Please, not the P word!

I let the kids wear costumes to hand out candy to the neighbor kids tonight. They all looked so cute.

Ebee thinks she's found the ultimate logical reason for why she should eat all candy NOW: "But if I don't eat it, it will melt."

AJ's obsession of the month is poison. Probably stemming from a combination of a Fire Department Open House (which included a presentation and coloring book from poison control) and a PBS special on venomous snakes in the last month or so.

I keep reminding myself that at least this time it's not something about one of the other kids (like when she was hiding under chairs screaming and lying awake at night worrying about the way M&M drew pictures, or that one of the other kids was swinging higher than AJ on the swings, etc.).

The counselor says extremely helpful things like, "Well, just stop thinking about it," "Think about something else," and "You're giving her too much attention when she does it--no, wait, you're not paying her enough attention." "If you just punish her when she does this sort of thing, she'll stop." Etc.

She says things to AJ like, "Well you just need to figure out what worries are real and which are just silly" but she hasn't been able to give any suggestions or tools for how to do it.

We are looking for a counselor who is a better fit. Preferably one that shares or at least has respect for our faith, and doesn't respond to questions like "Why did God make bad things like germs?" with a deer-in-the-headlights look and a nebulous mumbling about Mother Nature.

NLASS, who is very good at handling circumstances with grace and humor, watched the girls for a few hours yesterday while I ran errands. She called me two or three times to tell me that AJ was driving her crazy worrying about poison, but she never let on to the kids--just figured out ways to distract them or make them laugh.

She made up silly stories about bungling burglers who spilled poison on themselves while trying to use it on someone else, and came up with pretty compelling distractions. NLASS even drank paint water and licked soap in an attempt to prove to AJ that the manufacturers had not actually lied about it being nontoxic in an attempt to sneak poison into unsuspecting homes.

AJ was asked to take a break from talking about poisonpoisonPOISON for the weekend, because Mommy and NLASS are being driven. crazy. after weeks of hearing about poison approximately 60 million times a day (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration). (And Mommy is very tired, after being kept up until almost midnight and woken at something like 6AM to field worries about poison yet again.)

So a few minutes ago AJ (who mentioned to me a bit earlier that she got her costume wet washing her face and hands) wrote the following note in her notebook and left it open on the table:

"It's Halloween, And my whole costume is wett do you think it mihgt be poisen?"

M&M found the note and wrote on it, "Anser: No. I would say not." and on the next page (which I managed to make disappear before AJ saw) she wrote, "You are So Silly!"

AJ thereupon had a meltdown that M&M wrote in her notebook.

M&M recopied AJ's note nicely on the next page of AJ's notebook, sans answer, crossed out her comment on the first copy and wrote, "Sorry. I diden't now it [the notebook] was yors," next to it.

AJ was mollified.

Sweet. I love it when they're able to do such good conflict resolution.

The kids are also all responding with very good humor to the new "rule" that anyone who says the P word has to immediately do two jumping jacks.