You Must Engage With The Slime

<p>Rules and regulations are important. A child needs to learn what behaviors are acceptable and which ones are not. They need structure and guidance. They need to learn about responsibility and accountability; about how actions have consequences; about respecting authority. </p><p>Sensible, hardset rules can help with a lot of those things. But <em>arbitrary</em> rules that we make up simply for our own convenience, those are something we should step back from and think hard about. You know the kind we’re talking about. The ones produced in the moment, on the spot, as a response to that one-word question our children learn early and that has a special way of driving us nuts: <em>Why? </em>Because I said so! <em>Because I don’t want to do that.</em></p><p>For a long time, one of the arbitrary rules in <a href='https://dailydad.com/be-careful-how-helpful-you-are/?utm_source=sendfox&amp;utm_medium=sendfox&amp;utm_campaign=engage-with-the-slime'>Jeannie Gaffigan’s</a> house had to do with slime. Maybe your kids are too old to care about slime, but it’s not difficult to relate Jeannie’s dilemma. Sure, the kids are having fun, but it’s a pain in the ass to clean up, and who do you think is going to be the one left with the scrubber and the paper towels in their hands? </p><p>Recently, though, Jeannie Gaffigan had a change of heart about her rules—particularly after a battle with a benign but very life threatening brain tumor. She recently talked about it and her brush with death <a href='https://geni.us/O8GSoeZ'>on Marc Maron’s podcast</a>:</p><p><em>“My nine year old just turned 10. She is into making slime. You know, this is a big thing, right? It&apos;s this whole little science thing. So my daughter is really into this slime thing and I had a list of rules and regulations for slime in the house and how to deal with it because I was finding it in places that are like—AH! But after the surgery, I realized that I never asked, &apos;can you teach me how to make the slime?&apos; I never engaged with the slime.