Thursday 16 January 2014

What happens if I....?

Ah, the next stage in the mind development of a small boy.
We're getting into the "What happens if I do this?" stage.
Actually, I think there's a bit of that right from the start, but at the age of three he's finding many more things to be irritatingly curious about. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it sure got the toddler into a lot of trouble.

It started because I'm very tired. I'm finding it hard to sleep and that means I don't always make it through the day without a nap, just as Joseph is deciding that he doesn't really need one any more. Now, usually on a Wednesday I wade through a big pile of ironing whilst Joseph is sleeping but I thought I'd have a little bit of a sit down first.
Some long while later I woke up from an unintended but much needed nap to the sound of a toddler who was not asleep and probably never had been. Now, I should have just left him and got on with the ironing as quickly as possible. He didn't sound distressed so he'd probably have been ok, but I don't like leaving him awake in bed for too long.
An unwise decision - I got up, told him he could get up as long as he played upstairs for a bit while I got the ironing done. It didn't look too big a pile, but you know what ironing is like, it always seems to take far longer than it has any right to even if you are doing something of a improper rush job.
Joseph decided that rather than playing with his trains - which he had very much insisted I get out - he'd rather climb up on a chair and make a grab for things he's not allowed. He's getting tall, that boy, and things that were out of reach are no longer so.
Perhaps he was trying to get something else, but I can't help but wonder if he simply thought "I wonder what happens if I knock something over that I have been repeatedly told is delicate and breakable and I'm not allowed to have?"
It goes smash on the floor, that's what. And it makes Mummy cross, oh so very cross. To be honest, I was just as angry with myself over it. It would never have happened if I hadn't been dopey and dropped off to sleep when I had things to do. Still, he's knows he's not supposed to go climbing.
I told him off and told him that his punishment was to stay on his own a whole lot longer, which he seemed to understand and took with a measure of good grace as it appeared to be dawning on him that he'd done something really quite stupid. No downstairs time, no TV time and Mummy time was at an absolute minimum.
Daddy came home. Joseph's enforced banning from the living room came to a natural end and he came rushing downstairs to tell Daddy that he'd just fed his fish.
Huh? Now I know I put the food out of reach and I know he can't get the lid off. What's he done now?
As it turned out, the wretched boy has had another growth spurt and having not really learned the lesson properly from earlier, had embarked on another climbing spree. I still can't work out how he got the lid of the tub of food, he's never managed it before. Still, manage it he did and the entire tub had been tipped into the tank.
I've supervised fish feeding time many many times. Like all toddlers he has a measure of OCD and likes things done in a certain and proper way, the way we always do it. He knows it's two pinches of food and no more, he repeats it every time we feed the poor critters. Alas this time he decided that they must be hungrier than usual, and an awful lot of flake food had been tipped into the tank, around the tank and on the floor. Probably enough food to last about six months.
Anyone who knows anything about fish knows that even small amounts of over feeding can be dangerous, and a lot of excess food can be very toxic. The fish can't eat it, it stops oxygen dissolving in the water properly and as it starts to rot the levels of nitrate in the water skyrocket, poisoning the fish.
Cue an emergency water change and lots of scraping of sludge. Joseph was made to sit in a chair facing the corner the whole time. He just didn't understand how naughty he'd been. After all, he'd just been feeding the fish, something he does three times a week.

Four water changes in 24 hours later.....
Thank goodness we have a large aquarium downstairs that we've been borrowing water from. Andy has got most of the muck out of the water, but we'll probably have to do another couple of changes again tomorrow and strip the filter down to clean out all the sludge it will have inevitably picked up.

So Joseph, I hope you really have learned now. The answer to "What happens if I..." is usually "I get in trouble, a whole big heap of it." and I've learned that if I need to get him to play in his room on his own for a bit then I'm taking away the little chairs that go round his table.

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