There are three reasons why I need to buy new clothes for my son:
- Growth.
- Messy food consumption. (e.g., strawberries, those stupid yogurt tubes)
- Napkin blindness.
No, really. He is unable to see napkins. Or even admit that they exist. Which makes sense because he physically can't see them.
Watch:
See?
My 3 year old loves to use napkins, but still ends up incredibly messy. Sigh.
oh do I feel you… I should buy stock in the Shout! company. and even then it only has a 60-70% success rate at saving clothes.
My kids must be serious oddities. I always hear moms complain about the tube type yogurt but my kids have never had a problem with them! I love to freeze them and give them as “dessert”, haha.
And my son still suffers from napkin blindness at age 8…
Thankfully my first son was not “napkin blind”, so his clothes were passed down to my second son quite clean. HOWEVER, #2 seems to have inherited the “napkin blindness” gene, and leaves his clothes unsuitable for hand-me-downs!
My 14 month old thinks napkins are for cleaning her high chair tray off, but god forbid I use it on her face, hands or mouth!
How funny.
When my grandson was 3, I took him to a birthday party. I handed him a napkin and told him to use the napkin. His answer was “That okay grandma, I have my shirt on”. He is 14 now and I still laugh every time I think of it.
my son has this issue. he gets it from his father. i have been known to randomly shout ‘NAPKIN!!’ when they are are eating particularly messy foods and hands go anywhere near their shirts/jeans.
Ha ha, that made me laugh too!
I have a seven year old who is still suffering from napkin blindness. We buy them in bulk at costco, put a HUGE stack at the table in front of him, and he still uses his freaking shirt.
Both of my boys (4 and 7) suffer from napkin blindness but both of my girls (2 and 8) will actually ask for a napkin if they don’t already have one. Maybe it’s a boy thing? lol
My MIL sends outfits, and it cracks me up every time she sends along something with white slacks. They can stay pristine for about 5 minutes.
Stained clothes do really well in a 24-hr soak in Oxiclean (start with the hottest water you can get, I put in 1.5 c of oxiclean in probably about 5-6 gal of water [utility sink full]). For tomato-based stains and oily stains, the Spray-n-Wash stain stick can’t be beat. NAYY, this is just how I have saved clothes worn by 3 girls to send to my niece.
Well…the good news is, he wiped his mouth.
My almost 9 year old son STILL does that. About 50% of the time I can remind him about napkins, the other 50% he’s rubbing his face and hands on his shirt.
Just wanted to chime in that this applies to girls as well. My 3.5 old has become better about asking for a napkin, but occasionally I still catch a sleeve gliding across her mouth. Yes, tube yogurts are devilish.
My son is 14. It will not get better. But you may be able to convince him to wash his own shirts.
My 4 year old used to use napkins, but has been slacking lately, and uses his shirt instead. Ugh.
My 3YO has “Kleenex blindness.” She wipes her nose on her hand or sleeve, and when I ask her if she needs a Kleenex, she says “No.” Because she already wiped her nose on her hand or sleeve!
My husband has that blindness, and I even caught him telling my 4-year-old daughter to wipe her mouth with her shirt sleeve… I mean, really!?! Argh! It’s like having 2 toddlers….
My daughter has that too, but she doesn’t use her shirt, she comes up to me and wipes her nose on my shirt.
my kids also suffer from kleenex blindness. EVERY. TIME.
Ha ha!! I love your blog. My boys like to wipe their hands on their hair as they go. Messy, but at least it doesn’t stain!
I never thought of freezing the yogurt..what a great idea!
tube yogurt solution: pull of a corner of the top, stick a straw in it. no squeezing required.
Omg my son does the same thing! He also wipes his fingers across his belly/chest area of his shirt. And my slaughter blows her nose on her shirt. And the best part? They wear white shirt uniforms every day to school! ::sigh::
I got some BAAAAAAAD news for you…at 15 and 13 YEARS my children have STILL not learned what a napkin is 0.o
So timely! I was just shopping online because I need to buy new shirts for both my girls because of napkin blindness. Though when my 22 month old eats anything super messy ie: spagetti, she eats it naked!
My 8 and 4 yr old are silverware blind, I tend to shy away from soups because I don’t even want to know how that will turn out. lol Paper towels are non-existent as well. Good times.
My boys use their napkins to wipe up their spills on the table…but they put the napkins down and use their sleeves to wipes their mouths and their noses. LOL
My HUSBAND has napkin blindness. Some never outgrow it.
I love freezing them. My kids are convinced they’re dessert.
Unfortunately my husband TAUGHT our first son napkin blindness. When he was little he ENCOURAGED wiping his mouth on his sleeve or shirt….ARGH! I quickly discouraged that but alas, the damage was done and now I have dirty shoulders to contend with in the wash. Thankfully I trained the second son….lol
My 5 year old daughter has napkin blindness, so I don’t think it’s just a boy thing! ๐
Pie chart? I’m itching to draw a Venn diagram!
I caught my 5 year old wiping her nose on the COUCH once. Seriously!? My 2 year old wipes her nose on my clothes.
My son doesn’t have napkin blindness, however when he tries to imitate us using them he just ends up scrunching them in his tiny hands (in the act of wiping) and tosses the ball aside. Fingers still messy and with added stickiness from the process! At least it makes us laugh!
I second the Oxy-Clean soak.
Oh yes, that would be nifty. Or a bar graph. Really anything that looks official and shit.
to little ones, shirts are like a napkin they can carry everywhere. and then later that night when they take it off they can look at it and remember what they ate. i think its what the cavemen did.
Hahaha, same here! She cleans up her messes, but if I even look at her with a napkin or wash cloth, she screams! ๐
My Husband is 26 and still has napkin blindness. ๐
I’m still guilty of this at 36! Napkins? Who needs napkins? That’s want pant legs are for. Especially jeans ๐
Love your blog BTW. I’m a father to be and I’m oddly already relating to your fantastic stories. Can’t wait for my own!
Oh how many times have I asked my son not to wipe his hands on his shirt. He found an alternative solution of course – now he wipes them in his hair! Napkin shmapkin…
It doesn’t get better. My 13 and 11 year olds never use napkins. I lay out ten of them and they always use their pants.
And why is it when you see they have food on their hands and you say, “Wait, don’t touch your shirt!” they IMMEDIATELY grab it as though we were telling him TO do that. Yet had I not said anything, he still would have wiped his hands off on it. I can’t win!
I do that with the tubes too! they call them icecream tubes, lol, whatever works!
My little one, 23 months, is really careful when she’s having something with chocolate. Not one crumb is spilled away on her napkin or elsewhere. Strangely she is much more messy when it comes to a meal with rice, suddenly there is some kind of a rice festival everywhere (wall included).
Also stick a straw through the foil top of regular yogurt cups for less mess too!
My four year old uses his shirt to wipe his nose, his mouth, and his entire face. I’m so frustrated with his “napkin blindness” that I started making him eat meals naked. If he’s not wearing a shirt, he can’t use it to wipe the muck off his face. He uses his napkin by default. Boys are gross.
So sad. We really should start some kind of support group. ๐
Haha, my second son definitely had “napkin blindness” at that age! Only he uses his sleeves…and come to think of it, he’s 7 now and I STILL catch him about to wipe his mouth on his sleeve every now and then and have to remind him to use his napkin! Hopefully he’ll outgrow it soon?? sigh…
Caitlyn has Paper Towel Preoccupation, where she spends the entire meal trying to grab the roll of paper towels (because we are too fancy for napkins)instead of eating. Then when she gets one, she wipes her teething drool, blows her nose, then insists I blow MY nose into the same paper towel. Sharing is caring!
I am pretty sure my son is convinced that is what sleeves are for. If I forget to give my daughter a napkin she goes looking for one herself. It is unbelievable.
oxiclean spray AND powder to soak loads ๐
My husband is 42 and still has it!!
My 10 month old is too young for napkins but LOATHES for me to wipe her mouth so I’m guessing this is gonna be my life in the near future. Damn.
That’s “daughter”, not slaughter (ipad autocorrect!). My son is 6 and my daughter is 4 — and my mil is the queen of laundry and every time we visit she offers to “take care of” the shirts my kids are wearing for me lol
I love it. My almost 7 year old does that every. stinking. day. I cry out in frustration “Don’t wipe on your shirt!” She says “I didn’t”, whereupon I point to the food smear on her shirt, and she says “Oh.”
Repeat.
This must be the precursor to the Refrigerator Blindness so common among adult males; “Why did you open another [insert perishable food item]?” “Oh I didn’t see an open one.” IN THE FRONT OF THE MIDDLE SHELF.
i own a laundromat and for 95-100% stain removal success…spray soiled item with pre-treater of choice and let dry completely, then wash…for car grease or oil, spray with brake cleaner, let dry and wash normally, ink stains..spray with hairspray and hand wash, repeat until stain is out….saved my son’s clothes over the years and continues to…he’s 18 now and he still sprays the bottom of his white socks right after he takes then off and tosses them in the laundry bin, which i may get to once a week…and they
come out looking brand new everytime
My stepmother broke me (mostly) of this habit by making me wear a bib if I didn’t use a napkin. She still threatened me with it as a teenager if she caught me.
I hated it, that was for babies. Even worse if it was a colour I hated or lord forbid it was one of those nasty plastic ones with the catch scoop at the bottom. How humiliating.
Second offence meant losing the food. I learned pretty quick when I was at her table.
Since I am now pregnant with my first and having read all your comments here I am hoping this will work again.
Amber, whatever your advertisers are paying you, it’s not enough.
Oh yes. Just. Yes.
No, zero is not a very good income.
I’ll have to try the “let dry completely” part, that is something I’ve never tried. Thanks!
You mean you aren’t making money? Get thee some advertisers lady! Your blog is totally worth paying a subscription fee for even. Or write a damn book already. Sheesh, hop to it.
I’m going to try this. My husband got some flower pollen on a shirt and for the life of me I cannot get it out.
we suffered from Npakin blindess until we switched to cloth napkins…a friend of mine converted me. Each family member has his or her own color napkin (that way you don’t have to wash them everyday). Once my daughter had her own lavender napkin (which is twice as large as a paper one), she ALWAYS uses it!
My daughter (2) has the opposite issue, napkin obsession. She would carry around a wet washcloth to “clean up” all day long if I let her. Except she’d clean her books, the TV, etc.
Also, best solution ever to those yogurt tubes. Freeze them. Now they are yummy popsicles and my daughter thinks they are the coolest super special treat ever!
We use cloth already but I LOVE the idea of having special napkins for them, why didn’t I think of this before? Sewing a few pirate napkins are in my near future. Thanks Brenda!
I would pay for a subscription to this blog, and gladly buy a book for every baby shower I attend. Crappy Pictures blog is the highlight of my day!
yeah…my kid licks napkins…yup! he insists on having one so he can wipe his tongue – so weird ๐
Or he uses it to wipe the food he has dropped on the table, onto the floor – he’s very helpful ๐
My soon to be two year old just takes the napkin and throws it on the floor after looking at it like it is some foreign object.
My son uses his shoulder to wipe his face. That, or his sleeve if he is in long sleeves. Napkins are dumped on the floor.
For a few months, my daughter thought my shirt was the napkin. I’m not joking. She’d have the napkin right next to her plate but she would still call me for me to come over and the reach out and proceed to wipe hand and mouth on my shirt.
Now she uses the napkin but only once. She’s wipes her mouth on a piece of it, crumples it and chucks it over her shoulder and asks for another napkin. When I show her how she can fold it she looks at me as if I’m barbaric and uncivilized asking her to use a ‘used’ napkin.
that’s my son’s answer too. i tried to get him to lick the chocolate off his fingers, but noooo. The stuff has to be spread all over his shirt. He also has kleenex blindness. While the results wash off, it’s really gross!
My 5 year old has a different type of “napkin blindness” He seems to think that his shoulder *is* a napkin
My son used to have mandatory “wipe mouth with tissue” period when he was toddler. It meant he finished the meal and was not coming back. Empty tissue boxes meant mid-level meltdowns.
The daughter came. She had no time for tissues/napkins, wanted to feed herself as soon as she was able to sit, so meal mess ensued. And her napkin blindness is total, but then, she is shirt AWARE at 5 years. She changes the shirts/skirts after each meal/snack/change of scenery herself, to my horror, I now have pile of food/marker/glue/mud/snot colored clothes in front of her room EACH day. I’m thinking of putting a lock on her wardrobe.
My dear son? He is now almost 8 and is secretly (under the table) wipes hands on his slacks. Always. Even if he is in charge of handing the napkin to me during meals(as he sits next to napkin holder). He would hand me the napkin and simultaneously lower the other hand to wipe off pants. So much for nice behavior from toddler years.
LOL I think it’s a boy thing; my 8 year old son STILL has this issue!
My 5 year old daughter, and even my nearly 2 year old daughter have both already outgrown this issue.
Absolutely HILARIOUS.
My kids (now grown) always used MY CLOTHES as their napkin–and kleenex. ewwww
I still have this same problem with my 10yo. Every time I catch him and call his name he jumps and grabs the napkin but the next time is still the same. SIGH….
You totally should be making money off this. And, I agree with the Oxyclean/Oxobrite hot water soak. Saves even dried-in stained clothes.
I wasn’t able to read all the comments, but I wanted to suggest Tide Stain Release In Wash Booster. I just throw it in and put it on a 15 to 30 minute soak and virtually all stains come out. I’ve had a few that are just too tough. My neighbor tried bleaching a few of her grandsons’ white shirts and the stains wouldn’t come out. I gave her a few of the stain release tabs and all but one shirt came out stain free. Tide has a fragrance free version too for people like me who have bad allergies. (and no I don’t work for Tide. I grew up hating them till someone told me about their magical stain releasing properties and I reluctantly changed brands.)
My son will be really embarassed if he finds out I posted this, but sometimes embarassment is a parent’s last resort. He just turned 13 and still suffers from napkin blindness.
I second this. My 2nd daughter has lost many fewer clothes to stains since I got religious about using oxyclean on everything she wears.
Yes! I keep having to tell my kids that mommy is not a napkin or kleenex. (Or a garbage receptacle, since they will walk right past an open trash can to hand me their candy wrappers.)
I like the baby shower book idea. I would definitely start sending it to new parents!
LOL! This is more like my twelve year old, than my two year old. It doesn’t matter how many he has at his disposal, his shirt is always the one used. o.O
I love this one! My 5 and 1/2 (I stress the 1/2 because he is no longer a single digit age) refuses to use any sort of table manners. We sit down for dinner almost every night and you would think “use your fork” “don’t eat mac & cheese with your hands” “don’t drink out of the ketchup bottle” – would sink in at some point. I still have hope….
hahahahahahahahahaha yep.
OMG. You did a crappy illustration of my son!
hahaha my HUSBAND still has napkin blindness, although he does manage to growl at the kids when they try and use their clothes. Gotta love parental hypocrisy ๐
Fortunately my kids also have ‘stain blindness’ so they get to wear the spotty dotty clothes again another day. One shirt even started to look quite funky with all the different stains on it.
My youngest wipes her hands on the rug. Sigh. Big daughter is pretty good, she still prefers to eat with her hands than use a fork but she takes herself off to the bathroom to wash her hands after dinner and doesn’t wipe them on the rug like Little Bad Daughter.
Worse than food stains though, is the “washable” paint and felt pen they get all over themselves. I’ve had to get rid of loads of clothes because nothing I do will get the marks out. Little Bad colored herself in with a blue pen and it didn’t come off for days, even after I scrubbed her with exfoliating shower gel. She looked like a child extra from Braveheart.
hydrogen peroxide works really well for stain removal! strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes, poop, blood…just spray or pour it on there and throw it in the hamper. Don’t use it around metal, though (near snaps, or on vitamin drops that contain iron).
It’s amazing how well the stains come out of light colored clothes when you put them in the sun. I live in an apartment and none of my windows get great sun, so if I have a stained article of clothing, I put it in the rear window of the car. This has gotten rid of many stains, from mildew to bright yellow baby poo.
amber, you are the funniest person I have read in ages and I don’t know which I laugh at more…the way you say things or the pictures that accompany your thoughts. hope you never stop!!!
My almost 3 yr old daughter insists on having her tongue wiped also!!! Goes back to that infant obsession of eating baby wipes!!! (You gotta do what you can to keep them still long enough to change them!!!)
My 2.5 year old has silverware blindness too!! I’ve never served soup. He used to eat oatmeal with his hands. Ugh. Finally convinced him to use a spoon there. Yogurt he drinks like it’s a cup. Which results in a hilarious albeit messy yogurt ring on his face.
Love it. I have a napkin-blind 6-year-old. Unfortunately he’s the older of two sons, which means few of his clothes make it as hand-me-downs to his somehow neat-as-a-pin 2-year-old brother who never gets stains on his clothes!
LOL! Rubbing Ivory bar soap on the stain will take out anything. I mean anything. (It won’t work for old stains from clothes already washed and dried.) It’s a good thing it’s cheap. I also yell ‘napkin’ at the dinner table… My last girl has talent in the shirt dirt category as well.
I have a child who has {selective} napkin-blindness. Although he is unable to see the napkin when it comes to wiping food from his hands or face he is more than able to find (and grab) every other napkin on the table which he then screws into tiny balls and launches across the table while yelling “all done!”
Ditto. Somehow this reflex toward the shoulder is triggered by moving toward my child with a napkin.
My son comes off pretty clean after battling his meals – the floor however is an entirely different story. He does suffer from the all too gross “tissue blindness”, though.
at least you are being green by using less paper towels lol…
venn diagram hahahaha too funny.
sorry to say but i think im suffering from napkin blindness myself…my sons had a bit of a runny nose, so after about 10 kleenex, i just said screw it, my shirt sleeves it is. :-S
I am so going to try this! My 2.5 year old LOVES frozen blueberries and milk with Ovaltine – I’ve thrown out many shirts because of this – thank you!
My husband doesn’t own a single shirt that isn’t stained. So lame.
Wish I could draw my son for you, who wipes his hands in his hair to clean anything off them. Every time, every day. Cheaper than hair gel I suppose…
And, of course, the garbage can blindness…”Why did you put the empty orange juice container back in the fridge?” “Oh…I forgot…” “Forgot? Huh? Wha?”
ah yes, the napkin blindness. I know it oh so well.
I agree it’s not a boy thing. I have a 4 year old who always tells me when I forget to give him a napkin… and for the most part – he actually uses it. Somehow he’s done pretty good at not getting food all over him!! We are very lucky!
I.Love.It. Early in my blogging days, I wrote about “Male Pattern Blindness”, basically the male gender’s inability to see anything unless it is right in front of them. I can relate to the concept of “napkin blindness” as well! ๐
OH HELLZ YES, that drives me crazy. Does it comfort you to know that they STILL do this at 7 ???
If I give my 17 month old anything even remotely messy… The shirt comes off. We don’t have a dress code at our dinner table…<3
This is my brother – still, at the age of 29! …and sometimes my husband ๐
My 17 (almost 18) year old son still does this! I showed him the blog entry and he said, “but it works! And you have to wash the shirt anyway!”. Hopefully your son will stop doing this before 17:)
What about olive oil?
I too freeze them and pack them in lunches. By the time its snack or lunch time, they are slightly defrosted and yummy!
From the comments I’ve noticed- IT IS A BOYS THING!!!
I figured with boys the easiest thing to do is teach them to use the inside of their shirt instead of the outside of the shirt to wipe their mouths. it works..
LOL that is awesome!
Hasn’t anyone ever heard of bibs???????? When did they go out of style?????
I agree, too. Oxyclean spray, let the item lay on top of the washer until I’m done avoiding the laundry, and it comes out nearly every time – but I use the powder in every load of kid’s clothes, too!
This post made me both laugh and nod in recognition.
You clearly have a gift with insightful crappy pictures. ๐
rub a little dawn dishwashing liquid in any oil-based stain and it comes right out in the wash. ๐
This is totally my daughter, from the moment she learned to feed herself!
Rice, steamed vegetables, chicken nuggets, no problem.
BBQ chicken, pizza, spaghetti, nori (seaweed), noodles that somehow trickle down her shirt and gets stuck in her panty, different story.
We use dish towels as “napkins” at home. It saves paper, and the kids seem slightly more inclined to use them. That being said, I’ve taken to sarcasm with my 10 year old son. “I’m so glad we dressed you all in napkins today, it makes the cleanup so much easier.” His shirt and pants always get the brunt of the hand cleaning.
Oh for those horribly messy yogurt tubes…cut a small slit in the top and insert a straw (a regular length bendy straw reaches to the bottom)! Your life will be free of giant neon pink & electric blue yogurt splats.
OMGosh, LOL!!!…good to know i’m not the only person to shout “NAPKIN!” randomly at my husband…sadly he does not have a son/daughter to blame….
we are planning a family next year and am already AFRAID of the crazy things he/she will pick up from us!
When one of my sons was little, I had to keep him shirtless to train him out of using his shirt for a napkin. He had gotten sly (or so he thought) and instead of wiping his hands on the front, he would reach around and wipe them on the back. Real smart. Now that he’s a teen, I have to fight him to keep his shirt on, though he has learned to use napkins.
before having my son (ive got an older daughter) I would not have understood this. girls are so clean. boys are grubs! my 12 month old manages to dirty half the floor in the kitchen and dining room with just one piece of bread. and whats more, they love it. they just don’t care. my daughter HAS to wipe her hands and face after eating because she doesnt like being dirty.
Thanks for sharing. I’m a teacher at a school with kids who are on the autistic spectrum. I’m using this in my class today!
Amber…..I have a NINETEEN year old that suffers from this affliction. Nooooooo bueno. Lol!
I looooved this one haha. My chart for my oldest however would be about the same portion napkin blindness and the otehr two portions would be replaced by rips/worn out….. His clothes never last long enough for him to grow out of them. My son has this move for wiping food wear he wipes his face with his shoulder no matter how many napkins I give him… it never fails :/
My husband and I recently put our foot down with our boys who can’t seem to get through any meal without staining their shirts. I ordered dental bib clips and we now require all three to wear a large paper napkin secured with a bib clip during most meals. I even take the clips in my purse to restaurants and we are saving a lot of shirts from being ruined, and no more scrubbing stains out. The dental industry has this method down pat!
Tip: Freeze those yogurt tubes. Frozen yogurt-they think it’s a special treat!
I have two boys of which both are messy eaters. I discovered that both of them (age 7 and 10) were purposely placing their napkins on the floor instead of their laps during dinner. I have now outsmarted them. They are now both required to tuck their paper napkin in their shirt collars during meal times which makes the paper napkin extremely visible. No more napkin blindness in this family! Many shirts have been saved, too!
Love this idea and will implement right away. My wife complained all the time about our boys getting food stains on their shirts. Not sure why we have not been enforcing the paper napkin tucked in collar, but I will insist on this from now on.
Mark W’s idea is a great one. Sometimes out of sight means out of mind. Wearing the napkin across the chest keeps it visible and makes it much more useful. My husband will tell our boys that he is not passing the food until napkins are in place.
Usually I do not read article on blogs, but I wish to say that this write-up very forced me to check out and do so! Your writing taste has been amazed me. Thank you, very nice article.
I like MarkW’s idea. What a great way to insure clothing stays stain free. After reading MarkW’s idea, I have made this a rule for my children during all meals. From now on, paper napkins get tucked around their necks (where they do the most good)instead of in their laps. Actually, I am not opposed to a two napkin rule which means that one paper napkin gets tucked around their neck and another gets spread across their lap. No more ruined clothing is going to save me money!
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