Arrows Make Terrible Crowns

Jack was little. Like “using a purple plastic step stool to reach the bathroom sink” little. It was time to wash his hands. He put his tiny fingers into the stream of water. I calmly said, “Jack you need to wash all of your hands, not just the fingers.” He put his hands in a little bit more, but still not the whole hand. In a stroke of genius, I instructed, “When you wash your hands, you need to get your wrists wet.” He looked at me and stuck his hands a little deeper into the water. I said it again in a more punctuated tone, “Jack. Get. Your. Wrists. Wet. NOW.”

Jack refused to obey.

You’ve been there, right? What starts as a simple lesson in washing your hands, turns into an epic battle. Each time I urged my son to get his wrists wet, more and more fire grew beneath it.
Then it happened.
The wheels came off.
The proverbial poop hit the fan.
Like a 13 year old girl at a boyband concert, I lost my ever-loving mind.

I screamed with a voice from the very bowels of Hell, “GET YOUR WRISTS WET!!!” I screamed so hard and loud I actually had to bend over to get the words out.

Jack started crying. (Of course, he did. He thought his mom was Satan.)
I grabbed him, way too harshly.
Taking him to his room, I sat him down in his chair, way too hard, stormed out of his room and slammed the door behind me loudly.

As I stood on the other side of that door, breathing hard and trying to come down from the high that comes with the release of rage, God interrupted my thoughts abruptly and clearly:
“Janet, he doesn’t know what a wrist is.”