Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Judge not lest you be judged

I might be the only person who encounters unsightly situations and passes judgement on all people involved.
Today I learned once again that life is not always black and white.
I took the boys to the neighborhood school to play for a while. It is about 7 or 8 blocks away, so I only brought my keys, cell phone and a book to read while the boys played.
I was sitting on the bench reading and thinking how nice it is that the boys seem to be getting big enough for me to read while they play.
I looked up and and Liam was dumping stuff on the slide. The stuff looked an awful lot like dog poop. I walked over to check the situation out and indeed he was piling woodchips and dog poop on the slide.
This was a problem on many levels. First, I did not bring wipes or anything else to clean Liam's hands. I had to get him home and I was not going to touch those dog poop covered hands. Second, there was poop on the slide. I feel this need to leave places in the condition I found them in. I also find that with children this is not always possible. I looked around to find a stick or something to get the poop off the slide, but there are not trees or anything like that at the playground and I needed to keep Liam contained.
So....I grabbed Liam by his shirt and we left to go home. This week is spring break so the school is empty. If school was in session, I would have tried to call and explain my situation so they could send someone out to clean the poop off the slide. I guess I just have to pray for a big rain tonight to clean the slide off.
I imagine that people driving by watching me drag Liam down the street by his shirt while I had an angry scowl just thought that I was one of those horrible people who have no right even trying to raise children.
I sent Liam straight to the the bath tub when we got home. Liam loves taking baths and apparently he loves playing in animal poop so natural consequences are not really possible in this situation. I am also glad that he is on antibiotics.
When we were at urgent care last Friday, I was commenting that I don't know how Liam gets these weird infections. I guess it would be playing in things like dog poop or whatever else he seems to find.
There have been a couple of times that we went to a park and the slide was covered in dog poop. I have always become very angry and either thought or told people that people who do things like that belong in jail. It may be unruly youth responsible for things like this or it might be three year olds who get a little too curious.

6 comments:

Thena said...

What a great lesson and story. I'm so glad you shared. We probably have all had something like that happen with little ones.
Hugs,
Thena

Rina said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog, Michelle! Ewwww about the playground poop - that is just disgusting - no wonder it's so easy to pick up all kinds of bacterial infections. I must say we live in a great neighborhood where people always clean up after their pets and something like this won't be tolerated by the neighbors. Hope you have a wonderful Wednesday :).
-rina
http://rinakroes.blogspot.com

AfriDigiDiva said...

Been there done that. Actually been on both sides of it. Once I discovered that my kids were not immune to making the playground unsanitary, I stopped a a TG&Y, got a bucket, a gallon bottle of water, some paper towels and a gallon of bleach, oh yeah and a spray bottle, so that I could kind of clean up their messes as we went along. Lead by example. Fantastic that there was a lesson and even more wonderful that there was something learned from it. It's good to still be teachable.

Melody aka pebbles7195 said...

Thanks for sharing your story - kids are curious even though we as mothers and parents don't appreciate the things that they are curious about sometimes. Things like that seem to make us realize that we always need to carry wipes, etc. with us!! I know that there are several times I wished I had carried some with me!! :)

Beth said...

Ok... I guiltily feel good reading your blog post.... that other people have crazy moments just like I do! LOl! It 'stinks' that you had to deal with such a 'stinky' situation though! Ugh. No fun. It's when we just feel like they are 'ok to play alone' when they get into trouble eh? Ha ha.... well, you're not alone. :-) TFS the story.

DawnMarch said...

Yes, I've learned not to judge others through similar situations! It's always humbling, but also almost always something to look back with a little laugh.