Thursday, May 5, 2011

Misnomers

It has recently come to my attention that parents often re-name, or rather don't bother to correct a mis-name of, common things. For example, on the rare occasion I find myself in a Target, I get a Starbucks. If my children are with me (and able to consume cow's milk), I purchase them a kid-sized steamer. This is merely a dressed up hot chocolate. McKenna has forever believed that this is coffee. I've never had the energy to argue with her. She will walk through the aisles of Target, sipping her small-person-sized-logan-plastered cup and say, "Mommy, I just LOVE coffee!" Oh, the looks of reproach I get. But they'll get over it.

A good friend of mine was sharing a misnomer with me today. She allows her daughter to have the Halls Defense drops that are basically hard candy-ish vitamins. She's never corrected her daughter's assumption that these were cough drops. When her daughter opened a grab bag from a birthday party to find strawberry hard candies, she yelled, "Oh goody! I got cough drops!" It's the little things, people.

When my girls were younger and ate like birds, (OK, Madelynn still does) I would supplement their diets with a Pediasure at bedtime. This way, I didn't have to worry about them getting the right nutrition. Turns out, it was a vicious circle. Since they woke up full in the morning, they weren't hungry enough to eat all day. ~sigh~ But I digress. The Pediasures were disgusting! So, I told the girls that they were "milkshakes" and the first few times, I'd put chocolate syrup in. Worked like a charm. Except for the first time we were out of town visiting relatives. They were all ready for bed when they came in the kitchen, "Mom, can we have our milkshakes now?" Hmmmm

But the mis-titled item that haunts me the most is their melatonin. Each of the girls have bad, life-like nightmares, so the pediatrician recommending giving them a melatonin tablet before bed and another if they woke up in the night. Now, I don't love medicating the kids, but I've gotten over my inital fears after years of allergies, asthma and colds. At this point, if I get the nod from the doc, it's all good. So we started giving them melatonin at bedtime. People, it's like a miracle drug! Except, it's not a drug, it's a supplement. That's right, all natural. And it's fan-freakin-tastic! My girls don't have time to cover themselves up after they lay down, because they're already asleep! Love it! But here's the hang up. I think McKenna's hooked. We've started breaking the tablets in halves and fourths on days that they didn't get a lot of rest. Then one particularly tiring day, we skipped the melatonin altogether. McKenna was not pleased. She begged for her "sleeping pill" for a good 30 minutes. I finally told her that when I was finished washing dishes, I would come check on her and if she wasn't asleep yet, I'd give her a melatonin. That little bugger kept herself awake by sheer mental doggedness. Every five minutes, "Mommy, are you done with the dishes? I need my pill!" We should probably work on that terminology before someone submits a complaint.

Love,
A

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