Thoughts on Parenting

The Invention Box

It was an unusually rainy day here in Texas, and I don't want to sound unappreciative, but that makes the mother of a preschoolers' life just a little more difficult than usual. As I found myself confronted with the age old question of what to do on a rainy day, I had to push past the obvious (TV) and retrieve the Invention Box.

Cason loves to invent things and create things. Anyone who has visited our house has seen the results of these projects all over the walls. In an effort to foster this passion, we started the Invention Box. It's just a giant plastic tub -- nothing fancy. It's filled with egg crates, paper towel rolls, paper cups, boxes, straws and anything else that seemed interesting and destined for the local landfill -- nothing fancy.

But the things that come out of Cason's brilliant little mind -- they're really fancy! Just last week we had an entire village of Styrofoam dots inhabiting our living room. They had individual rooms, garages, even a swimming pool. Heck, I was ready to move in myself!

It's just amazing to see what a child can do with some trash (clean, of course), tape, string and scissors!

Smashed Fingers, Slamming Doors

The loud bang of the bedroom door was jarring.

“Let me in!” my desperate little preschooler screamed at his sister. His attempt to force open the door was momentarily successful before another huge bang. SLAM! With the door to the bedroom he shares with his sister narrowly missing his precious little fingers, I decided it was time to intervene.

Despite conversation after conversation, I cannot seem to convince the children that there really is no need to slam doors. While watching an old episode of Friends one night, I got the inspiration I needed when I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to find out if, indeed, Matthew Perry was missing a fingertip. A quick search on Google showed blurry, up-close images of the finger. Sure enough it was missing – a nursery school mishap in a door nonetheless! Perfect!

The next day, as another fight ensued and the door got slammed yet again, I jumped into action.

“Do you guys know why I don’t want you slamming the doors?”

Cute little faces upturned, expressions saying, “We’ve been through this a million times, Mommy!”

Robotic little voices repeating, “So we don’t smash our fingers.”

“Yes, it would be really terrible to lose a finger.” Fudging a bit, I say, “I know somebody who’s finger got slammed in a door at preschool,” building importance I weigh my timing and inflection carefully, “and now… his fingertip... is missing. It’s GONE… forever.”

“I WANT TO SEE!” Jack screamed with great enthusiasm.

Not exactly the reaction I was going for, but, what the heck. I’ve probably already scarred him for life. Back to Google and the somewhat disturbing images of Matthew Perry’s missing fingertip. More discussion about the pros and cons of slamming doors and a desperate hope that maybe, just maybe something might get through this time.

But just in case, we came up with a very inexpensive backup: a 3-4 inch section of pipe insulation with a semi-slit that fits perfectly over the bedroom door and makes it impossible to slam -- a simple, inexpensive solution to a very common problem. Shhhh! Don’t tell the multi-million dollar baby safety industry!