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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

cleaning up

jim and i have reached a new discipline milestone as parents. as of tonight, we have officially had to wash a child's mouth out with soap. or, rather, make her eat soap.

the offense, which has been talked out and forgiven, is over now so i'll spare you the details- but you can be sure the mouth was used in an incorrect manner...

jim was at work when it happened. i won't use names, but the child i'm talking about had never committed this sin to this degree before. in the middle of talking it out with said child, i discovered i had no good ideas in mind for how to handle the discipline and consequences for the disobedience. you know, i had to make sure the severity got across in a memorable way. i had no idea what to do... so i did what any good mother would. i said we'd wait to decide how she'd be disciplined until daddy came home (an excellent way to fain control to my daughter, but mostly i was just stalling for lack of the creativity to know what to do!).

when jim came home we talked it out and he pulled the same thing on her that i did- he said he'd need to talk to mommy before he decided on a consequence. ha! so then later we talked about it together and decided the old "wash your mouth out" method might leave a poignant memory to discourage a similar future offense. so we go on a quest for the proper soap. the girls LOVE handsoap in this house! i thought she might not mind eating it, since they love to use it so much, but was curious to see what would happen. anyway, we couldn't find anything that didn't state, "if swallowed call a poison control center right away..." and we ended up deciding that they were all just over-cautious, afraid of law suits, or are speaking of the harmful effects of swallowing the WHOLE BOTTLE at once or something...surely a couple drops couldn't hurt anything! (please don't report us). so jim went upstairs to administer the discipline. there were no tears, but a definite sour face. hopefully it's a good memory that when we use our mouths/words in a way that hurts Jesus and others, it's not a good choice!

anyway, visions of ralphy from a christmas story, blind and homeless as a result of soap poisoning danced in my head for a couple of moments, but i'm sure she's fine.

1 comment:

katie said...

giggle giggle. i had to brush my teeth with it when i was a kid. ugh. my sister uses sassy sauce (a drop of tobasco) and when i noticed the bottle was almost empty, she assured me it had spilled, not been overly admninistered to her angel. too funny. again, taking notes from the experts for future use with the peach. :)