That went wrong: ‘Don’t be so petty, I said, and gave her a paracetamol’

Anouk (35), single, mother of Annelie (10) and Julia (8).

“’Kiss it, it will pass’, I soothed my eldest daughter Annelie. She complained of pain, but I didn’t see anything unusual on her wrist. No scratches or bruises yet. Besides, she has something every day. Annelie is very impetuous. A real tomboy. She falls from trees, from chairs, from a swing or over her own kicked-out shoes. She walks almost continuously with bruises on her legs.

So I didn’t suspect anything serious when she complained about a sore wrist last year after waveboarding on her inline skates and being knocked over by a loose paving stone. I reacted irritated: why with inline skates on a waveboard at all? I cooled her arm with an ice pack and gave her water for the shock.

Read also
‘Like a thief in the night I buried the poor creature among the plants’ >

Chunk pilot and drama queen

That night she kept getting out of bed. She couldn’t sleep because of her pulse. Again I didn’t take her very seriously. In addition to being a chunk pilot, she can also be a drama queen. She wasn’t crying either, which is normally an indication that she’s in real pain. I admonished Annelie not to be petty. After two times I gave her a paracetamol, after that she was calm.

But the next morning she wouldn’t eat anything and I thought she was drowsy. Now alarm bells went off and I called the GP. The doctor bowed and squeezed and sent us on for a photo. He didn’t trust it. Rightly so, as it turned out. No wonder she moaned so much. There was a big tear in the bone of her wrist: she had to put in a cast for six weeks. I felt like a terrible failure as a mother. To ease that pain, I had her pick out an exorbitantly large box of Lego.”

This one that went wrong is in Kek Mama 05-2021.

Curious about more mothering blunders? Every Monday you can read a new ‘That went wrong’ story on Kekmama.nl.