How Do You Handle When Little Ones Are Sick?

If I were to give a one-word description of 2024 so far, my word would have to be “Sickness”. Just as 2023 was winding down, one of my family picked up pink eye, and then a cough– it was downhill from there.

In families of any size, an illness can mean changes in plans, late nights, and lots of soup. In an age where COVID-19 is a thing, people can be more sensitive to coughs and colds, so you try to be sensitive by staying away as much as possible, but this can mean missing church, youth group activities, or canceling get-togethers.

Inside the house, it’s a different ball game. There are days when you wonder if it’d be better if you just let everyone get exposed, get sick, and get it over with– but that’d just be mean. Even if you wanted to torture everyone (for no one likes to get sick), who knows how long or how much exposure it would take? Intentionally trying to get someone sick is just wrong.

So, you end up making arrangements to try to limit exposure. For us, a big change usually is moving whoever is feeling ill or coughing from the main table at meals to a secondary table– trying to prevent coughing all over the food or sharing germs. This last time around we kept kids pretty much in their rooms all day, letting them rest, read, or have downtime.

Sleep is a different challenge. We’ve used distraction at night, isolation to parts of the house where others can sleep, sleeping with the sick child or apart from the sick child with baby monitors or in rooms that we can still hear. If you can do it, I think isolation where someone can care for the person but others can get rest is probably the best strategy.

Lots of prayer, lots of liquids, and keeping a check on temperatures are the order of the days. Hopefully, you and your families are well and not fighting all the bugs. I’m definitely interested to hear what you do when your little ones are ill.