What to do when your kids stress you out!

PARENTING: Both partners need to work to reduce hassles and divide time to spend with the child.

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Aarti Bhatnagar was extremely hassled. Her 10-year old son Vinod and six-year daughter Shalini, both were down with a viral fever, cold and cough.

The kids refused to eat, and were cranky, all day. Worse still, they had unit tests coming up at school, in which they are not doing well enough. Their father was on tour and Aarti had taken some days off from work.

The other day she brought the kids to see me, imploring me to make them alright...immediately! This was because she could afford to take anymore leave.

I explained to her that these are viral infections and that they can take anywhere from five to 10 days to disappear completely. But she wanted a second opinion.

The newspapers report illnesses like malaria and dengue, and a couple of people she knows are in already hospital due to fever. So, she got some blood and urine tests done. Ultimately, however, all reports were negative, and after a week, both her kids recovered their strength.

Let's quickly take stock of life 30 or 40 years ago; most mothers then had two to four children, on an average. And they fell sick as often as children do, today. But mothers rarely got this hassled over simple infections like a cough and cold.

If you were to ask you mother for advice, in all probability she would tell you that she rarely took her kids to a doctor for simple illnesses; these were cured using home remedies or with simple OTC (over-the-counter) medicines like paracetamol or a cough syrup.