There is something frightening that happens when kids start exercising their independence. They start doing things for themselves. Like washing hands. And getting their own drinks. And making their own food.
I say frightening, because what this inevitably does is it makes it ever more impossible to keep a tidy home. Because they will try to get water from the water filter, and they will accidentally miss the cup and make a puddle on the floor, and they won’t clean it up and will forget to tell anyone, and the only way you know about it is when you’re coming in to put the laundry in the dryer, and you slip and nearly die, or at least it feels like you almost died, if your heart has anything to say about it. And then you start laughing, because YOU ALMOST DIED and yet you still have to put the load of laundry in the dryer.
And there’s the bread they’ll try to use for making an after-dinner snack, except they don’t pay the least bit of attention to the crumbs they’re spreading all over the counter and the butter that was smeared into granite so effectively it was rendered completely invisible, and the only way you’ll know about it is when you put the oldest’s reading log on the counter, and the grease starts eating all the way through it and you realize it was only a matter of time before you started looking like THAT family.
And then there’s the washing hands, which usually results in water staying on too long and somehow not keeping to the boundaries of the sink, because they put their hands right up into the faucet instead of leaving enough space beneath it so water won’t splatter everywhere, and there are drops all over the mirror and their shirt. Then, of course, they miss putting the soap on their hands, because they’re not very good at aiming (just look at their toilet) and so every time the faucet is turned on for the next five days, it creates a bubble bath right there in the sink, and you’ll wonder, briefly, how you might be able to save all that soap and to use in their baths or something, except it’s hand soap and good mothers don’t use hand soap to wash their kid, except for that one time you were out of body wash and you thought, what the heck, it’s all made of the same stuff, and you did and the sensitive 6-year-old’s skin broke out and you felt terrible about it. Hypothetically.
Kids come into the world begging for independence. I see it in my infant, who has just started letting go when he’s standing anywhere, so eager to stand on his own and start walking that he doesn’t care that in the next three seconds he’s probably going to fall hard, right on his rump.
And after years of pouring their milk and wiping their noses and dressing them, we start begging for that independence, too (except when our work is gone and then we’ll miss it).
The problem is that independence comes with inconvenient spills that will drip all the way down into a cabinet of storage containers, and you’ll have to go ahead and wash all eight hundred of them. And it comes with snotty tissues lying around the living room, because he thought that when he used them to wipe his nose, you would throw them all away, not him. And it comes with a pile of clothes heaped in front of the closet, because all these shirts were the ones that “didn’t work out” or the ones that were holding on to the shirt he really wanted, and he doesn’t have enough time to hang them back up before school starts.
Independence means pencil shavings spread all over the entryway floor, because the 8-year-old was sharpening a pencil and then the 5-year-old tried and accidentally knocked over the entire sharpener and made the shavings go everywhere, and now the infant is happy that there are more things to put in his mouth. Independence means soap all over the bath rug because he’s just started taking showers on his own, and sometimes the soap squirt doesn’t quite make it in his hand, because he pushes too hard or too soft, but, hey, at least he’s using soap, which is more than I can say for the other third graders, judging by the way their classroom smells. Independence means way too many toys taken out, because he couldn’t decide what to play with, and he can reach all the toys and unlock the door by himself, and so he just chose, in a moment when you weren’t paying attention, to get them all out and save you the trouble. Except he didn’t really save you the trouble.
There are some things that will get worse before they get better, and they can usually be linked to independence.
Food messes are the worst.
When they decided they wanted to have oats with milk for a snack, because they enjoy eating raw oats drowned in 2 percent milk (gross), they thought surely they could do this themselves. I was putting the 3-year-old twins down for a nap and was not aware of their plans. They probably could have done it themselves, except they accidentally opened the bulk bag before taking it off the pantry shelf, and the oats spilled everywhere.
Those are the times you’ll want to take their independence back. Not really. Because I don’t want to be Cinder-Mama. But still. Maybe take it easy on the food, guys.
While it’s easier just to do things ourselves, it’s good for them to feel efficient in their own worlds. It’s also good for them to know that it’s okay for them to make those mistakes, and then learn how to clean them up.
As long as it’s not oats with milk. Or popcorn (no you cannot eat the seeds). Or water from the Brita filter in the fridge. I’ve nearly broken my neck three times, and that was just in a day.
There are some things I’d rather do.
This is an excerpt from The Life-Changing Madness of Tidying Up After Children, the second book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by Jonathan Pielmayer on Unsplash)
