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!
Great idea, the pipes are also good for putting over barbed wire fences in child playing areas.
Posted by: Hazel | September 23, 2008 at 07:12 AM
Wish we had come up with this idea for our (now) teenager! She had the door-slamming fits when she was about 4 or 5 and we took more drastic action - we took off her bedroom door entirely! When she had gone about a week or two without "privacy" she promised to stop slamming her door - and she hasn't since.
But, as an almost 14-yr-old now, I'm just waiting for it start again...she'll dislike the lack of privacy even more as a teenager with two 6-yr-old brothers!! :-)
Posted by: Terese | October 15, 2008 at 09:45 PM