Yesterday I was sitting in the kitchen eating lunch when my four-year-old came downstairs with a roll of toilet paper in her hand and informed me that my three-year-old needed more toilet paper. So I went upstairs to help.
Instead of just finding my daughter in need of a little help to go potty I found her standing in two inches of water with the toilet continuing to flow all over the floor. I immediately shut the water off. Took my daughters out and told them to play in the family room until I had things under control. My youngest had stuffed the toilet full of toilet paper and then kept flushing it to try and get it to go down. But because the toilet was so clogged the water just kept overflowing. It was a disaster. Reminiscent of when my clothes washer broke, twice in two weeks, drenching our laundry room, seeping out into the adjoining rooms, and filling our ducting with water. Luckily the vents in the bathroom were in the ceiling so I didn’t have to worry about the vents.
I pulled out my husband’s vet-dry vac and started sucking up the water. I vacuumed the bathroom and then started in on the hall. Then when I went downstairs I noticed that water was dripping down our dining room light, which sits directly underneath the hall upstairs. Not a good sign. I spent the next three hours sucking up as much water as possible. Then my husband came home with a commercial carpet cleaner and spent another hour sucking up the water. We currently have a carpet dryer running to dry out the pad and wood floor.
Why is it that when a child gets the least bit hurt you know about it the instant it happens, but when your child lets the toilet overflow and is standing in two inches of water they don’t make a peep?
I didn’t yell at my daughter or even put her in time-out I just calmly explained that she couldn’t put so much toilet paper in the toilet. I also told both her and my older daughter that they needed to tell me if water was ever spilling on the floor again. My husband on the other hand was angry with my daughter when he came home and got mad at her for making the toilet overflow. I can understand his response because that was my first feeling as well. But I realized that she didn’t realize what would happen when she clogged the toilet and was probably afraid to come get me after she had done it. So it wasn’t worth getting angry over.
How do you handle disasters?