Today, I made many mistakes, and while I made each mistake, I was kind of like, "this is a bad idea..." and then I'd do it anyway.
I got a call at work from Alice's school, which usually just means she injured herself ("she smacked into a pole and has a big bump on her head, so we just wanted to let you know...but she's running around again and seems fine..."). But this time, they said she had diarrhea, had gone to the bathroom several times that morning, and said her bottom hurt so bad she couldn't sit down, and her ears hurt, so I needed to come pick her up.
I knew Alice had diarrhea, (she'd been messed up for a couple of days) but she seemed fine otherwise, so we just kept sending her to school. So the call was inevitable, really.
By the time I arranged a sub, threw together some lesson plans, and drove to Alice's school, it was probably nearly and hour since they had called. When I got to the office, she was happily working behind the secretary's desk, using lots of her tape to construct her weird crafts out of paper.
Once I signed Alice out, I took her outside and asked her about her symptoms. As best I could piece together after interrogating Alice, it seemed that she was more embarrassed about making a mess in the toilet at school (or getting it on her undies) than she was actually feeling so sick she couldn't stay at school. And I later figured out that the real reason her bottom hurt was because she was trying so hard to hold it in. Since she did have two ear aches also, I decided to make a doctor's appointment, because I occasionally worry that one of the kids will have some terrible illness that we're just ignoring because they seem fine.
Since I had over an hour to kill until the doctor's appointment (and our house was the other direction), we visited Cary's new downtown fountain that is right next to Alice's school. I even gave her some coins to throw in it, which she voluntarily, unprompted, kindly shared with another kid at the fountain (maybe she's not a complete psychopath after all I thought proudly).
Then, since I hadn't eaten lunch yet, we walked a block or two to a sandwich shop so I could get something to eat (Alice eats lunch at school at 10:45 or something ridiculous like that, so she'd already eaten.) But, the kid she befriended at the fountain was going to get ice-cream, so Alice also really wanted ice-cream. I say no to Alice so much that it's a treat for both of us when I get to say yes. So I said yes.
All this, the fountain, the coins, the ice-cream, was a mistake. I was essentially rewarding Alice for claiming to be so sick she needed to leave school when she was more or less perfectly fine. I should have taken her home and made her lay in bed, just to deter her from ever asking to leave school again. But no, I bought the kid ice-cream from the lunch counter at the corner drugstore.
As my mistake dawned on me, I tried to undo some of the damage. I grumbled a lot about how she should never ask to leave school when she's really fine. She can only leave school if she's so sick she should go to bed. Then I talked a lot about how diarrhea was normal (even though it's gross); it happens to everyone sometime, and that she shouldn't worry about it. This, actually, seemed to have a great effect and help her stress tremendously.
My talk was so effective, in fact, that she suddenly had to go to the bathroom. We rushed into the drugstore and crammed ourselves into the tiny restroom. It was then that I realized my second, and much graver, mistake of the day: we'd brought her ice-cream cone into the bathroom. Dear reader, I will spare you the grossest details, but if she didn't already have diarrhea before this incident, she definitely would have gotten it after this. There was much passing of the dripping ice-cream cone back and forth as the various restroom tasks were completed. To make matters worse, because it was an old-timey place, the sink, with it's precious soap and water and paper towels were all outside the bathroom, in a tiny hallway. It was a disaster. In hindsight, the logical and sanitary thing would have been to throw out the ice-cream cone, but that option occurred to neither the 5-year old (who wanted the cone) nor the 37-year old (who paid for the cone). We both had our reasons for not wanting to waste it, reasons that somehow overrode actual reason.
We finally made it back to the car and zoomed up to the doctor's office. I told Alice we should ask the doctor what foods would be good to eat help end the diarrhea. Alice did great at the appointment: she interacted well with the doctor, answered all the questions herself and even asked questions about what to eat to get better. As much as Alice drives me crazy and I feel like we've failed at getting her to develop important skills like patience and perseverance, I am happy about the things she does well, like interacting with adults and advocating for herself (things I was particularly awful at as a youngster). As the doctor was talking about what foods to eat and avoid, I realized my third mistake: ice-cream (dairy) is really not ideal for someone with diarrhea.
And then, my fourth mistake: rather than taking Alice right home and giving her a nap after the doctor's, we ran errands to Food Lion, RiteAid, and Trader Joes. She had to use the restroom at RiteAid, but luckily at this drug store we did not have an ice-cream cone in the bathroom with us and there was a sink right there in the restroom. By the time we got home, it was too late for her to take a nap and so I didn't get any of my school-work done. I had to unload the groceries and I needed to get supper going...the old pressure of time and routine took over, and I didn't do anything else foolish or impulsive. The gummies I gave Alice before supper were the probiotic gummies I'd gotten at RiteAid, so they would start to ameliorate her symptoms, and were not just a senseless treat to make a little girl and her mom happy.
