The Slime Incident
My wife gives the kids a lot of trust to have certain things in their room. Our 6 year old daughter E has makeup, nail polish, glitter, and a slime kit in her room. It’s all tucked away in her drawers or closet and E knows she should not play with those things unless she asks.
Earlier this week, she decides to go to her room and play by herself. She closes the door and comes out a few minutes later. The rest of us were downstairs at the time and my wife was doing a puzzle. E walked up to her and is afraid to say what happened in her room, but she needs some help. My wife now says it’s a safe space and that it’s fine to share what happened. Reluctantly, E tells us that she played with the slime without asking and it got all in her hair.
My wife was still oddly calm about it and told E to just doing something else for now. The puzzle needed to be completed and my wife wanted to just focus on it for a few more minutes. E did not like that she had to wait for help and decided to whine, scream, and throw a fit. Still, my wife was oddly calm and asked for space. I stepped in to tell E to go upstairs with me and give it some time. Everyone needed a break, especially E so she could calm down.
E was not having it and threw more of a fit. I had to drag her upstairs while carrying baby L. I tried to talk and explain why she needed to give Mommy some space. It’s fine to be sad and mad, but you cannot keep screaming and crying in someone’s face to get what you want. Nobody is being hurt by having some slime in their hair and it’ll get fixed a bit later. All reasonable things to say, but not to a 6 year old who is having the worst day of her life.
I told E to stay upstairs or things may get worse. She didn’t listen and goes to confront Mommy again. Now my wife gets really upset and becomes a cleaning tornado. She takes a bunch of stuff out of E’s room and now it’s chaotic in the house. E is sobbing and saying sorry, but sorry doesn’t fix things. I wrangle baby L and my 4 year old son C to head upstairs and we weather out the storm.
My wife ends up cooking and talking to E about what happened while explaining that space was needed for everyone to decompress. Things get much worse if people keep adding pressure to the situation and even though you want to solve the problem immediately to feel better (in this case getting the slime kit back), it can’t happen right away at times. E started to understand this and my wife got the slime out of her hair after dinner. I tried to film the cleanup and aftermath of the slime incident, but E was also not having that. I got enough film to remember this memory and hopefully it will serve as a reminder to keep the trust you earned with people (and not to break that trust by putting slime in your hair).
