So my first idea for a blog since …forever…hit me at 10:30 pm and I was too tired to do anything about it then…all my good ideas probably got sucked out of my head by my pillow…

But here it goes anyway…

The other night my 3 year old son asked if he could take one of his wooden train cars into the bath tub with him. I stopped buying bath tub toys a long time ago because I found out that empty Johnson’s baby shampoo bottles are just as entertaining in the tub. I said no because I happen to be a teacher and know something about what happens to wood in water, but my son (not a teacher) has no clue and therefore thought I was just being mean.

Now here is where I should interject that my children have the gift of being a tattle-tale. Thank goodness they usually reserve that gift for each other. 

As parents, we have written filed all the typical parent responses to tattling on invisible 5 x 7 index cards in our brains.  If you were able to look in my brain under the file “Respond to Tattling” you would see the following statements written on my index cards:

·         I can’t hear tattling. Try to tell me another way.

·         Was it on accident?

·         I have an idea. Don’t touch each other.

·         I mean it. Don’t touch each other.

·         Honey, Mommy will take care of your brother/sister. You worry about what you are doing.

·         Knock it off

My husband has downsized his file to one card.

·         Knock it off

I’m exaggerating. I don’t know what his card says. If he’s in the room when the tattling starts, I leave to let him deal with it.  I don’t hear what’s on his card.

Anyway, back to the bathtub…

No wait…let me clarify something else. (This is what happens when you don’t blog for awhile, you pretend that no one cares if there is no fluidity- is that a word?- to your writing)

I don’t understand tattling because I didn’t grow up with it. I was an only child until I was sixteen. When my younger brother came along, my main concern was whether he was mistaken for my child.  I once tried to tattle tale on him and it was so lame, that I even sounded awful to myself.

Anyway, my son figured out quickly that tattling to Mommy about Daddy, or tattling to Daddy about Mommy would get him nowhere.

So when I said “no” to the toy in the bathtub and tried to explain that it would get ruined, my son got a very defiant look on his face and said to me, “Well, I am mad at you now. I am going to tell your mother!”

I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out who taught him to say that.  I am thinking back to all the times I left him alone with my mother and whether or not they began to plot the day he would be able to say that to me.

Because the thing is, my mom can be a very scary woman. You do not want to make her mad. Ever.

So if anybody threatens to tell my mom anything I’ve done, I sort of started to seize up and break out in a rash. Even if it is a three year old doing the threatening. The rational part of me began to tell myself that my mother lives a 5 hour drive away and that my son can’t drive, or operate my iPhone. I think.

I did what any person under that kind of threat would do…I interceded by telling on myself to my mom first. I texted her. That I wouldn’t let him have a toy in the tub. That I tried to tell him the toy would get ruined.

And then I told on my son.