The placebo effect

For anyone who talks to my daughter, please don't look at her too strangely if she ever suggests that Burt's Bee's lip balm makes mosquito bites stop itching.

She perhaps might have learned something to that effect from her Mother who had reached the point of doing anything to get her to stop whining.

One recent evening, Sydney was doing everything in her power to not fall asleep. She tried numerous excuses to get out of bed, one of which was insisting that she needed bug spray (that's what she calls the stuff we spray on the bites to stop the itching). I told her she was fine and needed to go to sleep. I would put on the itch spray in the morning.

By the next morning, of course I'd forgotten all about her supposed bug bites. And so did she... until it was time to get in the car and head to daycare. Sydney again was looking for excuses to stall. She wasn't finished watching Little Einstein's. She needed a toy for show and tell. (It wasn't show and tell day.) Finally she stopped in the driveway and started crying. "I still need bug spray!"

Thinking quickly, knowing we were already running late, I grabbed the lip balm from my purse and told her we would use that instead. Jeff looked at my like I was insane, until he noticed that Sydney was quite satisfied with this solution.

There's that line: "Necessity is the mother on invention." I don't think it's by chance that it includes the word Mother ,instead of Father.