Forbidden Cupboards of Mystery and Curious Three Year Olds

Yesterday, the children disappeared into the bathroom together, followed by the sounds of giggling and sundry articles hitting the floor.  This is not the first time it's happened... they've decided that getting the bath toys out of their basket and throwing them on the floor is a fine game.

Clearly, this makes a big mess, but the clean up is simple and they're quite willing to do it.  As we don't exactly have prescribed uses for the bath toys, I had decided that this was a 'permissible mess', with the advantage that they were also playing together without wanting me to be in attendance which freed me up to get on with something else for ten minutes or so.  And since they're the only ones who use that bathroom, there was really not much other than baby soap for them to get into.

'Not much', however, included a Febreze aerosol.  I kept it at the back of the counter where I fondly imagined my son couldn't reach it.  Well, yesterday, they decided to extend their throwing game to everything on the counters.  Then my son discovered how to spray the Febreze and presumably felt it necessary to repeat this new skill over and over.  Usually, we have a detangling spray in that bathroom, which I use on the children before brushing their hair.  As it happened, it wasn't in the bathroom yesterday, but my son logically concluded that the Febreze must have the same purpose and started spraying it on his sister's hair.

Thankfully, when I spray their hair, I spray from the back of their head, and I'm guessing he did the same thing.  Certainly, she never cried and had no signs of eye irritation.  The only evidence of what had happened was her wet hair and an overpowering smell of Febreze.  She still smells of Febreze today, although the bathroom has finally aired out, 24 hours later.  Serendipitously, Febreze seems to be a wonderful conditioner too, although perhaps it would be best to consult the manufacturers before you try this at home...

So, luckily, no real harm was done, but I was freaked out when I first discovered what had happened.  I've moved the Febreze out of the their bathroom altogether now, but it's becoming more and more apparent that we can't just rely on things being out of my son's reach anymore.  He's got wise to that little trick and has lately got into the habit of moving his stools to peer up onto out of reach shelves to see exactly what curiosities are being denied him.

I did give him a long talk about why he shouldn't spray the Febreze and how it could have got into his sister's eyes and hurt her--which hopefully won't inspire him to find another spray and see what exactly would happen if he sprayed in his sister's eyes.  He can be very responsible about most things, but the Montessori practice of letting children discover the consequences for themselves doesn't exactly extend to bleach, for example.

It seems the most sensible thing to do would be to suggest that if he doesn't know what something does, he should ask Mummy.  But I can guarantee that he'll be asking me at the most inopportune time, and will get a frazzled "Wait a moment!" or "Not right now!" in reply.  This is still happening a lot lately, despite my efforts to be more available.

Oh, well.  Never give up and all.  And being more conscientious about where truly dangerous things are is probably a good idea too....