As a mum I am my daughters biggest advocate as well as her biggest critic. I have to remember at the end of the say she is 7 years old, and very intelligent. With that she knows when to best get the best reaction from us and by now has learned the best ways to pull the heart strings and get attention. With her issues it is very hard to know what is causing the problems and thus as a parent to know if she may be putting it on a bit for attention or genuinely in pain.
Recently I have been getting it wrong, rather wrong, where we have pushed her a bit too much tried to get her to walk more and thus ended up with rather swollen knees and me feeling guilty!! But the last two weeks have been trying, i've been watching her walking to see if we can "catch" her out but she has got so use to locking her leg in place because her knee hurts it's almost becoming her normal way to walk and nothing i can say is going to change that. I'm torn between letting her do things and trying to keep her from doing more damage before we can get seen by the doctors next week.
I am not denying she is not in pain, her knee is genuinely puffy and her knee cap doesn't seem to be moving as it should but i am finding it increasingly hard to tell what is what! How are we suppose to know? she has a rather low pain tolerance when it comes to her joints ( and scratches, yet her eczema can be bleeding and she doesn't complain) I try not to give over attention when she is in pain and go a while before having to give the pain killers. but when her teacher is saying what i am saying... I am worried we are doing something wrong.
Example being that they went on a trip on Wednesday and had alot of walking, but she did fine, she did crash when she got home and needed medicine at home but at the same time i had dosed her up first thing so that she could enjoy her day! so was that the reason she could enjoy herself ( and had the best trip ever apparently?)
Hubby would probably say I am being to harsh esp at bed time but then i know she has issues, its because she has nothing else to focus on so the pain takes over, ( and the fact she never calls for her dad its always me! )
We can't be the only parents in this position? I hate the invisibleness of it all, that i can't see whats the problem unless its swollen, I do however see the pain when she suddenly tumbles to the side due to her ankle giving way for no reason or the anguish of walking home and we are walking the fine line or what is real and what is not and at the same time feeling crap about it!
