Punish, Honey Puns

My boy, Arthur, is slow. He is the slowest child I’ve ever met. And I don’t mean mentally, he just doesn’t move quickly at all no matter what the urgency.

He takes an hour to get out of bed and stand up in the morning. He takes an hour to eat. When we go anywhere we have to tell him 20 minutes in advance because he takes that long to get his shoes on. His showers…we had to install an industrial sized water heater and hook it up to his shower exclusively because he would drain the tank and shower in ice cold water and started getting sick from it.

The worst part is that even if you help him out he doesn’t go faster. We can feed him and he’ll just swallow slower. We can wash him and he’ll just sit there for longer.

I’ve learned to live with it and be content because I know he won’t change. But my wife can’t take it. Just the other day she told me she was going to punish him to make him go quicker:

“I’ve had it with him! I’m going to start giving him timeouts and taking away toys for going so slow!”

“Honey,” I said, “it’ll never work.”

“Why not?!”

“Because you can’t rush Art.”