Should this grandmother have let her granddaughter squirt herself with a hose?

[SpunkyTWS]

You were acting on a parental suggestion. Me, I just stuck a key in a socket to see what would happen.

Of course I had my hand properly insulated. Luckily there was a limit to my stupidity.

[bolamig]

I’d be more worried about the psychic wounds of grandparents laughing at the kid.

[orenwolf]

Exactly. Non-life-threating (or life-changing, or otherwise dire) situation. Explain implications. If child (or adult!) goes and does it anyway, well, they should have listened!

[Melizmatic]

Someone else made a point about the grandmother’s jovial tone and how that could have been misleading; I think there’s a double lesson therein.

Not everyone is laughing with you…

And you’re right; this was totally non-life threatening, if not the tiniest bit sadistic.

But that’s what family is for, right?

[Deidzoeb]

We’re helicopter spectating.

[redesigned]

@Mark_Steven

The grandmother did the right thing. She shared her wisdom, but let the child find out what would happen if she followed through with her actions.

I think this is the right approach for situations that actual harm isn’t involved.

[woodfish]

Zero. It is called life. Sometimes you laugh at them and sometimes they laugh at you. Welcome to family.

[MaiqTheLiar]

On the painful parenting scale (or grand-parenting) I gotta’ think that anyone who puts this above ‘not’ just hasn’t lived life to the fullest.

[zikzak]

@jon_nebenfuhr

Hopefully their local water utilities adds enough chlorine to the water to kill any bacteria the hose or nozzle may have harbored and they don’t get a sinus infection.

And hopefully the sinus infection isn’t hose-MRSA* which eats into her brain and makes her so delirious that she wanders out of sight. And hopefully then she doesn’t get picked up by the many Predators lurking for just such a situation…because then grandma would be very sorry she didn’t helicopter her more.

* almost certainly not a thing...but how certain are you? 99.9%? Is that safe enough? Better safe than sorry, you know.

[GulliverFoyle]

@Mark_Steven

What I was referring to were the people who’ve never tried to live on their own and are in a sense incapable of doing it, because they’ve never learned how to.

To each their own, and I totally get it’s not something everyone’s in a position to do whether because they need help as a single working parent or their parents need their help or other responsibilities. But not wanting to leave home seems so bizarre to me. My folks were decent parents, but by the time I left home, first to boarding school, then to the opposite coast for college, I couldn’t wait to live on my own. Cuz…

[tlwest]

@TobinL

When the offspring was a toddler he saw my shot glass with some bourbon in it. He reached for it and said ‘juice, juice’ and I told him no.

I had it played the other way. At a family dinner, we’d had Schnapps with the meal, and as I was cleaning up in the kitchen, I hear my five year old say “Hey, daddy!” I turn around just in time to see him holding up a full shot glass. I start to yell “NO!” across the room, but it’s too late: he downs it in a single gulp.

I come leaping across the room prepared to deal with a scream of agony along with possible projectile vomiting while I see my son’s eyes widen as he sees me charging.

And then my brother falls over, barely able to breath because he’s laughing so hard. My son is going “Daddy, are you all right?”

My younger brother had filled a shot glass with water and then told my son to get my attention and down the glass, telling my son “do you want to see Daddy jump?”

My son was in awe of my brothers predictive powers for several years. Fifteen years later, he still vividly remembers the look of horror on my face.

Meanwhile I wait, biding my time, for my (much younger) brother to have kids…

[LDoBe]

Now I have to figure out how to get candy cigarettes into my brother’s kids hands when he eventually decides to procreate. He’s always wanted a family, I might as well make it interesting.

[ChuckV]

@Mark_Steven

This is why we see thirty year olds still living in their parents’ basements, as they’ve been protected to the point of crippling them.

I’m sure the economy has nothing to do with that.

[rcthompson]

A wise man once told me, “Experience is something you don’t get until right after you needed it.”

[art_carnage]

At that age, you’re programmed to learn from experience, not from being told. But maybe Grandma could have laughed a little less.

[anon63581570]

Grew up on a farm and I’m wondering why the hell this is being asked. It’s a garden hose, not a firehose. If it’d been with a nozzle attached i might have some concern over eye damage but even then it’s part of learning and growing up.

[L_Mariachi]

What was the problem? Some of my earliest memories are my grandfather feeding me shots of blackcurrant Schnapps whenever my grandmother and mom weren’t looking, and I turned out just…

Oh, right, I see what you were getting at. Takes me a minute, for some reason.

[peterk]

Around the age of 4 I snuck into my parents’ room and took a nice big lick of the mink oil on their dresser, unable to believe their repeated indications that it was not in fact sour cream and onion dip (similar color and container shape).

In the words of Melody Gardot: “Some lessons we learn the hard way.”

[piratejenny]

@TheGreatParis

Not as bad as when I was five and my father — an electrical engineer — recomended I put my finger down a light socket.

Pop tells a tale of watching me (at about that age, or maybe a little younger) with a paper clip, going around the room using it to poke at things. He considered whether or not to stop me when I got to the electrical outlet, and decided against it. Bzzzt! He knew I wouldn’t be seriously hurt, and you betcha I never did that again!

[robulus]

I feel morally obliged to point out that doing that in some other countries will get you killed or permanently injured.