She Immediately Regretted Her Decision

This week, my daughter did something that was incredibly dumb.  Being two years old, she had no idea of the consequences of her actions. Here is the story.

My wife teaches English classes twice a week, and on Wednesday, she forgot to grab a CD that she needed for class in order to print off worksheets for her students.  She called for my help, and I left my daughter on the couch watching her favorite show (Caillou on PBS) while I went upstairs to email my wife the files that she needed.  I was out of my daughter's sight for no more than ten minutes.

As I descended from the second floor or our house, I was shocked to see that my daughter was not watching Caillou anymore.  When I turned to enter our kitchen, I was even more shocked to see that she had pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, climbed it, emptied out a bag of her old books that we were planning to donate, and was now sitting on the kitchen table with the pepper shaker in her hand.  Just as I entered the room, she licked the top of the pepper shaker.  Her eyes lit up and she looked at me as if to say, " I immediately regret this decision."  No kidding, kid. That was dumb.

So I scooped her up, and as she fought back the tears, I got her some water to wash out her burning mouth.  "It's all gone!" she exclaimed.  As I gently explained to her that it was not a good idea to climb onto the kitchen table and that it was also not a good idea to lick the pepper shaker, she seemed to be totally ignoring me. "Those are my books!" she said as she pointed at the donation pile, "I want them!"  Really?  Because you haven't read them for six months, and that's why we specifically picked those books to donate.  And I was specifically alerting you to the dangers of climbing onto tables and licking things that are not really that good for you.  Wait, are you even listening to me?

I think we all learned a lot from this experience.  Number one, don't trust Caillou as your babysitter even for ten minutes.  He's just a kid who's four.  Number two, don't lick the top of the pepper shaker.  You will immediately regret your decision.  Number three, don't donate anything ever because your kid still wants it - all of it.  Plus, it increases the odds that you might get lucky enough to end up on Hoarders one day.