HELP PLEASE - My 5 Year Old Daughter Refuses to Let Anyone Know When She Is Sick

I think that kids who have a lot of medical issues develop a certain strength and resilience that a healthy child does not. I have one healthy child and one with multiple, serious medical problems.

My advice would be to not push, to not continually say things like "I know you're not feeling well" or "what's wrong?".

She may not be feeling 100% but she may be processing how to deal with it in her own way. If she's able to get up and go to school or go about her daily activities, even if she feels some pain, just support her, let her know she can talk to you, but don't show her that you're desperate or frazzled. You have a strong kid who may not be feeling well but is persevering.

Watch her for anything truly alarming but otherwise treat her with calm confidence.

My 10yo does this.

1) He has High pain tolerance.

2) He's ADHD so if he's hyperfocused on something else he honestly doesn't notice

3) his 'normal' is off. He's used to being SO sick that he's in the hospital for weeks at a time, so normal sick doesn't even blip his radar

Ex) his appendix burst last year. He described it as 'My stomach hurts a little"

EX) He'll be freaking BLUE (pulmonary issues), but because it's JUST an asthma attack (instead of asthma plus atelectasis plus double pneumonia plus double pleural effusions he just keeps playing... With his o2 readings at 85... He doesn't start saying 'I don't feel well' until his oxygen is in the 70's)

EX) Seasick for 8 hours and he describe it as 'a little nauseous, not that bad' (throwing up for 8 hours every 5 minutes.

For HIM it's not fear based, he loves Children's hospital, and his last panic attack asked to go up there just because it's a 'safe' place for him / we've gone up there to visit friends at his request (staff)... It 'just' the high pain tolerance, and skewed idea of what 'normal' feels like.

AFTER I've dosed him 6 ways from Sunday, he'll look over, grin, and say "Oh! That feels soooooooo much BETTER!" (after swearing up and down he was fine / really believing he was fine). So I have to keep an eye on him.

Maybe you are being too concerned about every health issue and she is not liking that. I don't mean to ignore real illness but you can tell usually if she is wheezing and know it's asthma and just go get her inhaler or whatever she uses. I would talk less about how she feels and more about other things. If she has a fever and you need to check that that's another thing. But it sounds to me like she's tired of dwelling on her medical issues and making it the main focus. If she's playing most likely she's not sick.

I can actually identify with her. It's because she was in the hospital/doctor's office so much with her various physcial problems. Sure she's afraid of having to go back into the doctor's office for some painful test or have to take some awful medicine, but it's also because she wants to be "normal." You see other kids doing things you can't, because of x disease, it kind of gets to you. Another thing is that we just don't feel sick, because the other problems dwarf simiple colds. Don't worry about it so much. We do slow down when we really need to. She'll let you know if something's really not right. There's no sense taking all that medicine and weaken your immune system, if you don't really need to....and yes, we're usually very pale.

Your daughter may not feel 100% but if she is really truly sick I think you will know. My youngest has had her fair share of illness and when she is really sick she simply can't function no matter how badly she wants to go to school.

I would go forth without asking her verbally 'what's wrong', but looking for clues and cues. This is a touchy situation; outside a psychologist, I'm not sure I could offer concrete suggestions for the deeper problem of her aversion to medical care. I worked with a child years ago who had had multiple heart surgeries by the time he was three and suffered some hard challenges because of this. It's really tough for the kids and their parents.

If it were me in a situation where I felt I wasn't getting good feedback, I'd go with my gut as to when to seek medical care and when to wait and see if it was a passing bug or something worse. Some symptoms (severe pain, vomiting, redness, swelling, bleeding, fever) cannot be suppressed, even by a non-communicative person, and those are the most severe, so that's what we have to go on, much like when she was a baby.

I'm sorry this is such a tough situation-- good luck to you. You might consider a private conversation with your daughter's pediatrician over the phone, so that he/she would be able to talk with your daughter about her communication during the next visit-- or the doctor might know of someone to refer you to if it's agreed that this needs to be addressed more directly by a counselor.

Lastly, there are some kids who can have pretty good energy while they are sick. I grew up being kept in bed all day when I was sick, and was surprised to learn as a nanny that some kids 'do' sick differently. I say, as long as she's happy and comfortable when she's ill, and getting some rest times (read stories-- this mellows kids out), this will likely be better for her than being miserable in bed. Good luck!

I think we moms can tell when something is REALLY wrong. She may not tell you every time she has a little tummy or headache, but you know her well enough to see when her mood, activity level, color and eating/sleeping habits are "off." Just keep a close eye on her, and try not to let your own fear of her being sick affect her. As long as she's relatively active and eating well she's probably fine :)

I suggest calling her doctor and explaining the situation. Ask if the doctor can talk to her about it, something along the lines of "We know how much you hate seeing the doctor and doing all the tests. By telling us when you are feeling sick, and by telling us how you feel, you are helping the doctor do less tests and make the treatment take less long. If you don't tel, then the doctor has to guess and order more tests, and you could/will get very sick, and the doctor might not be able to fix the problem as easiliy." See if your child's doctor will talk to her about that.

I would also suggest that you contact your closest children's hospital and see if they offer any kind of adult-moderated children's support group or play therapy to help kids working through chronic painful illnesses--I bet that talking to someone with expertise in children's psychology would greatly help her deal with this.

I've been going through this as well with my 7 year old daughter. She has always been very healthy up until about a year ago when she developed a hernia. Since then it's been colds, skin growths that she's had biopsied, and she just recently got over a virus. I'll admit that I started freaking out a bit only because she rarely got sick before. So she's had 2 blood tests plus a hernia surgery and other things within a year. Every time she gets sick now she gets really anxious and starts asking if she's going to have to get blood taken. I feel so bad.

What I do now is just keep a closer eye on her and I tell myself that if anything starts to get more frequent then it's time to see the doctor, but if it's something every once in a while I try not to worry. I think as moms we know when something isn't right.

I'm at the point now where I'm probably going to start bribing her with something small if she does have to go to the doctor for anything besides a regular checkup. I do agree with the other posts as well about talking to the doctors about their fears.

I wish I had better suggestions!

My daughter had reflux as a baby and has asthma but not anywhere close to what you have been dealing with. She had lots of tests to figure out what was wrong. She was afraid of the doctor for a while. We just started to talk almost every day about Dr H. We talked about his family, what he likes to do, etc. Then when we took a couple trips to the doctors office to just say hi. It really helped. She was about 2 1/2. She is much better now about going to see the dr now. Hope you get some good ideas!