I Won't Take a Bath

On the way home from Nature Camp yesterday, Raphaela started a sentence with, "I really hate that..." and I immediately interrupted her. I explained to her that the word "hate" is very strong, hurts people's feelings, and brings lots of negative energies with it;  just witness the 3,000 year turmoil in the Middle East, the hate has become so strong that everyone has forgotten why we are all still fighting.

I set down the rule of law in our house, that we do not use that word to explain our feelings, and that we apply the concept very sparingly, when it is actually deserved.  Raphaela immediately amended her original sentence, saying, 'I really don't like when...."

I presume she picked up that word in camp.

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When Raphaela comes home from camp, she is hyper and dirty and sweaty and exhausted, all in the good sense of having had a full and active day. During the summer we have pushed up bath time, mostly because Raphaela wants to change into a clean set of clothing when we get home.

It took a bit of effort to convince her yesterday to strip down and jump in the bath, thus started the frustration of the evening.  Then she started jumping in the water, sliding all over the place and making waves that splashed out on the floor.  Mommy does not like cleaning up local flooding. 

During one of her gymnastic endeavors, she jumped so high that the water pushed her over the edge of the bathtub, flipping and comically landing on the floor in a twisted lump.  I was afraid to turn her over and expected to see a chipped or lost tooth, and certainly copious amounts of blood that would necessitate a visit to the emergency room at Shaarei Zedek hospital.

Turns out, instead of landing on the hard tiled floor and cracking her head open, she landed...on my foot.  And instead of losing teeth she got scratched with only mildly bleeding.  My toe though not broken, started throbbing.

My parenting brain froze:  I wanted to make sure she understood that her behavior was dangerous, and at the same time I felt immensely grateful to G-d that it was a minor injury, a scratch that will fade within a few days.

What came out of my mouth came straight from the Polish shtetl, "Young lady, you don't know how lucky you are, you really could have hurt yourself just now and instead you are a little scratched up. No need to go to the hospital, pthoo pthoo. I don't care if you were trying to break the Olympic record for jumping in the bathtub, you need to be more careful."

Ughh, I totally feel like I could have handled that better.