Do you have an overly dramatic child? Meet mine, Mr. Oliver Ben Schultz. Total drama queen. Like when he gets a paper cut, he screams as is if he was stabbed and yells he is going to bleed to death. It drives me CRAZY!!
I have zero patience for his antics. We were at a family reunion and he kept complaining about his tooth, then his jaw, then his face. He couldn't smile he said or it would kill him.
And I was completely ignoring him..... at first. But then he kept the act up for 4 days. So I said fine Ollie, we need to take you to a dentist, thinking he would protest. But he called my bluff. So we left early for home to go to the dentist.
And I am officially the worst mom ever. He needs two root canals. One of the teeth is so infected they might just pull it. Uh boy, I have failed him.
So I told my second born about the story of the boy who cried wolf. And then I told him sorry for not believing him. But it really is just so hard to tell when he is really hurt or wanting my attention. I do feel kinda guilty cuz I am sure he sees that the sick and afflicted get the extra attention in our house, like Davy with her numerous doctor appointment and hospital stays.
Please tell me how do you handle your drama queen?
22 comments:
I can't offer any advice just sympothy. In fact, just this morning when I dropped of my 2 1/2 year old she was once again telling her teacher about the owie on her arm that hasn't even existed for the past two weeks. She got it a month ago and is still hanging onto it.
I had a simular tooth incident with my 5 year old. Also blew off her complaining until her face swelled up and she had to have her tooth pulled as well. Her is hoping it gets better or that they one day win an Academy Award.
Same way - put her off until I finally offer to take her to the doctor and then when she is just tearfully grateful, start wondering if something is really up and then apologize profusely when we leave with a prescription for both antibiotics and steroids...
If it makes you feel any better, my brother was the same way. He once walked around on a broken leg (hairline fracture) for 36 hours because my parents didn't take his complaints seriously because the boy was *always* complaining about something hurting him.
I just had a similar issue with my six year old. She complained and complained about an "owwie" on her leg that needed a band-aid. She always does that for the littlest things because she likes the band-aids. Well, turned out that "owwie" was hiding a huge infection in her leg. We're now on day 5 of Bactrin for the infection. I felt and still feel horrible for not believing her. My husband and I told her all about the boy who cried wolf after we got back from the doctor, too!
How do I handle my drama queen? TEQUILLA. LOL....just kidding. I had a similar story with Matthew complaining that he couldn't read the board at school....I thought he was just not wanting to do his work, and he wanted to wear glasses. After months of his "complaining", I took him to the eye doctor....he had TERRIBLE vision, and needed glasses. I felt so bad that I made him wait so long.
My sister-in-law walked around with a broken arm for a whole day because my mother-in-law didn't believe that she had broken her arm. She only believed her when it started to swell!
Oh, so good to see kindred spirits here... A little over a week ago my 4-yr-old fell at the playground and started his dramatic antics... which I ignored for days... turns out he broke his elbow, which is now casted and healing. But when one has a drama queen (or king in our case), it's so stinkin' hard to know when to take them seriously!
When my daughter was ten and coughed and moaned and felt lousy for months I convinced her it was just allergies until I finally took her to the doctor. Naturally it was pneumonia. Later I thought her growth spurt and changing figure was to blame for her round belly, but of course that turned out to be a four pound (!) ovarian cyst. On the other end of the scale is my dangerously stoic mother who had a compression fracture in her spine for two weeks before we pried the admission of "a sore back" out of her. (She has also had a broken hip AND a broken wrist and kept those secret. I live less than a mile away and my phone works.) I can't get the mother OR daughter part right!
My 10 year old broke her wrist in February and we didn't believe her that it hurt. I honestly just thought she scraped her palm when she fell running on the concrete. We took her to the er the next day with me telling her the whole way that if it wasn't broken she was in trouble and she ended up in a cast for 3 weeks! We all do it!
I'm sorry to tell you, it doesn't get any better as they get older. My 17 year-old son has always been a hypochondriac and I never know when to take hime seriously. Going to the doctor doesn't phase him, at all. I think he enjoys it. We put off an ER visit for several hours when he 'hurt' his knee. Yep, bruised ACL, a brace and months of physical therapy.
Don't feel bad. We all do it.
You're doing great and we all feel that way at times. Drama Queens are tricky that way. p.s. you're Oliver looks just like my hubby did when he was a little boy! Startles me a little at first but then it's so sweet.
I have to shut my drama queen down real quick-- if I give in a little, she keeps it up and gets more and more freaked out. Don't feel too bad (although I know its hard), its not like you were knowingly ignoring an injury. I felt so guilty when we found out our oldest had horrible vision (REALLY BAD!), like there's anything I could do about it. I had a friend who's mom would not believe her that her side was REALLY hurting, finally took her in right before her appendix burst--yikes! So like everyone says, it happens to a lot of us! :)
My MIL calls my daughter Sarah Bernhardt because she has always been quite dramatic - she even arrived 8 weeks early in order to make a grand entrance (ha). Most of the time, when she begins to complain I offer a visit to the doctor. That usually stops the dramatics.
Same thing happened to me, TWICE!!! I didn't learn my lesson after my first child needed a root canal. I had to go and let my third child's tooth go bad, too. Those darn kids and their rotten teeth. And we are avid brushers, too. Or so I thought.
You know my story...my drama king had his appendix burst before we decided he wasn't just being his usual over dramatic self.
It didn't help when he found out that he had 2 great grandpa's die from burst appendix...before penicillin was discovered. He reminded us from that point on that he could haved died because we didn't take him serious :/
(Long time lurker from CJane's blog) (love your stuff)
I have a 12 year old drama queen too, who just "hurt" herself tonight. She is ALWAYS doing something to her ankles...even conned the school nurse into giving her crutches. It was barely, barely swollen and no bruising. So tonight when she said her hip 'cracked' after she got up from her prayers, we didn't take her too seriously. Which then caused the floodgates and hysteria to start. Medication and ice and waiting are the course of action. And maybe a trip to the doctor tomorrow morning.
The first thing I thought as I started reading your post was, "I bet this little guy is looking to get some of the extra attention his sister gets." I think you handled it beautifully by telling him that story. I'd just follow it up with a little extra awareness about finding special time for just you two.
Your post couldn't of come at a better time for me. My seven year old son is going on almost 3 weeks of thinking he is going to "throw up and feeling icky". It started when we started introducing school work into our morning schedule...about 3 weeks ago.
There have been times when I've doubted myself and almost convience myself that something is wrong with him...yet he hasn't thrown up once and doesn't seem to feel icky when he's playing with his friends.
Needless to say I've made a doctor's appointment...just to be sure.
I have never commented on a person's blog that I don't REALLY know but I just love reading your blog AND I have a friend who did the EXACT same thing. Her sweet little boy has a tendancy to be overly dramatic so she didn't even think anything of his whining about his tooth, face, jaw... then found out he had an absessed tooth that needed to be pulled and a root canal in the tooth next to it because it was infected as well... I think all of Moms go through our 'oh I am such a crappy Mom' moments.
this is so hard. we have a drama queen as well. he screams so loud for every little boo boo and just won't stop complaining about something. i have no advice... but ouch about the root canals.
Oh man, I had one of the same incidents... Drama queen daughter, aged 10 at the time (now 13), went on her first overnight camp with church... called me second day saying she'd hurt her arm by falling off a bunk. Because she'd been walking from top bunk to top bunk... almost 4 feet apart... fell and hit a suitcase... She said it didn't hurt enough to come home (a four day camp). She got home Monday afternoon, it was still hurting... called the doctor Tuesday, saw regular doc on Wednesday, got an x-ray and an appointment with the specialist for Thursday. Got a cast and all the fun stuff Thursday for a broken wrist. *sigh* Don't even get me going about her getting a pen cap stuck in the cast and having the cast taken off a week early because of a pen cap...
We've told her the story about the boy who cried wolf and had her write two essays on it when she *insisted* something was wrong and it wasn't, both times involving leaving work, school, cancelling plans, etc... Hasn't changed a thing. We still ignore most of her complaints unless something is obviously wrong - blood, dislocation, fever, vomiting, etc.
I sent my drama queen to school with a tummy ache (she complains when she's hungry, gassy, needs to poo--TMI?) and told her to tell the teacher if she felt like throwing up. She did, but the teacher didn't believe she was sick any more than I did and she was told to sit down and rest. You can see where this is going, right? Yup, she three up in the classroom. Felt like a great mom that day! ;-)
I believe anyone with more than the national average-sized family has experienced this.
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