Bathroom Discipline Shopping List

According to my favorite child-rearing dude, parents can designate the hall bath as the “conference room” for all sibling disagreements.   Any complaints about each other to me or arguments that disturbs the family peace are immediately recessed to the “conference room” for a fifteen minute closed-door conflict resolution session.  If frowny faces remain after fifteen minutes, the door is closed again for another 15-minute session.

This has had two effects:

1) We haven’t mediated anything in weeks.

2)We’ve snaked the toilet three times.

My recommendation, super glue all disassemble-able fixtures in the bathroom and install a metal detector on the bathroom door.

Okay, that’s not practical.  Fine.

If you plan to let your children use your bathroom as a conference room, or God forbid, brushing their teeth, I suggest/discourage the following:

These don’t work.  My kids still leave their toothbrushes on the sink.  And even if they do use them, then I have toothpaste dripping down my walls and mirrors instead.

These faucet thingies are awesome.  My water bill is nill compared to the old turn-it-on-full-blast-and-leave-it days.  Bump for water.  Automatically turns off.  I think they were five bucks.

This is the best thing we ever bought.  Our children are no respecters of parent toothbrushes.  They end up on the floor, in the kitchen, outside…and we aren’t even going to talk about the disgusting mess that is our toothpaste tubes!  But, since Mr. Ivory and I are both shower brushers anyway, this little contraption is the best thing that ever happened to our sanity.

Remember that Seinfeld episode when the toothbrush went in the toilet?  That used to be my life.  Every morning was a gamble.

Oh, and don’t forget the toilet snake.  Must have for every household!

Ivory