Please, Stop Being Nice To My Daughter.

Please, stop being nice to my daughter. I mean it.

My daughter’s in love with her doctor. The symptoms appeared at the age of two. Her first words were, “Dad”, “Hi” and “Doctor! Doctor!” It got worse. Every time we passed our doctor’s little grey office building she would cry, and beg to be let out of the car. Now, I wonder if there will ever be a cure. The other day I caught her scolding her dolly saying, “No doctor’s office for you!” How can she love her doctor after a steady round of immunizations and uncomfortable examinations? I don’t know.

At the age of four she is the only child I know who cries when I take her siblings to the doctor and leave her behind.
“Why are you crying?” I ask.
“He’s my doctor, mommy! I want to see him.”
“Are you sick, honey?”
She nods and throws her hand across her forehead, “I have a fever, mommy.”

A likely story. This from a girl who has taken to carrying around her spit up bucket and telling everyone who comes to visit that she is sooo sick. We are running out of play dates. I do my motherly duties and check her temperature: She’s fine. I feel her forehead, check her eyes, and look for lice: All good. “Honey,” I say, “you don’t have a fever, and you don’t appear to be sick. Besides, I just saw you swinging off that tree branch.”
“Oh, mommy,” her little eyelashes bat angelically, “the tree stole my fever. Could you get it back?”

Just what is going on? I can tell you a few things; I caught her shining a flashlight against her hand in order to make ‘Christmas lights’, she wants a giraffe at home so she can be ‘measured’, and she can’t stop talking about the fact that there are baby elephants sleeping just inside her ears. She comes from a loving, well adjusted family, I assure you. She laughs, sings, and plays like any normal child, but as soon as a member of the family coughs she puts on her boots and waits by the door.

So listen, doctor, don’t be nice to my daughter! No playing, no laughing, and certainly no funny songs about her elbows. Same goes for you, nurses, keep those knitted finger puppets to yourselves. I’m afraid my daughter will get to know someone with a spooky skin disease just to get inside your door. Plus, I have my other children to think about. Yesterday, I wiped my nose and my son was half-way to the car. I think it might be contagious.