I have a 3-year old who recently started going to preschool, so we are going through a lot of colds in our household.
Something puzzled me. When he has a cold, he has the obvious physical symptoms of a runny or stuffed nose and a cough, but other than that he seems to be fine.
When I have a cold I just want to sleep in, drink tea, wrap myself in a blanket, and be grumpy. My head hurts, my body hurts, I’m tired, etc. I usually just power through it and try not to be too obviously grumpy. I don’t remember being three, but I remember being sick as a kid and it was similar. I wanted to sleep a lot and felt generally crappy.
He seems to be totally unaffected. He’s not lethargic or grumpy except when his cough is bad enough at night to wake him up. Does he actually not feel bad the way I do when I have a cold, or is there a cultural element here? He doesn’t think to stop his normal frenetic toddler activities when he has a cold any more than he thinks it’s important to wear pants when company comes over.
My experience of colds both as a child and today resembles your child’s much more closely than it does yours. I always looked forward to being sick enough to be sent home from school, which as I got a little older, meant being picked up and then left alone at home, where I could watch large amounts of T.V. and eat whatever I could scrounge from the kitchen (chili and pasta were my big favorites).
As an adult, I might have a runny nose and a cough, but would still be mostly alert and functional (unless I have a really bad headache). I differentiate that from the one or two times that I have had the flu, which means being seriously ill and unable to get out of bed or enjoy any activities.
“Happiness is being too sick to go to school, but not too sick to watch T.V.” - Charles Schulz
Agreed - if I feel particularly bad with a cold, it’s because I had to keep getting up in the middle of the night to blow my nose. It may be a matter of your particular immune system; do your colds tend to be very short?
Oh, I did too. But that’s because sitting on the couch watching TV and drinking juice was so much better than being at school perfectly healthy. It still kind of sucked to be sick though. I’d have rather been healthy and gotten to stay home and watch TV.
I don’t think my colds today are more intense than average. They’re definitely not shorter, they tend to last the general 7-10 days (although really only 2-3 of those days are particularly bad with aches and fatigue. The rest are the day or two of scratchy throat and sinus pressure that portend the cold, and the trailing while where you have some combination of a cough, sore throat, runny nose, but mostly feel fine.
I just got over a horrendous cold, that became complicated by bronchitis. Both my kids were sick like me with hacking night coughs. I definitely acted more miserable than either of them though. I think some of it is learned helplessness and the stress of being an adult and going to work and all that when sick. Most kids don’t or at least shouldn’t have all that adult stress so the colds don’t bother them as much and they just don’t dwell on being sick cause they have all that happy, mental energy they need to learn about new things in their little world.
I’ve had colds ranging from “you wouldn’t even notice if I didn’t blow my nose about once an hour” to “I sound like I’m about to cough up a lung”, and from “nothing a mild dose of paracetamol won’t fix” to “did anybody take the plate number of the construction crane that stole my head?” The Littlest Nephew (currently aged 4) has in the last two winters experienced similar ranges (not the kind with the coughing fits, thankfully).
While they all fall under the umbrella of “no fever and it goes away by itself in 7-10 days”, neither every cold nor every person who has one is the same.
Isn’t part of the issue that kids don’t really understand cause and effect? So you know “sleep in, drink tea, wrap myself in a blanket” will make you feel better. Kids don’t really understand that and want to just keep doing what they’re normally doing.
Yeah, I’m more childlike in that regard too. Generally it’s the congestion that bugs me; I rarely feel bad from a cold. Actual influenza makes me feel like hammered dogshit, but just a cold? That’s just congestion.
One thing I’ve noticed with kids is that the symptoms don’t necessarily hit them with the same intensity as adults even when it’s the same disease, so maybe that’s what you’re seeing?
He’s not got a fever they way you do when you get a cold. Kids have different immune response, have immunity to fewer colds, and have different heat regulation than adults anyway.
You react to a virus infection by feeling cold, which makes you regulate hotter, which gives you aches (because adults don’t shiver in the same way kids do), and depletes your energy and also makes your brain work less efficiently (your brain would prefer a colder body temperature).
What I don’t know about immune response would fill a library. But yes, small kids are different.
On the other hand, when they do get really sick, they can die suddenly.
