Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Raising the Bar For Children's Excuses

As a parent of young children I have become quite used to my kids coming out of their room every 20 minutes after they have supposedly gone to bed. The excuses they have for coming out are usually pretty standard: “I’m thirsty,” “My head hurts,” “I heard a noise,” and of course the generic “I can’t sleep.”

But tonight, not long after my six-year-old went to bed, he came out and said, “I was wearing socks but my feet weren’t cold, so I took them off and threw them and one ended up on my ceiling fan blade.”


The fact that my small son somehow managed to hurl a sock from his bed, seven feet into the air onto a ceiling fan blade was so impressive to me that I didn’t even question why he felt compelled to throw them in the first place, rather than gently placing them on the floor next to his bed.

He didn’t get into any trouble for his bizarre feat, but the truth is he has now set the bar for excuses for leaving his bedroom pretty high. After the fan blade incident I won’t be satisfied with “I’m thirsty” anymore. If my son comes out of his room again I’m hoping for something epic. Maybe something involving wire hangers, Venetian blinds and a bucket of marbles.