Sometimes ignorance is bliss on bringing up kids
Calpol overuse fears another burden for our stressed mums
PARENTING is one big pressure cooker and the heat is on even before we give birth.
From the minute you conceive your life is no longer your own and the guilt commences – from working too much to rearing our kids the incorrect way, we’re forever on the offensive.
I’m seven months pregnant on baby number two and the constant bombardment with new information on what we’re doing wrong, from conception until our kids hit college, is a recipe for feeling inadequate.
This week a doctor in the UK warned us giving kids Calpol is akin to heroin addiction and most of us squirmed. Have we been drugging them all this time?
My toddler is teething so badly right now her screeching sounds like we are murdering her.
Pumping her nightly with the maximum dose of Calpol or Nurofen has been almost an automatic part of our bedtime ritual.
Like me, for many Calpol has been a saving grace for stressedout parents particularly when teething is a nightly occurrence.
The popular medicine helps fight many illnesses, soothing treatments and symptoms.
However, despite widespread use in Ireland, it is now being called the “heroin of childhood” for its addictive qualities.
This week’s BBC documentary The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs, with Dr Chris Van Tulleken, showcased how youngsters in the UK are being given too much Calpol unnecessarily and highlighted the dangers it poses.
Dr Damian Rowland, from Leicester Royal Infirmary, confirmed the medicine should only be given as a painkiller if a child is distressed.
I for one administer it as a precautionary measure before my child gets uncontrollably upset as a tactic to help her remain painfree throughout the night.
The documentary told how the medicine could be linked to asthma and liver problems, yet it’s marketed as useful for fever and high temperatures, as well as blocked noses and coughs.
A GP on the programme said: “We have children almost addicted to paracetamol, to Calpol. Not the drug itself, but the process. Some describe it as the heroin of childhood.”
However, Calpol’s makers Johnson & Johnson responded: “We strongly refute any suggestion the information we provide to parents is inadequate.” Pregnancy itself brings a whole world of pressures and once you enter the exclusive club that is motherhood you are finally part of the clique, but the strains are only just beginning.
The rules are blurred, and the members vary profoundly. You have the hard-core, scaremongering mothers who are dying to tell you the gory details of childbirth – and then the placid, hippie-dippy earth moms who tell you how much they miss being pregnant and how they adored being big and beautiful.
Type B swear by a natural birth without heavy-duty pain relief.
They say: “Gas and air is all you need.” Who requires an epidural when you can hypnotise yourself through the torture and really feel every agonising push?
Seriously, though, are we regressing to the cavemen era?
Why punish yourself further by being a martyr and refusing the pain relief on offer? The pressure begins in the birthing chamber with whether you do or don’t opt for pain relief.
If like me you were forced to have an emergency C-section you’re considered a fake, “too posh to push” and the fierce competition that is motherhood commences.
When the public health nurse came knocking to my door I again felt like I was being judged.
While explaining how I was to monitor the baby’s poos and pees on a white board, the voice of
wisdom uttered: “I often find the high-flying mothers are the worst at it.” I’ve never described myself in that way and I was appalled by the lack of confidence this lady displayed.
The list of pressures escalates as the child grows up and I guess we just have to accept the fact we will never feel like we are doing everything right.
Whenever I hear another report about the impact of screen time and what it’s doing to their little brains I inwardly cringe, thinking of countless dinners where the screen was used as a placatory device.
We have the best intentions before we bring the little beauties into the world but we’re only human and sometimes the pressure of parenting is so overwhelming the only thing to do is to switch off and pay no heed.
If we believed every little thing we heard on mainstream and social media we’d never leave the house again and wrapping them up in cotton wool wouldn’t even suffice. From birth, formula is deemed the devil, packaged baby foods are not nutritious enough and sweeties are like cocaine.
There is no escaping the neverending barrage of material that enhances the notion we are poisoning our offspring and Calpol is the latest product in the firing line.
We’re given too many choices, too many options and it’s as if we’re overloaded with ideas on parenting excellence. We’ve replaced family with the internet and parenting sites and if you want to feel even more pressurised about being the perfect parent just google it and you’ll be told just how awful you are.
When our grandparents reared their offspring the proliferation of information came from the top down, you brought up your kids with the help of family and community. The age-old notion “it takes a village” to rear children is now redundant as people leave family behind to focus on careers with a dream of making it big.
Surely surrounding ourselves with people who actually care rather than pursuing a capitalist dream garners a better quality of life.
Maybe we’d all feel less pressurised if we took a leaf out of our parents’ book, where they lived in an era where ignorance was bliss and the children practically reared themselves.