Miscellaneous Parenting Tip: Toilet water is not delicious

Both my babies were raised among dogs. Certain rules were established about human versus canine behavior. We don't eat the dog's food. We don't pee in the back yard. We don't chew one another's toys. These rules were received (sometimes) with a certain amount of acceptance. For example: my son, more than once, tried to see how many pieces of kibble he could cram into his mouth before I caught him and emptied his mouth of their semi-dissolved contents.

My daughter asked me once why the dogs drank out of the toilet. It was a good question and I didn't know the answer. I suppose I should have told her the water refreshed itself multiple times a day, whenever someone flushed, and the dogs preferred fresh water. I chose to tell her they drank from the toilet because it was the most delicious water in the house. These two answers were essentially the same, in my opinion, and the second was merely simpler for a 2 1/2 year old to understand.

Children, however, tend to take things literally.

Not until she was sixteen years old, did my child tell me that toilet water is not delicious. I had warned her that, despite its smell, play-doh is disgusting, but it never occurred to me to give her a public service warning about drinking from the toilet.

"You said it was delicious, so I gave it a try," she said.

I wonder if she knew, even at 2 1/2, that this was a dubious experiment. After all, why else would she have waited so long to confess, and blame me for the debacle?

"I can't believe you did that," I said, and swatted her with a rolled-up newspaper.