Toddler’s Guide to Helping Parents Improve Their Hygiene
As a Big Boy Toddler, you are too mature to cry without reason, no matter how satisfying it is. But without unreasonable bouts of crying, how can you tell your parents the importance of good hygiene?
Worry not! The tips below will deliver the message with only the most necessary tears rolling out:
1. Send Mommy a message by leaving toy blocks on the floor. If she’s any good at spelling, she’ll understand that letters arranged as C D B A E spell out “you smell.”
Note that there is a small chance of her slipping on the blocks. Sticks and stones may break your bones, and words on the floor may trip you. The world is a dangerous place for Mommy.
Cry for her safety.
2. Sit Daddy down and gently explain that the floor is not actually lava. But it has germs, so he should walk less on it. It is cleaner to jump from furniture to furniture to get around. The floor being lava is just an explanation given to parents to keep them from feeling scared of the germs.
Daddy needed to know the truth to take jumping on furniture seriously. But it’s always sad to see a fantasy destroyed.
Cry for his shattered reality.
3. Scribble on the walls. This will show your parents what a mess looks like, so they recognize themselves in the mirror.
They may get angry. They may scold you. Recall the months they’d only coo and use sing-song voices at you. Ah, they grow up so fast.
Yowl with nostalgia.
4. Get crayon and paper. Draw a kingdom in ruins, crumbled to dust and swept away by the wind, as an allegory of your parents’ bodies wasting away.
Mother will squint long at the drawing, turning it this way and that, before going “Um, what a… lovely picture of a horse!”
The gunk in her eyes must be obscuring her vision.
Shed tears for her, as a snake sheds its skin, and as she shall shed her body odor with your help.
Then bawl again, because snakes are scary.
5. Show your parents the joys of good hygiene by hosting a fine meal: put your hand in your mouth. Invite them to put their hands in their mouths too.
Do they not partake in the festivities? Are they grossed out? They miss out on the feast because their food lacks cleanliness! The promise of good food is great motivation for chasing hygiene.
But do not take joy in their inability to enjoy delectable cuisine. Empathize with their pain. Sob.
Perhaps even burst into tears in the night, when they least expect it. Everyone loves surprises. Everyone loves playing Peek-a-Boo-Hoo.
6. Nothing is better for motivation than a healthy environment. Bring organic nutrients into the house by crawling through mud outside and dragging it back into the house.
Weep if Daddy scolds you. How hath it come to this, that Man has lost touch with Nature?
7. Call a health professional. Since yours is a toy phone, you’ll have to make up the Doctor’s dialogue. Repeat Doctor-You’s instructions to your parents. They can’t argue with a Doctor.
Of course, helping parents through their troubles is taxing. Never forget to take care of your own mental health too. Remember the old adage: “Crying is the best medicine.”
