The Stove Incident

To show how much I haven't been blogging this summer, this incident happened in the first week of July.  Aria loves to help, especially in the kitchen.  One day for lunch we were making pasta.  She was standing on a chair near the stove, but out of harm's way.  She was helping me measure things and dump them in.  When the pasta was finished, I took it off the stove and told Aria to be sure and stay far back because the stove was hot.  She knows the stove is hot and usually stays away.  Well, that particular day she was in full two-year-old mode.  The look on her face was pure I'm going to do that because you told me not to.  And, she slapped her hand down on the hot stove.  I didn't see it full force because I was dumping the pasta into the strainer in the sink, but I know what happened out of the corner of my eye.  Yep, the stove was hot and my little girl learned her lesson the hard way. 

It was pretty much awful for the next hour.  Thankfully, Justin was on his way home from lunch and I called to ask him to make a detour for some burn cream.  We sat on the couch with an ice bag on her three fingers and I tried to console her.  Even though I felt like it, I knew it wasn't time for "I told you so" or "That's why we don't touch the stove."  She just needed me to help take the pain away and I really couldn't.  We eventually put burn cream and Hello Kitty band aids on her fingers and gave her some Tylenol for the pain, but I couldn't really make it go away. 

Since then, it has occurred to me often that there will be much pain in Aria's life that I can't prevent or make better.  There will be more physical pain and there will be emotional pain, which I imagine will be worse.  I'm sure there will be lessons learned by trial and error where I would have rather avoided the trial all together.  But just like touching the stove, she will probably learn best from the pain.  In no way did I want her to touch the hot stove and burn her fingers, but I do know she won't ever do it again.  In fact, for the next month, Aria wouldn't have touched the stove with a 10 foot pole.  I can already see that even though it is hard, sometimes it is best for kids to learn for themselves.  I will do my very best to guide her, but ultimately decisions will be up to her. 

When she burnt her fingers, I helped her in the only way I know how, we prayed.  We prayed many times a day for many days for God to heal her fingers.  When I can't heal her, I know Jesus can.  I pray that as Aria encounters more pain in her life, she will pray and ask Jesus to help her just like she did for her fingers.  Fortunately, as bad as it seemed in the moment, the damage was minimal.  Aria's fingers healed perfectly without any sign of infection.  She was a real trooper, too.  After the initial incident, she rarely complained of any pain.  It was an unfortunate event, but a lesson learned by all.