Mom's Padded Room

I think it first occurred to me that I possibly could need a padded room when my son Justin was about three years old. Justin is my third child of four. The younger three kids were born within 35 months of each other. When he turned 3 the other kids were 8, 4 1/2 and 1 1/2. You don't need to tell me my life was busy. I vividly remember something my mom had told me at Justin's third birthday party.

"Oh Julie, you'll love the threes," she told me. "Three year old boys are perfect!"
I trust my mom so, when she told me this, I believed her. I really needed a quieter year. A year that I felt the kids didn't out smarted me on most days. I misunderstood though, and thought it would be like a switch on him.

Instead, ten days after his third birthday, I was lying on the bathroom floor, door locked and curled into a ball. Not only had he out smarted me again, he had done it repeatedly in those ten days.

The first "incident" came just a few days after his birthday. I had gotten Katie, our oldest out the door to school and jumped in to take my 7 minute shower. I knew how much time I had before serious damage could be done. In the 12 minutes that I showered and dressed Justin pushed my glider from the living room to the kitchen, used it as a step stool to get up onto the stove and get into the cabinet above the stove. He found the cinnamon and proceeded to violently shake the full cinnamon container all over the cream colored kitchen carpet.

Let me first say that we did not put carpet in that kitchen, we bought the house with carpet in the kitchen, and bathroom by the way. Why people put carpet in those two rooms I will never know. They are the hardest rooms to keep carpet clean, and I refuse to ever have carpet in those rooms again. Also, you can NEVER get cinnamon out of cream colored carpet. I tried, and tried, until finally I gave up and we eventually tore out the carpet.

I still remember walking down the stairs and thinking the house smelled really good. "Wow," I thought to myself, "Julie, you're really doing a great job cleaning!" Then Justin came around the corner from the kitchen, saw me and ran, giggling all the way back into the kitchen. Alycia, my second child, and always the little mommy of her younger brothers was quick on the draw.
"Mommy, you don't want to go in the kitchen," she told me. "I told him not to do it, but he didn't listen." She almost had me convinced of the later statement, but her past history led me to totally not trust that comment. He had a long timeout for that one, and I really hoped that he would learn his lesson. Then a few nights later he struck again.

Once my children slept through the night I slept like a rock. As any mom knows, those years are some of the longest in her life. So when you hear a child in the middle of the night run to the bathroom and back to their room, you don't think much of it. In fact, you're happy to hear those feet go to the bathroom, less chance of a mess to clean up in the morning. . .or so you think.

I heard those little feet run, not walk, back and forth to the bathroom one night. I laid in bed too tired to move and see what was happening, not that I really could have stopped it by then. Soon, the feet stopped and he went back to sleep. It wasn't until morning that I would know what he had done.

When I entered the kids room that morning, I rubbed Danny's back to try to get him moving. He was 1 1/2 and he and Justin had a set of bunk beds, although they both slept on the bottom bunk. As I leaned over the bed, I put my hand down in something gooey. I smelled my hand, hoping that it would be a good smell. Moms, you know what I mean. It smelled good, familiar, like my shampoo, conditioner AND body wash all mixed together. Yes, he had gone into the bathroom, taken every bottle out of the tub and dumped it onto his mattress. Not the blankets or sheets, the mattress.

As a note to any parent whose child might try this at home, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get these soap like items out of a mattress. They simply turn in to suds when water is applied.

Three is old enough to answer for your actions sometimes, especially when they are reoccurring. I thought I wanted to know what the thought process was for this event, so I asked.

"Justin, can you please tell Mommy why you poured all the soaps on your bed?" I tried to be nice, I thought maybe I would get a better response.

"My trucks were board, and they wanted to play in mud." He said, with a sparkle in his eye and a smile on his face.

I have to give him this, he knew better then going outside in the middle of the night. We had to have a long talk about when it's sleepy time for trucks and when it's mud playing time for trucks. I believe there was even pleading on my part that he become the perfect three old that his grandma promised me. Not my finest parenting moment I admit. Yes, the mattress had to be replaced.

One would hope that this would help him turn the corner, but no. The final event happened on a Saturday. It was this event that solidified the practice of throwing out any and all kids meals toys before entering the house. You see, when flushed down the toilet it isn't good. In fact, when you only have one bathroom and your husband works on Saturdays, it really isn't good.

See, Justin found a Spider man squeeze toy from a kids meal and thought it would be fun to flush it down the toilet. It didn't go though and of course the toilet overflowed. All of the towels in the house had to be used to mop up that mess. The toilet had to be removed and the toy had to be fished out of the bottom of the toilet.

It was there, on the bathroom floor, in tears that I realized that I had to share my stories with others. Maybe out there somewhere are moms who have similar experiences, or if nothing else there may be people out there who can find humor in my stories. That is were this blog comes from, my heart. I will try to keep this fun. Writing is my passion, and sometimes my release.

As for Justin, he is now a sweet, loving, active, well behaved 8 year old. He loves baseball, NASCAR and riding his bike. He survived, and actually after those 10 days he really did turn into a great three year old.