Shampoo bottles

Wednesday 14 January 2004 — This is nearly 21 years old. Be careful.

One of my autistic son’s small aggravating habits is emptying shampoo bottles. He takes showers by himself, and is usually well-behaved. But shampoo bottles are very tempting, and he gets into phases where he uses a bottle per shower. We try to watch over him, and we buy him cheap shampoo so that we don’t care so much. We would rather he didn’t do it, but we’ve gotten used to it as a minor irritant.

Then yesterday my 11-year old needed to build a project for school:

“Do we have two soda bottles I can attach neck-to-neck?”

“No, but we have some shampoo bottles...”

Sometimes things work out in ways you don’t expect!

Comments

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Ben Langhinrichs 7:42 AM on 14 Jan 2004
My eight year old uses way too much shampoo, and it used to get to me, but recently I keep a larger bottle of shampoo and only fill the one he uses about a quarter full. That way, if he uses it all, I don't stress so much.
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rusty 8:33 AM on 14 Jan 2004
or, smaller bottles.

seems like the effort to refill a smaller bottle (periodically or daily, or however often) would be less than the effort of buying a new bottle.
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Ben Dubuc 12:05 PM on 14 Jan 2004
My 7 year old daughter does about the samething. Not only she empties the bottles just for the fun of it, but she always put way too much shampoo. We now have a small bottle just for her and I fillt it every 2-3 showers with 1/2 shampoo, 1/2 water.

Maybe we just don't get it: I'll try playing with my bottle tomorrow morning and see if it's that funny!!!
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Ben Dubuc 7:13 AM on 15 Jan 2004
Well, it isn't much fun... I guess it's another sign that tells me I'm getting old...
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Chris 5:27 AM on 16 Jan 2004
ooh ooh ooh - what was the project ?
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Max Batchelder 8:24 AM on 16 Jan 2004
hello people.
i am ned's son, max. The project I had to do for school was to create a timer that could time any amount of time between 2 and 10 minutes. First, I filled one bottle with water. I attached the two shampoo bottles together using electrical tape to create an aquatic hourglass, then my dad drilled two holes in the bottles for the air to escape through. finally, i put a piece of masking tape on it, flipped it over, and using a clock, marked the masking tape for one line per minute. my timer didn't win the competition, but I still had fun with it. it's called "the procrastinator" i named it after me.
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Damien Katz 9:46 AM on 16 Jan 2004
"The Procrastinator", AHHHH yes, I remember clearly the joys of starting and completing a 1 month school project in a single night. Good times....
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Nancy Bea 1:05 PM on 18 Jan 2004
My 9 year old severely autistic son also has a thing about shampoo, and liquid soaps of all kinds. We have to keep the kitchen bottle of dish detergent under lock and key (and shampoos too). I am sometimes hard put not to burst into tears when I go to the washroom in someone else's house and see the big sinkside bottle of liquid hand soap and the shampoo containers nestling in the shower stall. Depends on how fragile am feeling that day I guess. Thanks for putting a humorous gloss on it Ned!
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David Boudreau 7:55 AM on 19 Jan 2004
How about collecting those small bottles they have at hotels? It's probably easier hunting them down there than waiting for the trial sizes.

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