Experiments In: Watching What You Say

When my kids were growing up, I would try to find fun ways to teach life lessons.  One of these was The Toothpaste Experiment.  I have performed this experiment many times to many groups at many ages.  It's timeless.  And I'm betting many of you even know what I'm talking about and have performed this experiment, too!  This is how it's done:

We sat our 5 kids at the dining room table and put paper plates in front of them.  We sat travel-size tubes of toothpaste on the paper plates.  

"Okay, kids, now open the toothpaste and squeeze out as much toothpaste as you can get out of the tubes."  Having no idea whether this was the "contest" part, they squeezed and squeezed until they couldn't get anything else out of the tube.  

"Are you done?  Did you get it all out?"  I was assured they did.  

"Okay..........first one to get all of the toothpaste back in the tube gets ice cream!  All of it - not one drop can be outside the tube."

There were some determined little faces as they tried their best to get that icky sticky stuff back inside the little hole.  Toothpaste covered the paper plates and their hands up to their wrists - and sometimes their faces as they scratched their heads trying to figure this out.  

At some point, everyone will give up.  We all know it's impossible to get all of the toothpaste back into, well, anything.  

As I passed out damp towels, I explained.  "Just like you can't get that toothpaste back into that tube, once you say something out of your mouth, you can't suck it back in, either.  You must be very careful of what you say to people - to their face or someone else.  You must be careful what you say about people - to others or on the internet.  You cannot take those words back.  You cannot suck them back into your mouth.  And...and this is the hard one...you must be careful about what you think about people, as this will eventually form your words.

Those are the things you can't do, but what if you do hurt someone with your words?  You must ask for forgiveness.  No exceptions.  And it doesn't at all matter whether you intended to hurt them or not.  If your words hurt them, you've hurt them, no matter your intentions.

Now, let's go get that ice cream and chat about this."

And we'd go to Baskin-Robbins, order crazy-colored cones (only children can eat bubblegum ice cream with actual gum inside stacked on top of fudge brownie), and have some of the best conversations around those tiny round tables that are never big enough (right?).  "Janie said something that hurt me.  Does this mean I can go make her ask for forgiveness?"  "What about if I'm repeating what someone else said?  Does that count as me hurting someone?"  "What if somebody takes my words wrong?"  "Can I have more ice cream?"  

I have done this experiment while teaching Sunday school, youth groups, and the varsity cheer squad at cheer camp.  Though I will admit that, the older your subjects, the more creative they will get with trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube (make sure to give uber-clear instructions that ALL of the toothpaste has to be back in the tube and that they cannot rip open the tube to get it back in and that using the stuff that's left to make lipstick doesn't count as "creative points"), everyone - everyone - will get the message at the end.  

And, most importantly, they'll remember it.  "That was a toothpaste moment, wasn't it Mama?"  Yep, baby, it was.