✅ My Sister's Problem

48. Discipline

Author's Note: Sorry to anyone who was expecting a new chapter of The Last New Start today; the day was mostly consumed by panic attacks, and none of my friends were available to chat and help me reach littlespace, so the one I was working on isn't finished yet. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. For now, I hope this will be enough.

"It's okay," Mum said. And those words meant the world today. It didn't matter that she was still teasing me for wetting my diaper, I knew that she still cared about me. She was doing all this out of love, and knowing that seemed to dispel my nervousness. "I'm sorry I was teasing you there. You had a really early night, and a lie in this morning. I think it would have been hard for anybody to hold it that long. Especially such a little baby girl. But you need to learn not to have accidents, don't you? So no drinks after supper, and remember to ask to go potty before bed. Can you do that like a big girl?"

"Y... Yes Mummy," I sobbed, wondering when the humiliation had overcome my self control. I hadn't even realised that I was crying. I screwed up my eyes and dabbed at them with the plushies, telling myself that I wasn't really that upset, and it was just because the emotions welling up so suddenly had surprised me. I was just playing a role, and I'd gotten a little carried away.

"Good. Now, would you like to pick out your diaper for today? I know you're meeting your friend, and I won't ask you to wear the butterfly one again. But this is still a punishment, and you don't get out of it for just a little good behaviour. So you can choose unicorns or spacemen."

I opened my fingers enough to peer between them, and saw her holding up two different diapers. The designs were similar to the one she'd just taken off me, just with different cartoon prints on them. I was breathing heavily, finding it hard to believe she would expect me to wear something like that when meeting a friend. My life would be over! But then I realised from the way she was holding them that there was something different. The one with spacemen and UFOs on didn't seem as large. It was thinner, I thought, and might allow me to walk normally. It was hard to tell without something to compare it to, but I thought they had a lower waist, so it might be possible for them to hide under clothes. And they didn't have tapes on. As Mum stretched them out, I could see they had elasticated sides, like regular underwear.

"The unicorns are thinner," she told me. "They're more discreet, and nobody will see them if you're careful. And they've got special tapes that you can take off and seal again, so you might be able to go potty once and put them back on if you're careful. Spacemen are a bit thinner too, but not as thin as the unicorns. And they're a pull-up one, so you can use the bathroom if you want to. But either way, I'll need you to promise me that you will wear them all day. Can you do that?"

"Yes Mummy," I mumbled from behind my protective wall of plushies. I was already trying to compare the two options. The unicorns would be the easiest to hide under my clothes, I thought. They looked practically like childish underwear if you ignored the tapes at the sides, although being so thin probably meant they wouldn't absorb as much as the other ones. The UFO ones I could probably hide if I wore my high-waisted jeans, and a top that was loose enough to hang past my waist would make it easier too. And with those, I would have no trouble taking bathroom breaks like normal. They weren't as cute as the unicorns, but they might end up being more practical. And then I thought back about what I'd just been thinking, and realised that there was no way I should be thinking about cuteness. I didn't want to feel like a little kid when I was out. And there was no reason to think about absorbency either, when I considered it. "Umm... Can I have the unicorns? And... can I go pee first? So I don't got to go after?"

I knew I was talking like a baby. Somehow it seemed appropriate to drop the big words from my vocabulary. I imagined how a little kid would say it, and let myself use those words. I was just a little kid, I told myself. I didn't need to think about the grown-up stuff like punishment, and helping my sister to take responsibility for her actions. I could pretend I was too young to need all that pressure, and somehow just pretending was enough to make me feel better.