With kids, you have to be very specific when you tell them not to do something.

You know what I mean:  you tell them they can’t play basketball right now because they need to clean their rooms.  Next thing, you look outside and they’re playing baseball! 

“But you didn’t say we couldn’t play baseball,” they whine.  True.

So you try to be more specific.  “You can’t do ANYTHING until you clean your rooms.”

Later you ask them to help unload groceries and they pipe in, “We can’t because you said we couldn’t do ANYTHING until our rooms were clean!”  Ha ha.  Mom is so amused.

My daughter was at that wonderful age when she was discovering the joy of scissors and the delight of cutting everything in sight.  One day I walked in to discover she had cut a couple of chunks out of her beautiful silky hair.  Now, instead of cascading down to her shoulders, the one inch that remained on one spot stuck straight up.  Hmmm … I could shave her head to make it all match or make her wear a hat everywhere.  It was so bad, the other kids were embarrassed to be seen with her for months.  I carefully explained that she shouldn’t cut her own hair; if she really wanted a haircut, Mommy would take her to the beauty parlor. Now wouldn’t that be fun?  Oh, yes, Mommy, I’m sorry, Mommy.

“That went really well,” I thought.  I believed I was such a good mother.

In the weeks that followed, she cut her brother’s hair (“Now honey, I know we talked about your hair, but don’t cut ANYONE’S hair, okay?”), the dog’s fur (“Don’t cut any animal’s fur either!”), and the hair of the antique porcelain doll (“DON’T CUT ANYTHING’S OR ANYONE’S HAIR OR FUR, DO YOU HEAR ME YOUNG LADY!?”) 

I thought that pretty well covered it.

I walked in one day as she was leaning back, cutting her own eyelashes. 

People wonder why mothers are always nervous wrecks.

“You won’t be cutting anything else.  Nada.  Nothing.  You are forbidden from ever picking up a pair of scissors again.”

Was that specific enough?