Everyone gets ill sometimes. Usually its because some little kid (yours or someone else's) brought some of their nasty little germs over to you and gave them to you as a prize for being the closest person to them at the time. If you work for a good employer, you have a set number of sick days at your disposal or even some vacation time that you can use to cover your absence from work for a day or more while you vomit, sneeze, cough, shake, seize or have whatever symptoms (real or imaginary) you are having associated with the virus or bacteria (or stress induced boss avoidance) that has invaded the home you call a body.
Parents do not get paid for the job they do. Perhaps if they did, some of them would choose to take it more seriously and do a better job at it. Parents aren't offered a benefits package when they sign on for being the caretaker of a child. If we get sick, and we are not a single parent (or we are a single parent with helpful family and/or friends), we might be able to get enough help from our spouse or others to make it possible to rest and take care of ourselves in order to recover faster. However, this is not always an available option even with the most caring and supportive family or partner because it often means they have to take a day off as well and sometimes that's just not possible or doesn't make sense financially. Very often, as parents, we have to deal with being sick, or having a headache or backache or a twisted ankle or sore kee and still have to parent our kids. Even with tons of help, we don't truly get a day off from parenting. We still have to be there for our kids. Being a parent means sucking it up and trudging through the day with our kids whether we feel up to the job or not.
You can take herbs, vitamins or other natural remedies to get you over stuff faster, you can take conventional medicine to hide your symptoms, you can do a combination of both or you can take nothing at all. No matter what you choose to do, you do not get the option of pretending you are not a parent and have no responsibility to the offspring you have. Parents do not get a sick day. If you are really lucky, what you get is a cute little drawing from one or more of your children wishing you to get well soon so you can get back to making them dinner and helping them clean up the mess from that craft project you told them not make right now. Oh well....maybe you can sleep extra tomorrow. Good luck with that.
