The 7 Stages Of Coping With Your Toddler’s Cold

The average preschooler gets about nine colds a year. Purely coincidentally, the average parent of a preschooler gets the urge to disappear into the night and take a child-free drive to the Grand Canyon about nine times a year. Here are the seven stages you’ll face when your toddler catches one of those nine-odd colds.

1. Self-delusion

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That’s not a cold. Your kid isn’t sick! Your toddler’s nose is just dripping because she’s suddenly developed an allergy to the paint in the living room, probably. Was that a sneeze? No, she’s just making funny noises while she practices words. With her nose. Yeah.

2. Self-congratulation

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You know what? It’s okay that your little guy caught a cold. That means he’s getting his immune system challenged and getting exposed to germs now is better for him in the long run. Sure, it might be frustrating in the short term, but having a sick kid really just means you’re doing a good job as a parent. Go you!

3. Stiff upper lip

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After a week of steady nose-fauceting, confidence starts to get shaky. It’s okay. How much longer can one little cold last, anyway?

4. Cracks appearing in the facade

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You’re trying to come up with ways to assign a quantity to the volume of snot coming out of your kid’s face in order to try to prove that she’s getting better. she has to be getting better, right? RIGHT?!

5. Cabin fever

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The yard is a desolate, icy wasteland, but you still find yourself staring longingly at it through the window by the kitchen sink as you wash out the NoseFrida again. Soon, you whisper to the -3° wind chill. We’ll be able to go for a walk soon. And it’s going to be awesome.

6. Directionless anger

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You can’t get angry at a small child for being sick, for STILL being sick after three week, because only a crazy person would do that. And you’re not crazy! Right?! Would a crazy person take their frustration out by screaming into and/or viciously biting a pile of dish towels? I think not.

7. Resignation

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Your child has never not been sick. Your child came into this world sniffling and sneezing and he will always be sniffling and sneezing. It’s best to stop thinking about what life would be like without colds, because you will never again know a life like that. There is no ‘going to play dates’ or ‘leaving the house for non-essential reasons‘. There is only wiping leaky noses. This is your fate now. It’s best to embrace it without tears (because you’re long since out of the nice Puffs facial tissues and you’d have to blow your nose on a piece of paper towel).

(Image: Heidi van der Westhuizen / Getty)

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