Advice re 'sick' DD - is she faking?

[cherriesblossom]

Argh I'm really annoyed.This is gonna make me sound like a cruel and heartless mother,but ho hum.

DD2(8) is off today as she's been sick.She vomited in the playground after I'd taken her in. She told me this morning she was feeling sick, but I dismissed it and said she needed to eat something as she was probably just nauseous.

I was at the school office when they brought her round to say she had thrown up in the playground (twice). She had a little smirk on her face and is absolutely fine in every other way. This means I have to cancel my whole work day...and either take the day as annual leave or not get paid.

It wouldn't be an issue if I actually believed she was sick, which I don't. I feel she is being manipulative and has done this for attention/control. This happens 3-5 times a year. No issues with bullying/ disliking school btw, she is very popular and has lots of friends.

I've sent her to bed now, and said if she's sick then she must stay there without TV etc. Feels like she's being punished but I can't muster up any sympathy for her or shake this feeling that she has made herself throw up on purpose.

btw, I psycho analyse this over in my head over and over. Maybe she doesn't like me working and wants me to be at home. Maybe she thinks that being sick is a way to garner sympathy. Maybe she is testing me, if Mummy doesn't believe me, she can't really love me.

For a while she used to do it in the toilets until I asked had anyone every actually seen her? Then she began to do it more openly.

I imagine her when she is older, throwing this in my face - when I was sick, you never believed me/made me feel bad. I wonder if we need to see someone about this.

Could there be a genuine reason that she is sick roughly half a dozen times a year (sometimes less) with no other symptoms? Eating the same food as always/all of us of us or after having eaten nothing at all?
Any advice?

There was a bug going through our school in Dec where the children would vomit once or twicw, then appear to be fine afterwards. It was still a bug and took out over half of DDs class because people think that just because their DC is fine afterwards then it is not catching or not a bug and sent them in regardless.

It sounds like you want it to be that she is faking because then you are justified in sending her in tomorrow, but she said that her tummy didn't feel right, so give her the benefit of the doubt. And plesae think of the other children in the school and how disrupting it is for the other parents to have to take time off too.

Please excuse typos, I have 2 ill DC off school/nursery too!

I'm sorry if you feel I seem vindictive and nasty Floral. I don't believe I am. I'm actually a very caring person & felt very irritated this morning at having to miss work (home visits to vulnerable people). I care very much about people who are genuinely ill. I don't want my DD to grow up believing she can manipulate people by saying she is 'sick' - she is the kind of child who will want to go to the Dr for a cut on her finger.

Thank you Homebythe sea & Diamondee. I really appreciate your posts - I love my DD very much but feel quite played by her at the moment. As it is, DH was able to come home from his job (teacher) this afternoon so I could go into work at least a half day. We had a chat, decided to take the same tack: a boring 'sick' day with a follow up appt with the Dr. No treats or special treatment to make the day attractive, but no accusations either. When I came home from work, she was larking about, shouting with DD1 and running around..not very ill at all. I didn't comment on this, but it confirms my suspicion that there's nothing physically wrong with her. The head has said she's fine to go in tomorrow, as it doesn't appear to be a bug.

Thanks MrsM & Imogen- agree that we need to get to the root of this & probably see a Dr without her.

Toffee, I don't want her to be faking but I know her well and this seems to be the most likely option. I have no issue with taking time off/loosing pay if she is genuinely ill: but I do resent it if she is not. That said, as lots of people have pointed out, making herself sick is not right either & does seem like a symptom of something else. I'll try and post again if we get to the bottom of it.

Thanks for all the replies, you've helped me get some perspective on this.

Cherries - I think the responses you're getting from some people are purely because they don't know your dd or a child like her. I was capable of this as a child but generally didn't get away with it - as a drs daughter both my parents would be very sceptical (to all of us, I'm one of 5) and if we kept insisting we were ill we would have a day in bed, no tv, bland food, mum would come up to check on us. My mum's mantra was if you're well enough to watch tv you're well enough to go to school. If I was genuinely ill (DBs and DSis wouldn't have faked) she would be very attentive with lots of kisses and cuddles but we were still in bed. We all knew what happened on a sick day so it was a dull day! This is not unreasonable and is certainly not "punishment". We also didnt go to see friends or on playdates etc. Personally I would attempt to fake for lots of reasons but mainly just attention or boredom with school. Whilst I didn't love school I wasn't bullied or upset particularly, I just thought it was dull. I didn't have deep psychological problems and my parents made it clear that faking illness wouldn't get me very far so I stopped. I don't feel resentful to my parents - I think they were and still are brilliant - I was an attention seeking child! It is not difficult for an 8 year old to make herself sick. However, as a dr myself I would also say that some sick bugs (particularly norovirus) cause sudden vomiting with few other symptoms. This is highly contagious however so she should not be going on playdates or to a school concert. Just explain this and be kind to her without cosseting her on the sofa. If you make sick days fairly dull (which they should be IMO!) then that will help avoid faking behaviour if that's what it is. Sick children should not play at friends houses. If she's genuine then there is nothing wrong with this approach either. I would talk to her though about whether there is a particular teacher/child/activity at school that she is trying to avoid though.

I think you sound frustrated & at an impasse!

I wonder if you could get some individual / family councelling to understand & manage the difficult dynamics that you seem to be facing with an incredibly emotionally / socially aware child who isn't a simple child to parent. My Ds is younger & so far very very 'what you see is what you get', but if he wasn't I can imagine needing some help to know quite what's best to do. you need to be in a position where you can understand what's happening & have a plan, rather than be worried & frustrated & either letting her manipulate you, or potentially damaging her trust in you by disbelieving her when she feels poorly.

Probably a rubbish idea but wondered - what would happen If you asked her straight out? Said you won't tell her off this time but you a bit confused & really want to be able to understand...?

Um can I just say me and my friends used to do this!

One friend I vividly remember in junior school year 3 forcing herself to be sick so she could go home.

I used to gargle soapy water to make my glands come up so I could say I had a sore throat

I even pretended my ankle was badly sprained (where I had crutches from the hospital) even though it was fine

We all used to discuss the new best ways to make ourselves to ill for school. Not for any specific reason just because we felt like a few days off, pretending you felt sick to the school was a sure way to get a bucket and they'd ring your parents straight away to get you.

Btw I was ill very often And also faked being ill often at primary school. Combination of emotionally bereft at home, desperate for parebts who would actually care for me & protect me from the world, and bullied & misunderstood at school, and an undiagnosed chronic illness to top it all off.

But I needed help, didn't get it as the conversation was always about was I well or not. Wish someone would have digged a bit deeper although I probably wouldn't have told anyone how depressed & terrified I was everyday. I loved boring sick days as all I wanted to do was hide in bed and cuddle my teddies & sleep or read. A deliberating boring day would have been fine with me - but there was a reason, so I wonder if boring sick days are a good way to play it.

I'm concerned that you have already decided that she is making herself sick.

After she was sick the first time at school, somebody should have been watching her. They'd have noticed her stick her fingers down her throat, or cough herself sick.

But perhaps my concerns come from my own experiences. I was sick randomly from age 4 to 20. No other symptoms, just a feeling of sickness, throwing up, then fine. I'd be hungry, eat normally, play normally, tests all came back fine. It was all real though.

You believe your daughter is faking because you are uncomfortable with other aspects of her personality and see her as manipulative. I've met plenty of children who are like that. I'm not sure it has any relation to whether she's actually ill, which is the danger. She could still be ill, because even the most manipulative people get ill.

I think speaking to a counsellor about how you feel could be very useful for you, and potentially for your DD too, because she will pick up on how you come across. I know you spend plenty of time with her, and she feels loved, but she'll also know she's not believed. The good doesn't always make up for the bad, regardless of how much it outnumbers it.

I have no idea if your DD is faking being sick or not because I do not know her and I haven't seen her do it, so I'm not going to say yes or no. Previous posters have made good points for both sides of the argument (attentionseeking/genuinely ill) but I'd just like to say that it is possible for something to have disagreed with her even if everyone else who ate the same thing was fine (food intolerance or something wrong with the food that everyone else's immune system fought off and hers didn't), and that it's possible to vomit involuntarily even though you are physically fine - the latter happened to me a lot as a child and teenager. For me it was a symptom of anxiety and I would end up throwing up from sheer terror or stress, and as soon as I was removed from the stressful situation and had nothing in my stomach, I'd be fine again. (This resulted in me stopping eating if I thought something might be stressful so I wouldn't throw up, which is a whole different can of worms and an entirely different thread....)

I don't know if this is the case with your DD, but if I were you I'd not firmly grab onto either conclusion of 'faking' or 'genuinely ill' just yet. Treat her as though she is ill, with gentle sympathy but no fun stuff, and see if you can figure out what prompts these episodes - is there a pattern? Can you get her to talk?

I used to fake illness at school to get out of doing presentations to the rest of the class. I found them unbearable! Now I wish someone had spotted the pattern and helped me master my nerves. Don't think I'd have told anyone, though. Talk to the teacher each time she does it. What was planned for the day?

I'm another one whose nausea was ignored until my appendix nearly burst. As I was being wheeled into the operating theatre 90 min after being told I was making a fuss by DM, the A&E surgeon gave her a bollocking for being a bad mother. He was right.

Don't let it get that bad, honestly - even if she is faking, it's only 3-5 days a year - and no one is healthy all the time.

As someone who used to, and still does at times, make herself sick, this isn't something you do in the middle of a playground. It takes practice to be able to do it, for one, and people would notice that you were making yourself vomit. Especially if you did it twice in a row. FFS, think logically.

You sound more focused on the time you missed at work than the fact your daughter is ill. And are speaking as though you rather dislike her.

That sounds like a perfectly normal number of times for a child of that age to be ill throughout a year. And there are several bugs where you will vomit once or twice, and that's it. So there is your 'genuine' reason.

I think you need some help.