Who knew MSDS sheets could be so helpful?

A couple of nights ago, DH was putting the kids to bed and AJ asked him if nail polish was poisonous, why people made it and put it on their fingernails. She showed him in the poison safety coloring book she got from the fire station that nail polish was one of the things listed as a "poison."

She hasn't been believing our reassurances based on our own authority, so instead of reassuring her immediately, he got online and did a search for "poison nail polish."

He found a page explaining emergency procedures if someone ingests nail polish, and let her read it. It said that if a person had only drunk one bottle of nail polish, the ER staff probably wouldn't be too concerned, but if they'd ingested about 5 bottles of it then there would be cause for worry. This vastly relieved AJ. She and DH talked about how unlikely it was that anyone would actually drink 5 bottles of nail polish, and how silly that would be.

Then AJ started running her finger across the picture in the book, giggling and saying, "Look! I'm touching poison!" and giggling again.

Yesterday I had a chat with AJ, explaining to her how the 3 rules about germs, with very little tweaking, also applied to poison. Then we spent quite a bit of time in the evening going through the poison safety coloring book, looking up the MSDS (material safety data sheets) on the various substances.

AJ was surprised and pleased that information on the contents, toxicity, effects and treatment for all those substances were readily available. She loved reading them, kept wanting to look up more and more substances, and didn't want to stop at bedtime.

Of course, not one of the items was something so toxic that a trace amount touching something which touches something else which touches someone's hand or lips would be a big issue. I think learning that even for highly toxic items, there are actually established treatments for what to do if someone ingests them was comforting to AJ, too.

After I finally told her it was time to stop and go to bed, she said she felt "mildly relieved."

Then she said, "Mom, if I get up in the middle of the night worrying about poison, can you remind me about this?"

She didn't wake in the middle of the night, and for maybe the first time in weeks she didn't wake us first thing in the morning crying and worrying.

It's too early to tell for sure how much it helped, but so far today we haven't heard a single mention of poison, and AJ seems quite a bit more relaxed.

Rules Needed

Before this poison kick, AJ was worried about germs (interspersed with other things like being concerned about people mispronouncing or using the wrong words or putting the pens away wrong, of course).

We tried lots of different things, but finally DH came up with a strategy that seemed to be pretty effective. He came up with three "rules" for AJ to use to determine for herself if she needed to be concerned about germs or not in any given situation.

I'm not sure I have them exactly the way he taught them to her, but the basic idea is this:

Rule 1: Only worry about major, really bad germs that come from things like toilets. Most daily objects don't have bad enough germs to be a concern, but if you've done something really germy like go to the bathroom or something really dirty like play in mud, you may wash your hands. [We were trying to limit the handwashing because she was doing it so much she was damaging the skin on her hands.]

Rule 2: Only worry if the germs are going into your mouth. So if you plan to eat or stick your fingers in your mouth, go ahead and wash your hands.

Rule 3: If it's already happened and there's nothing you can do about it now, don't worry about it. So if you wake up in the night and realize that you touched the wall which might have touched your nightgown, which might have touched the toilet earlier, don't worry about it. If you realize you just ate something off a spoon that had a speck on it, don't worry about it because it's already happened and there's nothing you can do about it now.

After a while of fielding questions and worries by reminding her of the specific rule that applied in the situation, eventually it was only necessary to say, "Rule 3" and she would say, "Oh. Yeah. OK." and at least stop crying and talking about it, if not thinking about it.

She's a lot less worried about germs the last couple of weeks. Of course, she switched to worrying about poison instead.

As Kevin pointed out, maybe we should come up with a similar set of rules to help her determine whether something is poison or not, and what to do about it.

Any ideas?

She actually did it

M&M and Ebee are getting pretty good at trying to think of ways to distract and cheer up AJ when her brain is stuck. It doesn't necessarily work, but it's sweet to see them try.

This morning AJ was worried that something green on a bowl in the dishwasher was poison, and when accusing me of not believing her or caring about her when I didn't buy into it didn't work, she switched to crying about how Ebee never shares toys with her.

M&M tried to help AJ think of happy thoughts, while Ebee immediately ran and got several of her favorite toys to share with AJ, which rather deflated that particular escalation. Of course, then she didn't want the toys (even the one AJ had specifically said she wanted) and explained that really it was "the P-word" that she was worried about, and not Ebee's toys.

The amazing thing is that ever since I asked her to take a break from talking about poison, she has strictly avoided using the word--has said it maybe once, if that. It amazes me that she's able to do that so well.

It hasn't stopped her worrying about it, but she instantly became very good about freaking out about poison without actually saying the word. She'd be very good at that game where you have to describe things without saying a particular set of words. :)

Her brain works very well with "rules" that she can follow strictly. Now if I can figure out how to harness that to actually help her stop worrying . . .