Episode 6: Bandaids and Bedtime

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that candy often tops kids’ lists of favorite things. What might surprise you is what is 2^nd on that list. It’s not pizza, toys, or pools…it’s bandaids. Well, maybe that’s just my kids. In our house, you’d almost think that the kiddos want to get hurt just so they can get a bandaid (with complementary candy, of course). 

But, they seem to be confused about the purpose of bandaids. Our youngest daughter (age 4), for example, seems to think that bandaids are the cure for any pain in the extremities. Case in point, last night Jen and I were awakened by a knock on our bedroom door. Apparently, our daughter’s bandaid fell off her “mangled” finger (and by mangled, I mean a finger with a minor itch). Jen was not amused. Jen fixed the bandaid and sent her packing. An hour or so later, I was awakened by a squeaky closet door being opened in the hallway outside our bedroom. At two in the morning, there shouldn’t be any closet doors opening. It was my turn, so I stumbled out of bed to hear a 4-year old scurrying out of the hallway and back into her room. In a strange turn of events, she closed her door and then began knocking on it (I think she was trying to hide the fact that she was snooping around the closet).

When I opened her door, the shields dropped and she immediately confessed to looking in the hall closet for more bandaids. Apparently the recently replaced bandaid had fallen off and was nowhere to be found. As any good Dad would do, I explained to her, in short, direct tones, that it’s two o’clock in the morning and that if the finger isn’t bleeding, the finger doesn’t need a bandaid. What her itchy finger needed was sleep. Tonight is a new night, but even as I type this, I can hear Jen explaining to her in the next room that she doesn’t need another bandaid. If given the choice between candy and a bandaid, our 4-year old might choose a bandaid.

As hard as it is to convince a 4-year-old that she doesn’t need a bandaid, it’s equally as hard to convince a 6-year-old that the bandaids can’t stay on forever. Kids are more afraid of the pain of taking a bandaid off than they are of the actually injury that required the bandaid in the first place. I think the tougher bandaids are made to last because kids want to keep them on for six months. When I was a kid, my parents told me the bandaid needed to come off so my wound could breathe. I can’t speak to the validity of that, but it worked on me, so I just keep trying it with my kids. Our kids would prefer their cuts suffocate.

The baby (age 1) isn’t into the bandaid game yet, but I know his day is coming. For now, his joy is finding a used bandaid that has “jumped off” the hand of one of his siblings. For him, he actually thinks the bandaid is candy. Since bandaids can be found stuck to the carpet, chairs, or wall, it’s basically like an Easter egg hunt to him. Unlike a true Easter egg hunt, though, Jen and I don’t know when the eggs are being hidden or where. And that…makes the quiver a bit chaotic.

Written by Roger

Filmed in Kansas