Faking pain/sickness because she likes medicine...

[Hokulele]

OK, wise mamas, help me figure out how to deal with this. DD feels things intensely and anything can trigger a need for attention (lack of sleep, hungry, too much attention paid to her sister).

Recently I've noticed that if she feels bad physically (sick or hurt) and likes whatever attention she gets then she will continue to claim that she is feeling bad even when she feels better to continue getting the attention. I'm fine with this in general. I don't mind giving her extra attention, of course, because eventually she'll get bored of that and move on to playing with something.

However, this IS an issue for me when the attention she is craving involves medicine. I find it difficult to determine when she's over-emphasizing pain because she knows she might get medicine.

How do you determine when medicine is necessary when you're not sure you're getting a straight answer from the child? I don't want to withhold pain meds when she needs it, of course, but I hate the idea of medicating her when it isn't necessary.

[teachma]

When she was 3 and 4 years old, my daughter used to tell me she was sick so that she could get medicine, as well. The difference here is that I only really gave her prescription medicine (maybe pain medication a couple of times when she was a teething infant) so the request for medication would also necessitate a trip to the doctor and and actual diagnosis. One thing I told her is that medicine can make you feel well, or be well, if you are sick but can make you sick if you are well. She seemed to understand that. I also would gently suggest a visit to our doctor, telling her that if he examined her and found that she needed medicine to get better, we would go to the pharmacy and pick it up. A couple of times, we did go through with a doctor visit at her request-- meds were never prescribed on these occasions-- but most of the time, she would say, "I think I'm okay."

How old is your daughter? What are some of the reasons you have given her pain medication? These answers may help me (and others) understand your circumstance better. For instance, if my daughter or son has a headache, they usually eat a small snack, drink a lot of water and lie down to rest. I'd do this before medicine. If, later, they still have a headache, I guess I might consider offering Tylenol, but usually they feel better so I don't really know.

[jillmamma]

I am guessing she is around 4? DD is 4 and sometimes will tell me the same thing. I go and feel her forehead and see if I can feel a fever, and if not, I will offer her some other "treat" instead (juice, chocolate pudding, etc.) and usually that does the trick for her. Then I offer to snuggle with her a bit and that helps satisfy her need for attention.

[MomOf3boyz]

I do a combination of what the previous two mamas do. I will feel for fever and offer juice, etc if there is no fever. Even if there is a fever, I will often watch that fever and let it do its work before I offer medication to lower it.

For pain, I almost never give medicine. Headaches I will send my LO to bed to sleep a bit, and most owies are magically 'fixed' when I give a bandaid on the offending bump. Bandaids aren't cheap, but I feel better using a band aid than offering medicine.

If my LO still persists that they are in pain, I will tell them that they need to go to the Dr if they are feeling that badly. For my family that generally ends that conversation right there.

If I KNOW that my child is sick, I will not hesitate to give Motrin, Tylenol, or whatever they need.

[Kailey's mom]

What works here, since my dd has had chronic GI problems since birth. tell the doctors that your child likes the medicine, and request that it not taste good, like the strawberry prevacid for instance. that will end the medication requests. Now it's a whole new ballgame of dd hiding symptoms the best she can to "not" go to the doctor or take medicine. It's a double edged sword. I think the yucky medicine route is a bit easier though, because a child can only hide true symptoms for so long kwim.

[Hokulele]

Thanks for all the advice. Hmmm... I guess with DD it is a combination of wanting the attention AND the taste of medicine. And yes, she is 4.5 years old... of course!

What spurred me to ask about this is that recently she's had some intermittent neck pain - I think we've narrowed it down to a cold draft where she sleeps. If so, the cause is fixable of course.

But in the meantime, the issue has been that her neck hurts for a while, but improves after some time and is better most of the time. However, I want to help her through the painful part. But there is no accompanying fever etc to help me determine when she is really in need of meds.

This type of thing happens often in our house - aches and pains. I'm not a med person normally, just this neck thing medicine has been a last resort. And I'm just wondering if others have run into the wanting-meds-so-exaggerating-it issue.

[One_Girl]

If my dd doesn't have a fever and hasn't just hurt herself very badly I don't give medicine. I do pain control things like ice, a dark room, and cuddling with a story. I also don't allow extra movies unless dd has a fever. I don't get a lot of faking.

[BellinghamCrunchie]

Its often hard to tell whether there is pain or not, but for my DD, she will mention it more than once separated by a hour or so if its real pain.

Even if it is "real" pain, these things often go away on their own.

Things that satisfy DD as much or more than medication are: making special ice water (she doesn't often have ice cubes in her drink so its kind of special) for a headache, giving her a massage complete with background music and dimmed lights for muscle pain, or giving her a yummi bear wholefood semi-vitamin "to see if that helps."

[MomOf3boyz]

If she has a sore neck due to a cold draft, perhaps a warm compress will help your DD more than ice.

We have had luck making a fun warm compress by microwaving a "fun" looking hand towel. That may help the pain, and help her feel special at the same time.

[Anastasiya]

When my kids go through that phase, I give them a tsp of Sambucus or ACF children's or something like that. In other words, they're not getting medicine, but an immune booster. Works for them.

[AAK]

Originally Posted by Hokulele

What spurred me to ask about this is that recently she's had some intermittent neck pain - I think we've narrowed it down to a cold draft where she sleeps. If so, the cause is fixable of course.
.

Maybe she can use a warm rice sock on her neck.

My dd also likes medicine, but of course I don't give it as a treat! I did buy some yummy vitamins though and she knows that she can have one a day. So, if she asks for medicine and she hasn't yet had her vitamin, I will offer that instead. And she knows that the vitamin is a vitamin--I am not trying to trick her. I just tell her that we don't give medicine to kids that are well.

Amy

[mumkimum]

I often give dd kid homeopathic tabs, or tea, or do something like a special bottle of water or juice (that we don't do often) and grain bag with comfy sleeping bag set up before I move on to medicine. She knows we have to do that and wait until we reassess and decide she gets medicine. She loves certain medicine too - I try to do a working up to it routine (like I do myself, anyway, when I'm ill) before doing medicine (incidentally, sometimes just getting her temperature taken seems to substitute her 'want' for medicine).

If a lot of her issues are aches & pains and hard to assess, I'd also suggest doing something like a grain bag/rice sock and finding a tea or vitamin or something that she does first, wait 15-30 minutes having done that, and then see how she's doing before giving medicine.

[Hokulele]

Thanks everyone for all the responses. We actually talked to the pedi today because of the persistance of the pain. I have now ruled out a cold draft and we still can't figure out what is causing it.

My main reason for posting, though, was less to find out what to do for the neck, in particular. My concern is more figuring out how to determine when pain is a real concern and when it is something that just needs some TLC and then she can go on her merry way.

Part of this is stemming from the fact that a while ago DD broke her arm. She cried when it happened, and her arm was clearly tender but she stopped mentioning it. I took her to the pedi but they didn't think it was broken. Even my SIL (a pedi) who was staying with us at the time, and saw how DD was with the arm, missed the fact that the arm injury was a real concern. Poor baby went FIVE DAYS before we X-rayed and figured it out.

So I guess maybe I second guess everything now. My instinct that time with the arm was that there WAS something wrong but everyone told me no. But now I don't know what to think when things like this come up.

... and now add to the fact that DD might be making stuff up, or over-emphasising things for attention/medicine/whatever and/or playing things down because she doesn't want to miss out on things etc.

[One_Girl]

Originally Posted by Hokulele

So I guess maybe I second guess everything now. My instinct that time with the arm was that there WAS something wrong but everyone told me no. But now I don't know what to think when things like this come up.

... and now add to the fact that DD might be making stuff up, or over-emphasising things for attention/medicine/whatever and/or playing things down because she doesn't want to miss out on things etc.

I did the same thing for a while after my dd broke her arm. We went to the walk in doctor the next day, but the guilt from waiting that long and from the hassle that came about from going to the walk in doc instead of the ER made me worry about my instincts. My dd also became very in love with going to see the doctor and we had some visits that were probably not necessary. It is normal to question yourself after something so traumatic. I didn't calm down about things and trust myself for almost a year. The doctor made quite a bit of money off of us, but luckily she doesn't believe very strongly in giving kids medicine so she didn't get an addiction.

I think that since you are questioning the legitimacy of your dd's pain you should listen to your instincts. She may be having pain because her body is craving the medicine. My body got into a cycle of doing this when I was having nasty migraines even though all I took was ibuprofen. It got to the point where I would have half the month taken up with headaches. When I stopped using any medicine and focused only on pain control techniques and once I got over the withdrawal period it cut down to two to three a month.

[sapphire_chan]

Well, are you getting an instinct that she's really hurt? Because you were spot-on with her arm, you just ignored yourself. I think if you go with your first reaction (barring other evidence) you'll probably be fine.

(As for the specific issue, any chance you're looking at growing pains? Warm baths, epsom salts, magnesium and calcium would help if that's the case.)