Monday, January 26, 2009

Give it to me straight, kid

I decided to tackle more than one load of laundry today. This usually means I turn all of the dirty laundry baskets topsy-turvy, and clothes is then strewn everywhere.

Fast-forward to this evening.

Oh, one other important note: we keep the children's individual dirty laundry baskets in the kids' bathroom.

Okay, back to this evening. LittleMan is coming out of the kids' bathroom shower. I help to towel him dry. In the middle of my mothering and happy thoughts, LittleMan busts out with this:

LittleMan: Mom? I think you need to clean this place up.

Me: [I look around, and the kids' dirty laundry is all over the bathroom floor. I laugh aloud!]

LittleMan: It is a diSASter.

Me: [Smiling] Honey, you know a better way to say something like that would be to say, 'Mom? Can I help clean this up?'

LittleMan: [Thinking about that.]

Me: Or, you could just start cleaning it up yourself. That would really help me out.

LittleMan: But, I would be afraid that you would get mad at me.

Me: [Laughing] That's true.

Unfortunately, LittleMan was right on several accounts. Yes, the bathroom was a HUGE disaster. Yes, I really should clean that up. And, yes, I probably would have gotten mad at him if he had tried to clean up the dirty laundry.

Why, you might ask?

Because what child cleans up DIRTY LAUNDRY?! I would have naturally assumed that he was just messing with the laundry pile in order to make a bigger mess, if that's possible. So, really, I think LittleMan has pointed out several weaknesses in my character.

I think I've grown some...

... or I'll just put the child to work more often to make certain he doesn't say stuff like that again.

2 comments:

DJ said...

Ha, ha out of the mouths of babes....
Yeah, I find that I do that sometimes, too. I guess we have to be more willing to let someone help us, even if they don't do it exactly like we would have.

Anonymous said...

It is so much easier for a mom to do the work herself since that way she gets it done the way she wanted it done. However, part of a mom's job is "teacher." This was a teaching moment on so many levels. Mom