Being is sick or otherwise incapacitated physically is never fun. However, what can make this hard situation even more challenging is when you’re responsible for taking care of other people, like your children, while also trying to nurse yourself back to health. At times like these, you as the parent might be struggling with how to keep your family going when you aren’t going yourself. To help you with this, here are three tips for caring for your family when you’ve gotten sick.
Allow Yourself To Do The Bare Minimum
As a parent, there’s always a certain amount of parental guilt that creeps in from time to time. Whether your kids have been watching too much TV or you haven’t been able to get your kids to eat a vegetable in a few days, it’s totally normal for parents to want to do better for their kids, even when you’ve been doing great to begin with. But when you’re sick and you physically can’t do things for your kids, Kirsten Brunner, a contributor to the Huffington Post, recommends that you just allow yourself to do the bare minimum. For these few days when you’re down, it’s fine to be happy with just keeping yourself and your kids alive. Any mess or other issues can be dealt with once you’re feeling better.
Try To Stay Away
Depending on the age and maturity of your children, this may or may not be possible, but to help you get back on your feet as soon as you can without getting your kids sick, too, Dr. Stacy R. Sampson, a contributor to Healthline.com, recommends staying away from everyone else if you can. By putting yourself in quarantine, you’ll be able to contain your illness and focus all your energy on getting healthy again. If you need to venture into common areas to help your kids, that’s fine. But whenever you can, try to stay away. This might mean relying on your partner or older children to help more.
Ask For Help
If you don’t have a partner or older children that can help you with your familial responsibilities while you’re sick, Alli Worthington, a contributor to Babble.com, suggests reaching out to others for help. This might mean calling up your neighbor, asking a friend or co-worker, or even just ordering takeout so that you can have someone else take on a responsibility that you’d normally have when you’re healthy. So while you might not like to ask for help normally, when you’re really struggling and simply can’t handle all that your family needs at this time, there’s no shame in asking for or hiring help during this time when you’re ill.
To help ensure that you’re able to get the rest you need to get healthy and that you family’s able to keep functioning when you’re sick, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you care for your family during times of illness.