The “three-day rule”. 

First time moms don’t know what I’m talking about.  All of us other moms live by it.

Let’s say little Johnny is out riding his bike, hits a patch of gravel and falls.  He runs into the house and says he’s hurt his arm.  First time moms, with alarm in their eyes, pack little Johnny up lickety split and high tail it straight to the hospital to have it x-rayed.

The rest of us use the “three-day rule”.  We clean it, kiss it, and bandage it.  And we say, “I think it’ll be okay, honey.  If it’s not any better in three days, we’ll go to the doctor.”

Going to the doctor is okay but going to the emergency room is COOL.  To a kid, that is.  You get to see all sorts of neat stuff and, most importantly, you get to tell your friends you HAD to go to the emergency room. 

Kids don’t want to wait three days.  Sometimes kids have been known to stretch the truth just so they could go to the emergency room.

Kids who have never had a broken bone look wistfully at the kid who shows up with the bright purple cast.  He’s so lucky.  He got to go to the hospital.  His parents didn’t use the three-day rule.

I have five brothers and sisters (I’m third), so I come by the three-day rule honestly.  I can count on one hand the number of times I actually got taken to the hospital.  Several resulted in stitches, a couple of times I broke my arm. 

One time, it was a severe sprain and I could see the unspoken words in my mother’s eyes, “I should have waited three days.”

My daughter claims her hip really hurts.  “If it still hurts next week, let me know.”  My son says he feels dizzy, I tell him to go lay down for three days.  My daughter says she can’t see the blackboard, I tell her, “Sure you can.  Wait a couple of days.”

There are sometimes when it’s not okay to use the three-day rule, though.

As I wrote last summer, when my oldest was not quite a year old, we were visiting my mother during the Christmas holidays.  I left him with my brother on the couch while I walked into the kitchen.  Seconds later I heard shrieks of pain and discovered him in a heap on the floor.  He had rolled off the couch, hit his head on the coffee table and had fallen to the floor.  I kissed him and soothed him, and soon he was happy again.

The next morning we were due to leave Houston and head back home to Alabama.  When my son woke up and began to crawl across the floor, we noticed his arm buckling every time he put weight on it.  I called my doctor back in Alabama and made an appointment for the day after we arrived home.

They x-rayed it, and sure enough, it was broken.  The doctor was angry we had waited so long to bring him in.

All I could think was, “But it’s only been TWO days!”