The first week of school came and went and by that Friday Samantha had brought home the first virus. By Monday Alyssa had it and it hit her like a truck: sinus and ear infection and bronchitis by Wednesday morning. And mommy then started sneezing . . .

I've trained my kids that the Netti pot can be their friend. They've got over the initial shock of putting water in their nose and both have learned how much they can cut down a cold. And I make them do it twice a day. Samantha even begs for a drop of iodine, which acts as an antibacterial. Anything to keep them off antibiotics and get all that goop out of their heads.

Last night, however, after the Netti pot, Samantha's ear clogged up. After a few hours of sleep she woke up crying because the pressure increased in her ear. (The kid has no pain tolerance and errs on the dramatic side.) It was two hours of crying and trying to reason with her. She wanted us to take her to the ER. I gave her ibuprofen and then Tylenol half an hour later for the pain. We tried to get her to stop crying because she was creating so much more mucus. Ugh! It was two hours of torture.

I played the "tough love" part--I told her to go to sleep and stop crying because she was making it worse. I was totally unapologetic about her crying. I have a high pain tolerance and the drama was too much.

After two hours she finally crashed. And this morning when her alarm went off she was fine, tired, but no ear pain.

Playing the "tough love" part can be difficult. I didn't want to discredit her pain, but I also wanted her understand that she was making it worse. If she would try to calm herself she'd find that it would resolve, and it did. Whether or not she realized that maybe "mom, was right" I'll never know.