Mary Novaria

I was home for three straight days with two sick kids. One was diagnostically sick. The other had the sort of m ystifying malaise that might prompt me to take a mental health day—but just one. It should be noted that even the truly sick one wasn’t sick enough to restrain himself from tormenting the other. And on the third morning of trying, unsuccessfully, to coax (threaten, shame, coerce, bribe, blackmail) my almost-thirteen-year-old daughter to middle school did me in. The poster child for power struggle. I became ill with bad parent syndrome. Symptoms include serious doubt, second-guessing and self-loathing about everything the child has eaten, said, watched, listened to, done and thought about doing in the last week, plus regrets about allowing the adolescent to make her own choices instead of locking her up in her turret. Thus I spent this third day hostage more to my own self-inflicted angst than anything else. Was there enough Zoloft (or ice cream) in the world to rid me of my d...