I guess I have grown a bit immune to this sort of gross mouth behavior during the last nine years of parenthood. When Kimball was a baby, I used to wash his toys after other children played with them and keep him in carefully controlled environments to avoid germs.
Anyone with a few kids knows this is a lost cause. Even the most clean and protective parents just can't control children's freakish mouth behavior. Here are only a few of the highlights of things I have retrieved from my children's mouth:
- Dirty coin collected from the sidewalk
- Partially chewed candies retrieved from under church pew
- Rubber band taken off a newspaper left in a mud puddle
- Flashlight found from under Weston's bed right next to an old, stale piece of bread
- Used sidewalk chalk
- Dirty car door
- Kitchen cabinet
- Dog
- Used flower pot
- Another person's dirty foot
I'm still not sure I understand the motivation for this behavior--maybe some of you have ideas?
9 comments:
I still haven't figured it out either. Liam has done most of these on your list plus some unique to himself. I would love to hear any explanations as well.
Matt-
Isabelle loves crackers dipped in toliet water. Frequently its unflushed toliet water. Now that I think of it, so did Katie. Maybe its a mineral defficiency.
We have to physically restrain Stella from eating candy off of the ground. We are also working on not having her not taking off all of her clothes, including socks and shoes in public restrooms.
Liam's top moment, a piece of rabbit pooh. I consider the oral fixation of our kids, the bodies natural way of acquiring immune system supremacy. When the ultimate antibiotic resistant organism is unleashed on the world our fecal and dirt licking children will be protected.
-Lisa
My theory is that a willingness to put something in one's mouth is inversely correlated to one's breadth of imagination.
For example, "Rabbit poo. I can't even imagine where that's been. It's probably fine to put in my mouth."
--GB
I think Lisa has found the answer. I'm comforted to know that Liam has been inocculated against any strain of "Lagomorphan Flu" that might come out of Asia in the near future.
Matt-
I didn't think I had anything to add to this post...until yesterday when I found my daughter eating -- or at least sucking on -- a handful of gravel. I kind of like Janell's 'mineral deficiency' theory.
Quinn
We all know that while some of the snot removed from human nostrils without the aid of tissues ends up as wall art, a lot of it ends up right back inside the body it came from. (I saw examples of this a couple of Sundays ago, some in Primary, some not.) I would also like to point out that this is not just a youth movement. We like to think that we have more manners and better hygiene as we mature, but we are simply more discreet and discerning. That’s why grown-ups invented the 10 second rule. Clearly, nothing could possibly get dirty or germy in 10-seconds, I mean every parent knows that you only turn your back for one second…oh wait.
I was just watching Jimmy Fallon on Tivo and he had Tina Fey on and she said there are ways of knowing you are a mom now. When a child hands you a bugger and you hold it, when you don't care what you are wearing when you leave the house, or how clean you are. I can't remember the rest but it was pretty funny.
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