In most houses there is an item or items the children are absolutely not allowed to touch.
In fact, finally having access to them amounts to a rite of passage.
In our house, it is with the fabric scissors and the iron pans.
The fabric scissors ban rankles my teenager, because there are times they’d come in handy to her. She loves the iron pan ban, though: When it’s her turn to wash dishes and she is expected to leave the kitchen perfectly clean, the iron pan is not included in that rule.
I have ended up with the most responsible daughter in the world, whether by sheer fortune, or solid training paired with strict upbringing, or I suspect, a combination of the two.
Given that, I felt it was safe to allow her to use the fabric scissors this past spring, after, of course, she acknowledged understanding and agreeing to the terms outlined in the lecture she was subjected to before them being handed over to her, to wit: 1 – Only use these to cut fabric, nothing else; and 2 – Return them immediately to the sewing basket.
Lo and behold, those fabric scissors were not seen for several stress- and sorrow-filled months. She swore she had put them back in the sewing basket, but one day I found them on the floor, under something, in her room.
Yesterday she asked to use the sewing scissors again.
“Sure,” I said, “Go get what you need to cut, and I will go get the scissors.”
“But I need them in my room,” she said.
“Just bring down what you want to cut to me here in the kitchen,” I replied cheerfully.
“It’s a shirt,” she replied. “I need to cut a little and keep checking the mirror and make sure it’s cut to the right length.”
“The last time you took the scissors, they were gone for months,” I said. “You may use them in the kitchen here in front of me, and that is a step up above in privileges over what you’ve had for most of your life except for this past spring, when you were granted full access; that, however, has been brought down a peg.”
She prattled on and on and on and on about the importance of using the scissors in her room. I kept polishing the stove as she went on.
Yakkety yakkety yak.
Finally, she concluded her spiel, drew herself up to full height and said, “So? Can I get the fabric scissors?”
“I have given my answer. Do you remember what it was?”
“You mean I have to use them here in the kitchen with you?”
I smiled, nodding that she understood what I had told her from determined to work her project the beginning.
“OK,” she said, slightly defeated but polite.
As the mother of a teenager, it is with a sense of shock that I realize it seems out of proportion that I do not allow her free rein with the fabric scissors or iron pans even though she’ll be starting driving lessons soon and have her driver’s license within the year.
Even so.
My rules are my rules.
Some things are all the sweeter when earned.
She, like I did decades ago, will one day know the joy and satisfaction of having her own pair of fabric scissors, and her own perfectly seasoned iron pans to use as her heart desires.
