Parenting Bug

Sometimes kids and software are eerily similar. When writing software you have to take care to express precisely what you mean in unambiguous terms. When you fail to do that, you have a bug.

By and large you don't have to be that precise with humans...most humans. 4-year-olds, as humans-in-training, seem to be an exception.

Elaina likes to give the tub a good scrub at bath time. Ordinarily, I might be very supportive of this, because it's not something I like to do. But the idea of her cleaning herself and the tub with the same washcloth grosses me out, even though she's really just washing the faucet and the sides of the tub.

Tonight at bath time, I anticipated her tub cleaning and stopped her.  I capped my intervention with a phrase  I judged to be worthy of recording in The Big Book of Parental Wisdom: "If you use it on your body, you don't use it on the tub."

Simple. Memorable.  Undeniably good advice.

Seconds later, Elaina was happily scrubbing the tub faucet with the washcloth I'd just given her.

"Elaina!"

Seeing my look of exasperation and the silent expression that I think she's learned to translate into "Why? WHY?!  I don't even have words to express the depth of my confusion and dismay over what you're doing right now."  Elaina stopped.

I knew it was coming--spotted the bug in my words of wisdom--before I heard her response.

"I haven't used it on my body yet."