What Happens When One Parent Enables a Kid’s Fake Sick Excuses: What I Learned As A Dad
7:15 a.m. on a Tuesday, my coffee was still dripping from the machine when I heard the fake cough echo down the hallway. I wiped my hands on my jeans and walked into the living room, where 10-year-old Lila was curled into a ball under the fuzzy hand-me-down blanket my mom made her, her backpack still unzipped by the door. My wife Sarah was already kneeling beside her, pressing her palm to Lila’s forehead. “She’s a little warm,” Sarah said, not looking up at me. “Let’s keep her home today.” I pulled out the thermometer we keep in the junk drawer, pressed it under Lila’s tongue, and got 98.2 degrees. Normal. I held it up. Sarah gave me that look—the quiet, sharp one that means “drop this now, we can talk later.” I sighed, poured the coffee, and went back to my work at the dining table.
This isn’t a new fight. Over the past two months, we’ve had this same exchange four times. Once before a field trip Lila’s best friend bailed on, once before a spelling bee she got picked for by her teacher, once before a group presentation, and now this, before her big 5th grade math midterm. I’ve always been the one pushing: she’s fine, she just needs to go, if she skips once she’ll keep skipping. Sarah’s always been the one pulling back: what if she actually is upset? What’s the harm of one day off? For months I called it enabling, plain and simple. I thought Sarah was letting Lila avoid any hard thing that came her way, and that Lila would grow up thinking she could just quit whenever things got uncomfortable.
Three weeks ago, Sarah had an all-day work meeting, and Lila faked a stomach ache the night before that group presentation. I was stuck staying home with her, annoyed the whole morning, answering emails while she watched old cartoons on the couch. Around noon, I walked over with a plate of crackers and sat down next to her. I didn’t say “you’re faking” or “you have to go.” I just said, “What about this presentation feels so much worse than hanging out here with me?” She picked at a loose thread on the blanket for five minutes before she said she stutters when she gets nervous, and her part is about her grandma who died last year, and she doesn’t want to cry in front of the whole class. Suddenly, that “fake sick excuse” didn’t feel like avoidance anymore. It felt like the only way she knew how to ask for a break without admitting how scared she was.
I talked to Sarah about it that night, and she finally told me why she’s so quick to let Lila stay home. When she was 11, the same age as Lila, she had to give a speech in front of the whole middle school for student council. She got so nervous she threw up right before it was her turn, and her mom made her go up anyway. She froze, forgot all her lines, and kids teased her about “throw-up Sarah” all the way through high school. She said she still has nightmares about it. She told me, “I’d rather Lila skip a dozen presentations than carry that feeling around for 30 years.” That’s when I realized it wasn’t that Sarah was enabling bad habits. We were just coming at this from two completely different places, shaped by what we’d gone through as kids.
We sat down after that talk to work out a system that fit both of our worries, no all-or-nothing rules. First, we got rid of the “sick” lie. If Lila’s not actually vomiting or has a fever over 100, she has to name what she’s feeling. She can’t hide behind a fake cough to get out of school. She has to say “I’m too nervous for my test today” or “I don’t want to do my presentation.” Calling it what it is takes away the secret, and it makes her face what she’s actually feeling instead of burying it. Second, we agreed on tiered options instead of just “stay home” or “go.” If she’s only scared of one thing in the day, we can drop her off an hour late after that thing is done, or I’ll email the teacher to ask if she can do her presentation after school one-on-one first, then repeat it to the class if she wants. Third, if we do agree to let her take a full day off, it doesn’t get to be a fun free day. She can’t scroll TikTok or watch movies all day. She has to do one small thing that prepares her to face the thing she’s scared of the next day—practice her presentation once, go over the math problems she’s stuck on, or just talk through what’s worrying her. No reward for stepping away.
We’ve had this system for a month and a half, and it’s not perfect. Last week, Lila still tried to say she had a sore throat before that math test, but Sarah just asked her “is this sore throat from nerves, or are you actually sick?” and she immediately admitted she was scared. We stayed home for an hour, went over the study guide together, talked through the hardest problems, and dropped her off right before the test. She got a B minus, and she told us over dinner that it wasn’t half as bad as she thought it would be.
We still disagree sometimes. This weekend we argued about the cross country meet she signed up for back in September. She says she hates running, she doesn’t want to do it. Sarah says let her skip, no big deal. I say she can go, run just the first mile, and leave if she still hates it. We haven’t sorted it out yet. I don’t think we’ll ever be 100 percent on the same page about every little hard thing Lila faces. What I do know is that “enabling” isn’t as clear cut as I used to think it was. Sometimes what looks like letting a kid get away with something is just meeting them where they are. And what looks like pushing them to be tough is just pushing them to shut down. Right now, this middle ground we’ve carved out is working more often than not. That’s enough for us, for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What Happens When One Parent Enables a Kid’s Fake Sick Excuses: What I Learned As A Dad