The 4 year old vs The Big Needle

Nothing says "Great Parenting!" like dangling a large double sized chocolate bar in your 4 year old's face, then taking them to a nail salon for a bright pink manicure. But, today, that is what I did. Judge me, or don't judge me, but I figured for the 4 year old immunisations I was going to have to bring out the big guns.

Thinking through the logistics, I'd decided that if we went all positive and talked up the process and had a big indepth happy optimistic discussion about the Big Needle and how it would hurt a little bit and that there would be chocolate at the end, I could trick her into one injection. And then I figured the second injection would be a bit trickier.

So that's what we did, we talked about it during the day, went to the dairy to pick the special reward chocolate (Turkish Delight Bar because it came in a dark pink wrapper), left the littlies at home with Dad, because at times like these Mum's sympathy is what's needed.

I was right.

The first one went in to her leg, the plaster went on, and she lost it. Really. LOST. IT. I had the chocolate out, even had some of it stuffed in her mouth, had her arm held tight and the needle went in amidst a massively high pitched scream. Chocolate was spat across the room, the plaster was whacked on, we did our 20 minute wait in the waiting room, all while the screaming continued. It continued down the road. It continued into the parking lot of the mall. It continued all the way until I decided that nails could not be made pink through all that noise. So, in an instant, she cheered up.

We went to the special Manicure place, she picked a bright, almost flouro, pink and sat so still while the man gave her "Barbie Nails".

She's still very unimpressed by the whole process, and we've sinced discovered that injections hurt more than the baby pulling her hair, and less than walking into some shelves at Farmers.

I've learnt something too - this is for next time: I'm not doing it. Mummy can have all the sympathy in the world, but when it comes to that second needle, nothing is going to be as useful as Daddy's physical capability to hold still a thrashing 4 year old.