Medication at 2 Households

Ugh!  We all want our kids to be healthy!  The process of making sure a medication is safe and appropriate for our child is complicated enough.  Then, on top of that, my husband and I have to trust that the parent with whom our children live every other week is giving the medication properly.  We brainstormed with the doctor to come up with an idea to at least make sure she is getting her prescription allergy pill 5 days per week by having her take it at school.  The school doesn't like to give medications that you could give at home. However, they cooperated.  Then, their mom (I'm stepmom) said that she won't go along with this.  It would mean that she would need to bring in pills to the school every other month and NOT give her a morning dose on school days.  We cannot control these things.  No matter how much time and energy and emotion goes into trying to make this work, it won't if the other side is not willing to cooperate.

So what does that mean?  The overall picture here is that our daughter is going to have to grow up a little bit more than a child who lives with both parents and become responsible for taking her medication on time on her own, regardless of where she is.  I have observed how much better she is about remembering at our house, but that is because it is part of her routine in the morning and at night.  They get "checked out"by Dad at night and I do the morning one.  Dad is funny.  He asks all kinds of silly questions around the basic questions, "Did you brush your teeth?  Did you brush your dog's teeth?  Did you brush a monkey?"  They look forward to "check out" and cheerfully make sure that they did all the stuff on the list.  However, I don't know what the routine is at their mom's house, and I don't even know that there is one.  Unfortunately, we are unable to communicate effectively with her about such things.  The counselor has offered to bring up such topics, but that only works if mom comes in to see him with the girls.

Deep breath.  The worst case scenario with this medicine is that it won't be as effective.  This means more snot, snorting, and refusing to blow instead of sniff.  However, it does not mean she will die.  I feel bad about putting extra responsibility on her shoulders right now.  What is the appropriate age for expecting a child to begin being responsible for his/her own self-care routines?  Isn't the concept of age appropriateness generic anyway?  Aren't we supposed to take into account the specific child's maturity, level of responsibility, quirks, behavior, patterns, and intelligence?  If I were her mom and we were her only primary caretakers, at what point would we tire of reminding her to take her medicine?

All these questions don't really count here.  Our situation is what it is.  I can not control anything beyond our time with our girls every other week for a week at a time.  I can hope that the time we have together will have a positive and permanent effect that she will carry with her into her own everyday life.  In that life, I hope she is able to feed herself healthy foods and take her vitamins or medicine and brush her teeth each day.  My mom says that raising two girls the same way turned out very different for each of her daughters, so you just have to let go of how it all turns out.  All I can do is get the prescription filled, enjoy my husband's funny "check out" questions, and praise the girls for remembering things on their own.  During the weeks that they aren't with us, I will send angels to be with them and make sure I'm taking my own vitamins.