Glue Explosion

A few days ago, my 4 year old son C was doing an art project. He wanted to take some of the glue and to stick a bunch of things together. The glue came in a bottle and was clear. The nozzle was not working, so he ended up figuring out a solution he was happy with.

His solution was to take the cap off and to pour the glue where he wanted it. The glue went everywhere. I didn’t notice it at first, and he was just happily doing his art project. By the time I knew something was wrong, it was too late. He walked up to me and asked me to wash his hands because there was glue all over his hands. I thought it was just in a small part of his hand, but it was literally all over.

I had to rub off so much glue and wash his hands multiple times with soap to get it all off. I could only imagine how messy the table was, and when I walked over to the table, it was worse than what I was expecting. It literally was all over the table. I was already handling all three of my kids for a while, and also needing to get all of them ready for bed. It was a lot to handle and looking at the mess of glue on the table, I decided to leave it. It could wait another day to clean it, especially once it is fully dried.

I think parenting is always a case of making trade-off. There’s no way to get everything done, and if parents got everything done, there was definitely a few short cuts that needed to be taken. I ended up cleaning the glue off of the table a few days ago. Since it was all dried, it was really easy to just peel off. I’m glad I waited instead of trying to clean it that same night because I think I would’ve went crazy. It was a great trade-off to make.