First World Parenting, Ice Cream, and Relative Risk.
Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 9:25PM My kid has what can only be described as an infinity cold. Sometime, maybe three weeks ago, the virus sunk it's talons into my kid's nose holes and it just won't let go. She's coughing, spluttering, wheezing, and leaking yellow gunk.
I'm worried about her health only insofar as she's tired, and unhappy, which causes my motherly instincts to rise to cajole and comfort my baby. And further, let's be honest here, it's inconvenient to have a sick and cranky kid.
Such are the privileges of being a first world parent.
Inconvenience not withstanding, I feel as though it's only right that I indulge her whims, dietary and otherwise, and feed her the staples that are the birthright of the North American sickie: chicken soup (well, in her case, bakso soup) orange juice, and ice cream.
The latter indulgence caused much distress to my child's Indonesain paediatrician as well as to Stella's nanny, both of whom were convinced that I was risking my child's wellbeing and chances of a speedy recovery by offering her ice cream as a balm after a particularly uncomfortable doctor's visit. They told me that the cold ice cream was dangerous, that cold foods could cause an adverse reaction, and would make her illness more intense. This I brushed off, thinking of trips into the firdged air to ease croup symptoms and unending Popsicles to sooth sore little throats.
Yet, the degree to which my doctor's concern with regard to my caviller attitude towards ice cream for sick kids troubled her gave me pause. So too did our nanny's insistence that I keep Stella home from school and dose her full of medication at the first sign of a runny nose. Perhaps I was wrong? Perhaps I was being too apathetic about my child's health?
And then I read this post about the difficulty of keeping young children safe in Indonesia where car seats, baby gates and all the modern trappings of infant safety are largely absent, or at best, simply not used. Rachel writes of her frustration with the standard practice to keep dangerous cleaning products within easy reach of toddlers, and not a second thought is given to boiling pots of water left unattended right at child height.
My own observations include parents who regularly allow children to sit on their laps in the front seat, children bounding around the back of cars with no seatbelt. And the ubiquitous two-wheeled minivan (aka motorcycle carrying an entire helmetless family, babies and all.)
How can we square these polarities with regard to childhood security? What sort of cognitive dissonance is at play when tiny colds are conflated to massively dangerous illness that need immediate medical attention and plenty of drugs, while what are, to the North American mind, common sense safety practices, are ignored entirely?
And so, I started thinking about life, living conditions, and the relativity or risk.
Disclaimer: This is a theory is composed by someone who has all the expertise of a non-Indonesian sojourner with two months residency under her belt, so take this with a grain of salt. Or perhaps half a grain.
When you live in a country where less than half of one percent of the population can afford to own a car, the only viable options to traverse sprawling cities are dodgy and unreliable public busses, and the omnipresent motorcycle. Airplane tickets are mostly out of reach for the average Indonesian, so creaky and barely seaworthy ferries convey people people to their home islands.
Deadly crashes and shipwrecks are a fact of life, and the price of admission for taking a trip to your home village or even going to work. If an average Indonesian wants to go anywhere, be it a short distance, or a long trip home, she'll be traveling along potholed roads, up and down hills with hairpin turns aplenty and a total dearth of barriers to prevent plummeting down cliffs. She'll likely sit on the back of a motorcycle without a helmet while dodging erratic drivers.
Within this context, the passenger in an inclosed vehicle feels virtually indestructible. Much better to keep your kid on your lap without a seatbelt inside the protective walls of a car than on the back of a motorcycle without a helmet. Similarly, in the context of a country kids die of all sorts of diseases, simple and complex, the risk of one kid falling off a porch, or dumping a boiling pot of water, or even drinking insecticide might somehow become lightened given the situation in which he lives.
When dangers are such an ever-present part of life, what's a sharp corner on a table, a shoddy wired outlet, or a stray bottle of bleach.
More dangerous are childhood diseases. Three-and-a-half percent of all kids in this country will die before they reach age five, but as recently as 1990, 8.5 percent of kids could be expected to die before their fifth birthday. That kind of insecurity stays with a population, ingrained deeply in the psyche, I think. It must alter the perception of risk. The fear of an illness, even something as innocuous as a cold, is quite real in this context, and so it becomes so much more important to medicate a runny nose, to stay away from cold foods when sick, to rush to the doctor at the first sign of a headache. Controlling one's medical care is much more realistic than controlling one's access to safe transportation, or preventing the inevitable physical dangers that lurk everywhere.
That's just my two cents, my half-formed theory bread by the boredom of becoming a shut-in for a weekend with a sick kid.
What do you think? Am I on to something or totally full of dangerous typhoid poo-poo?
This post was sponsored by Baby & Co. As always the content herein in mine alone.
Reader Comments (11)
Okay but seriously, what is with the "eating cold food is going to make you sick" thing? While living in both China and Mexico, the locals were totally hung up on that. Germs cause colds, not cold food, right?
I know from our time in Morocco that the developing world can have vastly differing views on medical care/safety/child raising. My attitude was always (and still is) that you should listen, consider, and then make your best decision. Just because a person comes from a lower education does not necessarily mean that they know less than me, but sometimes it does. Ultimately, we as the parents, have to make the best decisions we can for our kids! Hope your little one feels better soon! I keep mine home from school when they are sick too! :-)
I totally agree.
My college had a stomach ache all day, she blamed it on the weather changing and not wearing an extra layer over her stomach...
I suggested maybe she had eaten something bad or had a stomach bug, but no, its having a cold tummy that did it.
The eating-cold-things-makes-you-sick theory drives me crazy. As does the getting-wet-makes-you-sick theory and I too am encouraged to over-medicate my child at the slightest sniffle and get bad parent glances thrown my way if I throw off suggestions of taking her to the doctor. Think you may have hit the nail on the head about going overboard with the things you can control. I also think that the general Asian respect for elders may have something to do with it - my grandparents may well have similar outdated opinions on what makes you sick which I would brush off, but here they really listen and believe what their elders say rather than researching it and forming their own opinion.
The car/motorbike thing too - it's all relative and seems normal after being here a while. I made sure Maya was in a car seat for most of her first year of life and was horrified at the suggestion that she just sit on my lap. The hospital actually wouldn't let me put her in the seat when we took her home after she was born. Now our car is a free for all with children clambering over the seats and nobody wears so much as a lap belt. I frequently see tourists copying the locals and having their whole family on the back of a motorbike without helmets too so it's not just me.
Anyway I hope Stella feels better soon. The Jakarta combo of pollution and air con probably isn't helping matters - maybe her system just needs a while to adjust to the climate and new germs.
@rachel, I know. The cold thing is funny...but to be fair, after three years in China I could no longer drink cold water in the winter. I was all about mugs of hot water warming my hands and my belly. Though I've since sidelined that practice. Hee.
As for the car / motorcycle thing, I'm totally Asian about my view towards trasport. I used to ride motorcycle taxis in China, and I may or may not let my kid roam free inside the car (though I'll never sayyyyyy). What I will say though, is my attitude is 100 percent different in North America (where the relative risk is actually lower, wouldn't you think) where I'm all seat belts all the time. And somehow Stella gets that. In Nanny's car we sit in car seats. NBD.
@Laura....heee. When I was preg in Japan, people were really concerned that I wasn't properly insulating my tummy and thereby exposing my unborn child to the grave risks of cold. I on the other hand side-eyed all the preg sushi eaters. Oh geeze.
@Traveling Mama, yea, actually I learned that lesson the hard way. Sturggeling through the need to do everything "The Right Way" (read The North American Way) when my child was a baby, I got all twisted up in knots about things like the hows and wheres of sleep, North American vaccine schedules, expectations about pre-natal care etc, and I missed out on a lot of really useful and valuable insight, tradition, and wisdom. I'm now really open to other ways of raising kids, and am always grateful when my nanny or friend makes a suggestion re. child care practices. For example, I'm now a full proponent of the 4 pm shower that is pretty standard in Asia. People were shocked that I was bathing my kid right before bed. And actually, a quick shower before dinner, is like totally the way to go!!
Well, with ice cream, it's not so much that it's cold, but that it contains dairy. And dairy is known to encourage mucus production. And if a child is coughing with phlegm or has a runny nose, the dairy doesn't help. Bu I don't see how cold foods could make one worse. Many a child have been relieved during fever or other illness by having a nice, cold popcicle.
I agree with Amarie dairy does encourage mucus production or unlike a popsicle which is frozen flavored sugar water if the child is runny a fever ice cream could cause a tummy ache. Also, you might consider keeping her home from school to help her rest and get over this or if there is any chance of her spreading what ever it is to other students. I would not necessarily say that North American medical practices or the best in the world because they are not in fact the practices there are centered around money generating illness treatment rather than heath care/wellness promotion.
One other thought that came to my mind when I read the length of this cold was is this a cold or is it allergy related? You did just move to a new country with its own natural surroundings that can be quite different that what she was exposed to while in Japan.
@JP Yea, I agree, dairy does increase mucus production but it also increases joy. Hee.
Good advice about keeping her home; and I did on the worst days of her sickness, but at some point, she can't stay home for three weeks!
We also suspect that allergies could be at play; she was on an antihistamine for a while, and that seemed to help. We're watching out for asthma as well.
Cultural differences are just fascinating. Here in Eastern Europe, they share a similar belief in not drinking very cold things. I'm told this is because it will bother an already sore throat, or contribute to illness. Car seats are also optional, although I'd say more people use them than don't. I flipped once when my in-laws took my girl out and held her in the lap, in the front seat no less! for a shopping excursion. I am adamant about the car seat.