bully

That's me, making my boys drink and eat and take their medicine, too. In the case of DS1, add in the extra torture of making him blow his nose, instead of continuously wiping it with the back of his hand.

Both boys just cried through their last meds of the day. It sucks because we have to wake them up to give them the meds -- we can't let them go all night or they will wake up in pain. It's already bad enough in the mornings, with their meds running out between 4 and 5AM. So we literally have to make them take the meds around midnight, even if they are crying and just wanting to go back to sleep.

It hurts something fierce, being harsh with a kid who is both exhausted and in pain. But you can't just be all "There, there, dear, go back to sleep, I won't bother you," because that is positively harmful to them in the not-so-long run. Yes, they'd sleep now, but they'd wake up screaming in just a few hours, and getting the medicine into them at that point would be impossible.

On the upside, DS1's crying washed a lot of gunk out of his sinuses, so hopefully he'll be able to breathe better now. He denied it at the time, but that's because he was too annoyed with me to be anything other than contrary.

I'm terrible at this bullying business, but we manage somehow -- if the kids believed my threats more readily, they would be more quick to obey. Not-so-secretly, I'm glad they don't believe me, but then when I finally do give them a whap, they snap-to. Then know I don't want to do it anymore than they want me to, but sometimes... there is no other way. DS1 is too big for me to wrestle down to the floor so I can pour meds down his throat -- that tactic was required in years past a few times. He has to take it himself, and if I have to tell him to suck it up and stop being a baby, well, I will.