Do dads have intuition about sick kids, or do they use their knowledge, experience, and data analysis? Is there a difference?
This was previously published on Home Made Dad.
As a primary parenting dad, I often find myself puffing out my chest about how I can do whatever mom can do. And, in large part, this is not hubris. I shop and cook, I clean and straighten, I provide discipline and/or a cuddle, as the situation requires.
As part of my duties, when the dependents (kids and pets) are sick, I stay home and take care of them. Yet, it is precisely this part of my primary parenting job description that can be the most challenging.
I’m not referring to staying home per se. Since I work from home and have a high degree of flexibility in scheduling my time, I am able to take care of a sick kid and usually get things done at the same time.
What I find challenging is my apparent absence of intuition about my own child(ren)’s health that their mother clearly and demonstrably has. We’ve all had that experience when a mom looks at a sick kid or get’s a whiff of their bad breath and knows immediately that something just isn’t right. I don’t think I have that. What I do have is the day-to-day experience of being around them. I know which one of them got sick first and the symptoms they experienced and I know which of their friends got sick and the symptoms those kids experienced. While all of this data figures into my daily assessments and prognostications, it doesn’t feel like intuition. If anything, I feel like I am over-compensating for a lack of intuition in this regard.
So, when my wife returned from an almost week-long business trip and heard my son’s barking cough, she concluded that I should rush him to the doctor. But I was confused. My experience over the past week was telling me all he had was the same nasal-based cold and cough that my daughter and several of their classmates had recently suffered through. That knowledge and experience was mine—not my wife’s. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder: was her intuition offering me insight into something I was missing? Should I abandon my conviction that this was merely a nasty sounding cold and NOT the beginnings pneumonia? Was a mother’s intuition right in this case and my dad’s attentiveness to data falling short on the diagnosis?
(Note to readers: Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not implying that mothers rely only on intuition and don’t collect and analyze data in their assessments of the health of their children. I just find that, call it intuition or not, there are some things about my kids that I just don’t tune into the same way.)
This is an odd dilemma that comes out of the traditional role-reversal in which I am living. It is way simpler, in some ways, when mom is the primary parent to defer to her intuition AND experience—but quite another matter when the intuition isn’t coupled with the experience. Can we hone our intuition as dads? Will it ever be as sharp as the woman’s from whose loins a child has emerged?
In the end, I trusted my experience and didn’t rush my sick boy to the doctor.
I just really, really hope he doesn’t have pneumonia.
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—Photo of sick little boy courtesy of Shutterstock
While I think that some people may have some sort of intuition I don’t think it’s gender based. I’ve seen dads make similar calls and be on the money so its not like there is some sort of Uteromancy that women naturally possess that allows them to sense things that dads can’t. And I think that experience influences intuition with some people.
Hi Jay, Good questions all. I can tell you this. As a primary caregiver I have what I consider to be an important skill. I know when to shut down the all powerful program and take a sick day with my sort of sick kid. Often, we all get in such a routine that we just slug our way through a cold. If my son is sick and he starts to drag, I sock him in bed with some books and we take a home day. I like to think I’m the laid back one, but my agenda is actually… Read more »
Just a note – mom’s sometimes question themselves and that whole intuition vs. over-reacting thing. Any loving and attentive parent will usually do pretty well at keeping their kids from coming into too much harm most of the time. Kids get hurt and kids get sick. And they can sometimes manage to do both at lightning speeds. Is there a genetic or social programming that helps us tune in a little faster? Good question. Until there are more primary parenting dad’s voices, we may not have a true answer. My hats off to you for walking the walk – and… Read more »
C. common sense.
If the kid is tired, sneezing, coughing, sore throat, tummy ache, thowing up, fever, etc. s/he’s coming/came down with something. When in doubt, take him/her to the doctor.
But, 9 times out of 10, if the kid is sick, a 12 year old baby sitter could figure it out.
at the risk of being an “I told you so…” Jay did provide an update to the original post… the little guy in question did end up at the doctor’s office a few days later and did require a serious course of anti-biotics.
In my experience, as a stay-at-home dad, we often doubt ourselves if we made the right decision regarding our children and illness. I believe it is because we don’t want them to suffer. My son’s doctor told us that the number one thing parents actually get wrong is rushing their child to the doctors as soon as they hear a cough or see a runny nose. The doctor told us that it can actually be worse to do that. We are exposing our children to other germs and possibly something worse. We were told to trust our intuition and you… Read more »