if she was throwing up, or otherwise obviously sick, what would I do? I would be trying to make her feel better. That's what I need to do now.

So I ran out to Walgreens for Pedialax and a stuffed My Little Pony, and I brought them both back as her prescription for feeling better.

She's still sleeping this morning so I don't know if the Pedialax has taken its course yet or not, but Rainbow Dash made her feel better almost instantly, as did the Daddy cuddles while I was out at the store. Compassion is good medicine. For all of us.