Living With Kids

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Living With Kids:

Here is an article that appeared in the 2004 anthology Loving Mama: Essays on Natural Parenting and Motherhood, edited by Tiffany Palisi:

THE DRAMA OF BATHTIME

AND OTHER MAJOR PRODUCTIONS IN NEED OF COMIC RELIEF

By Rachel Gathercole

Trust me: there is no worse experience on the entire planet than taking a bath. I have this from a very reliable source—my son, who over the first few years of his life experienced far more than his share of screaming and crying fits while I attempted to wash his desperately filthy hair. (Sometimes even he screamed and cried.)

Fortunately, I have since discovered an amazing secret. An invaluable secret. A secret which has brought patience to my parenting and peace to my home. I cannot figure out why it is not written in every parenting book on the shelves, because it works like a charm. Luckily, I have had the good fortune to learn it directly from my two children, now seven and three. I am talking about nothing less than a golden trump card of early-childhood parenting: silliness.

Oh, silliness. Glorious silliness. The things I have accomplished with you that I could never have accomplished any other way! Silliness is pure magic. On even the most difficult of days it can melt my kids’ resistance in an instant and miraculously inspire them to cooperate. All I have to do is muster the creativity. The more resistant they are, the more I know they need the help of the “s” word. Now that I have this tool in my proverbial bag of tricks, I could not raise my kids without it.

Once I made this incredibly helpful discovery, all sorts of bizarre and miraculous things started to happen in our house. All kinds of unusual people began to appear in my stead. Take, for instance, the Clumsy Waitress.

Thanks to my clever friend, Annie Collins (the original Clumsy Waitress), our Clumsy Waitress (who bears a striking resemblance to Yours Truly) often shows up at bath time, instantly transforming the tub into an exciting restaurant, where the food is superb, the beverages invisible, and the well-meaning, lovable waitress forever spilling cups of water on people’s heads, smearing (very shampoo-like) pancake syrup on their hair, and dropping slippery bars of (soapy) ice cream on their bellies. Somehow, the children forgive her these clutzy errors, and miraculously, they end up clean.

On other days there is Brunhilda, a friendly, quirky woman who believes children cannot do simple tasks such as soaping themselves, rinsing themselves, and drying off. My kids delight in proving her wrong. Very forgetful of past such experiences, Brunhilda never fails to be shocked at their baffling abilities and usually attributes their accomplishments to the help of invisible goblins, which seems to amuse the children to no end.

Occasionally we are visited by Jimbo Jellybelly, a large, jovial fellow who mistakes the children for large potatoes and attempts to scrub them up and make them into soup in the biggest pot of warm water he can find (which is, of course, the bathtub).

In fact, one never knows who will show up. At times it has been Spartacus, a hairdresser who washes and styles their hair in the most unorthodox of fashions; a fellow by the name of Dirty McGee who simply can’t stand cleanliness and insists that it be washed off immediately with soap and water (he showed up on a day when the children did not feel they were dirty enough for a bath); and hungry washcloths in search of a bite of dirt to eat. More than once we have enjoyed the company of Amelia Bedelia, the famous children’s-book housekeeper who always misunderstands what she is supposed to do. My children, thoroughly entertained by her misinterpretations, explain the process to her step by step. (“Now rub the shampoo on my hair. . . no, no, not the whole bottle! Squeeze some out of it first! Silly Amelia Bedelia!”) Focused on wording the task carefully so as not to confuse their literalist friend, the kids become partners in accomplishing the task. After she makes a multitude of absurd, laughable mistakes, they are relieved and pleased when Amelia Bedelia finally gets it right and they end up clean.

Of course, skilled as these characters are at smoothing the ride, I don’t always leave the work to our strange, comical guests. That would hardly be fair, since I, after all, am the mother. So, sometimes I do it myself. Occasionally I will give the children each a handful of shaving cream with which to paint on the tub wall. Distracted from the task at hand, they paint happily, and I wash them. They hardly notice.

Sometimes I ask them to sing a song of their choosing, and we race to see who finishes first—me washing them, or them singing. Other times they count, and see how high they can get before I finish. Somehow in their efforts to win they forget about not wanting to be washed. They don’t even mind if I take a while, because the higher they count before I’m done, the more excited they feel. Naturally, they win every time, and then we all ooh and ahh about how high they counted (or how many times they sang the song) before I finished. Then, voila! We get out of the tub and towel off, talking about what story we might read before bed.

The value of this approach, to me, is that it takes the focus off of the undesirable task and puts it onto something they enjoy, while acknowledging that, either way, the task must be done. I like to believe that it teaches my kids self-discipline and positivity (accepting that the task must be done and then finding a positive attitude to do it with). They are free to safely express their negative feelings about taking a bath, and then they also have the option of finding the fun in it and having an enjoyable time. As their mother, I expect them to do what I ask, and will help them cooperate and make the task as painless as possible. I love them and want them to have fun.

Their need for effort on my part to make these tasks fun is not manipulation. I believe that at ages 3 and 7 they have a legitimate need to be helped through life’s distasteful or mundane chores in a way that allows them to feel good about themselves. Perhaps this way they can learn to help themselves through future situations with positivity and the empowerment to find their own ways to enjoy life.

Silliness is certainly a heck of a lot more fun for everyone than nagging, coercing, barking orders, or tearfully submitting to a chore. Play simply averts these power struggles.

In fact, lest I mislead you, I must confess that these antics are in no way limited to bathtime. In our house they start when we wake up in the morning and take us right up to bedtime. After drying off with talking towels that need rescuing from their thirst, and meeting a friendly diaper in search of just the right size toddler to fit on (no one too big or small will do, like Cinderella’s slipper), we go to the Fanciest Fancy Clothing Store, which sells exquisite pajamas made of one-of-a-kind silks, the softest of velvets, and sometimes even pure gold. “Madame,” the clothier might say, “if you will step this way I will place upon you this fabulous garment, the finest nightgown ever worn by a mortal, normally worth $800,000, but for you, no charge!” The children, thrilled at the privilege, carefully put on the valuable garments. Sometimes they insist on paying, reaching into their invisible pockets and drawing out their million dollar bills (“keep the change”) for the occasion.

When it’s all over, I suddenly find that (who knew?) everyone is in bed, in their pajamas, clean, with smiling faces and no tears. Another successful day, drawn to a close. It’s not always a piece of cake, of course. Some days do require every ounce of my creativity. I feel it is well spent.

But that is the exception. When all is said and done, my children like to cooperate. Many days, all that is required is for me to ask them to do something, and they will do it. Still, they are human, and some days it is harder for them. On these days, they need a little more. They need fun. They don’t ask a lot—just a little bit of effort on my part to make a disagreeable chore the slightest bit amusing. They are willing to meet me halfway and be amused by anything. They just want a little help.

I am aware that life will be full of unpleasant circumstances and I won’t always be there to help them through it. I like to think that I am teaching and fortifying them to find the good in every situation, and to find ways to enjoy life whatever it may throw their way.

For right now, we’ll do it together. We’ll rise each morning with a grin and a confident attitude that I know from experience can help us through even the most difficult days of motherhood and life:

Stand back, world, here we come! We’ve got a sense of humor, and we know how to use it.