Anybody who has spent any time around my daughter knows that if there is something that another kid around her age is allowed to do that she isn’t, she’s going to be pissed. When she overheard my wife and I asking new friends of ours how they were able to manage four children without it being total chaos every second of the day and they mentioned that the two oldest girls take their own showers, I knew that the days of her, Aquaman and the pirates enjoying a nice soak in the tub were numbered.
Eighty percent of households have tap water that can get hot enough to cause full-thickness scalds within thirty seconds of exposure, but the chances of an accident happening at her age are extremely slim. Five thousand children are burned in the shower or tub in the US annually, but the vast majority of those are children under four years old and a disgusting percentage of those are due to abuse. It’s something to be aware of but not something that a reasonable person would worry about after showing their seven-year-old how to manipulate the controls and emphasizing the importance of checking the temperature before entering.
For some reason, it drives me insane. I won’t stand in the way of progress and my wife is in charge of night-time bathing duties much more often than I am anyway, but when I am home I can’t let her get in without checking the temperature myself and reminding her that any song and dance routine needs to be done far enough from the handles that an inadvertent arm wave won’t result in catastrophe.
It’s a good reminder not to judge other people, other parents that make knee and elbow pads mandatory for the swing set or won’t let their child put more than a toe into the ocean at a time in case there is a shark nearby.
Kids, man. They’ll make you crazy.
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Previously Published on thirstydaddy.com
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