electric boogaloo

We didn’t have the car today. I was glad to be free of the ability to run errands or go anywhere, and today was full of hilarity and drama involving everything you’d expect: stickers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, spilled milk, our pet lovebird who has a cold, people falling off of chairs, nudity and general weirdness. We read most of Henry and Beezus, which I have started overanalyzing in the greater context of the development of suburbia and how much of child hood in our culture has been focused on acquiring material things since the 50s when these books were written. It’s always about Henry trying to buy a football or a fish or a cat or a bike or get something - and when he gets what he wanted, the very next chapter there’s something new he wants.

I’m an idiot of course; the books are awesome. So today we read a lot. We also spent a crazy amount of time playing with the dreamy sparkly play dough I bought for the boys last week.

This afternoon we pretended to trade eyes and ears until one of us started crying because it was all a little too real. Then we did school work off and on while listening to Tish Hinajosa, in between dealing with the routine business of food going into people and then later — although not as much later as you might expect — it coming back out.

But that’s not what I want to post about. I want to write about little little kids washing their hands, even though now I feel bad because people are going to google “kids hand washing” looking for guidelines or statistics or something and instead they’ll come here. Hi googlers: sorry.

It’s important for kids to wash their hands. But not only because of all the good germ-killing and all. Washing your hands is part of being a functioning adult, and it’s a fairly complicated skill. Most kids learn what they need to do a long time before they’re physically able to do it all:
1. Reach the sink somehow - locate step stool/adult/stilts
2. Turn on the water - every sink works a little differently, so you’ve got to assess it once you’re up there. Then you need to make sure you don’t use the hot water, because grownups are jerks who make things like this needlessly treacherous.
3. Locate soap. Each type of soap has its own challenges, assuming you can reach it. Bars are cumbersome and slippery, pumps require dexterity, and the public restroom soap dispensers are often empty or out of reach.
4. Rub hands together, getting all of the invisible germs which is impossible to know because they are invisible.
5. Rinse all the soap off, even though soap sticks and wants to stay between your fingers and stuff.
6. Play with the beautiful water until someone notices and makes you stop.
7. Turn the water off.
8. Locate and reach a towel. Is it the kind that’s hard to reach? Is it a soft towel? Put it back on the rack when you’re finished. Is it made of paper? Throw it away afterwards. Or just shake your hands dry, smile at yourself in the mirror, and be done.

It’s a lot of work, and around age three a kid starts to really be able to physically pull it off. They still have a dainty sort of toddler clumsiness, but they are taller now, better able to reach and twist and pull and grab and turn and scrub. And they are so very earnest about doing real things that it all comes together. I don’t know, I’m a sappy dork. I love watching little kids wash their hands. Everything about being a child is right there in washing hands. And everything about being a parent is all right there in seeing them do it.