Giving kids medicine can be torture for all parties involved. When my daughter was a toddler, the process would often escalate from bribes to pleas to threats to “ugh, fine, let’s just pin her down” as my husband and I would proceed to shoot a dose of syrup into her screaming mouth with a syringe.

The struggle is real — and universal. Thankfully, over the years, doctors and parents have come up with some clever hacks to make the medicine go down with less of a fight. Here are some ideas to try.

It’s winter, the season of the never-ending cough. Every year, my kids get some kind of phlegmy hack that peaks after a few days and then gets... mostly better, except at night, when the hackathon reasserts itself. Eventually I get tired of this and head to the paediatrician.

No one enjoys the sneezing, fever and aches that come with colds and flu, but unfortunately, once you’re sick all you can do is wait it out. Between getting a ton of fluids and even more rest, you might try some mindfulness meditation to help you find some mental and emotional relief.

Android/iOS: You run the risk of catching the flu, or someone's cold, or some other random virus pretty much every time you decide to leave your house - but what if you knew where people were sick before you went there?

When you meet up with a colleague or friend, greetings typically involve some form of physical contact. Be it a handshake, high-five or good ol' fashioned hug, all of them can be pretty dangerous during flu season.

Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations, Lifehacker's weekly dip into the pool of stoic wisdom, and a guide to using its waters to reflect on and improve your life.

While going over the illness section of the handbook at my daughter's preschool orientation, the director told parents, "If we made every kid with a runny nose stay home, we'd have no children here." Kids get sick a lot and not every sniffle requires you to take a day off from work to nurse them back to health. But it can be tough to gauge whether your kid is too sick to go to school, and it often comes down to a judgment call.

Earlier this year, I took my 14-month-old son Ezra to the local urgent care clinic, where I got confirmation of an ear infection. It made sense, based on his fever, but as we drove home, I thought he seemed ... disoriented. I tried to shake it off -- I was still a new mum, probably overreacting.

These days, it seems like everything can cause cancer. Peanut butter, bacon, alcohol, weed killer, air pollution, baby food, vitamins, birth control pills, pet cats, bottled water, toothpaste, vegetables - the list goes on and on.

Obviously, not all of these things are guaranteed to cause cancer, but there are definitely some foods, liquids and objects that you should try to avoid or cut down on. Naturally, your lifestyle and level of exercise also plays a huge part. This interactive "body map" brings together the evidence on proven cancer causes - from salty foods to sun exposure.

There have been several times when my husband and I have hovered over my four-year-old daughter while she was asleep, touching her forehead in confusion. "Does she feel hot? I think she feels hot." "No, she's probably just warm from all the blankets." "No, feel her -- she's really warm. Should we wake her up and take her temperature?" "No, just leave her alone." "OK, I'm just gonna stand here and see." (Yes, she is the first and only child. How did you know?)