Sick Day, My A$$

I’m not the type of parent who yells obscenities at the television and flips Matt Noyes the bird when he announces a snow day. But I’m also not the mom who dashes excitedly to the craft closet to whip up the necessities for making paper mâché pencil holders either. I’m somewhere in the middle.

I mean, first of all, Matt Noyes is a nice and cute guy – a weatherman for Christ’s sake – and second of all, the technology for him to be able to see me through my television screen hasn’t been invented yet. At least I don’t think it has. Though come to think of it, one time I was almost certain Matt gave me a second glance when I walked into the family room in my sexy flannel snowman pajamas. Anyway, a snow day is a snow day and there’s not much you can do about it except to pop in a movie for the kids and sneak sips from from the corked bottle of white in the refrigerator.

But sick days are a whole other beast.

I don’t keep my kids home from school very often. It’s a guilt thing. And it probably stems from my childhood, when I would stop at nothing to make it to school. Like the time I had accidentally put my hand through our glass door after my mother had already left for work and I ran to catch the bus anyway, a shard of glass protruding from my palm and blood running down my arm. You can’t teach that type of commitment.

So when my 7-year-old wakes up and tells me he can’t go to school because he has a cough and a runny nose, I have to remind myself that things are different now. See, in my day, kids went to school with stab wounds. Today, the possibility that you MIGHT spread a germ is cause for home confinement.

But still, up until the very moment that it becomes too late to even get him to school on time, I am constantly testing his stamina. “Are you still coughing out there?” I yell from the shower. “If you stay home sick, you’re taking a nap, just so you know.”

This morning, he assured me he was too sick to go to school, but by 10am, he and my younger son (whom I kept home from preschool because he was up all night with a belly ache) were playing an intense game of knee hockey in the family room and yucking it up. “What, Mommy, I am sick!” my 7-year-old insists when he sees me giving him the stink-eye after a killer slapshot.

Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I actually like having all the kids home together since our normal schedule has us running around like chickens with no heads. (Again, I’m not making paper mâché pencil holders, but I am playing games and watching movies and reading books under blankets.) But I also think it’s important to teach my kids a good work ethic now, so that when my son is 30, he’s not calling into work because there’s a vintage Phineas and Ferb marathon on television.

So what does it take for you to let your kids have a sick day?