“What is this, Klara?” I ask, pointing at a very messy corner with toys and books. “What do you call this, young lady?”
“It’s chaos, Mommy,” she says calmly. “The adjective is chaotic. The synonyms are messy and dirty. The antonyms are…”
Of course, I collapse with laughter and don’t manage to tell her off for the mess. Thankfully, she was so gratified by the effect of her response that she cleaned up with needing further imprecations.
“What is this?”
“This is a pile, and this is also a pile, and that …”
“Why’s it so messy?”
“It’s not, I know where everything is, that’s why there are piles.”
“You should put the clothes in the dresser.”
“That’s just a container for a pile, this is quicker.”
“But it’s harder for the bugs to get into the dresser.”
“Can’t the bugs just climb or fly anywhere?”
“No, we’ve sprayed around the drawers to keep the bugs out.”
“So what you’re telling me is that if I put my piles in containers that protect against bugs, I don’t have to worry about bugs. But what kinds of bugs do we have?”
“This is the scorpion I found out on the patio earlier …”
“That looks like it hurts.”
“A lot.”
Still keeping out the bugs after all these years: most of my stuff got moved in plastic bins that have foam rubber seals to keep out the bugs, plus we could “bug bomb” the cargo area of the moving trucks.
You could try this approach next time. 🙂
After having raised the first three kids, I thought I had this motherhood thing figured out, but the fourth forced me conclude that I knew nothing at all. One day when I had almost despaired of her ever learning to put her toys away, I told her she wouldn’t get any supper until her room was tidied up (a threat I’d never had to make with the first three). When I went to her room to check her progress, the place still looked like a tornado had passed through it. When I expressed my displeasure, my five-year-old daughter responded calmly, “Mom, you just don’t see things the same way I do. You look at this and all you see is a big mess. I look at it and I see a room that’s being cleaned up by a little girl who loves her mother very much.”
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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