How early do kids learn to con adults? I think he learns it in the crib. (I’m using boys as my example because that is what my great-grands are. Girls are equally conniving.)
If I cry, Mommy or Daddy will come and hold me. If Grandma is here, she’ll try to beat my parents to the crib. I love watching them all try to come through in the doorway at the same time. That’s so funny, but I keep crying until one of them picks me up.
Then the little darling turns two. He soon learns to sit on the potty chair without filling said chair until Mom, Dad or Grandma gets tired of reading stories. Then exactly one minute after the Pull-up is up, the tot fills it. The adult will get frustrated and turn red in the face, but won’t yell because the little angel tried. Then he gets more attention while getting his pull-up changed.
As he starts pre-school he learns even more skills from their classmates, such as, “I really, really, really want it,” while making this sad, little face. So the adult, especially Great-grandmas, give in and the little sweetie has a new toy. As he progresses through pre-school and kindergarten he learns to just stand and look at the toy with wide eyes while saying, “I don’t need a new toy. I just want to look at them.” Try to say no to that.
Then just as kindergarten is ending and the little sweetie can read simple words, he asks Great-grandma to take him to “the library that sells toys,” i.e., Barnes and Noble. He runs straight to the toy department carefully not noticing a single book, even those on special display. Finally Great-grandma steers him to the train play table with several of the “Thomas the Tank Engine” family just sitting there waiting to be joined together and driven around the tracks, over bridges and even into the round house.
After playing quietly and sharing the trains with other little boys for about an hour, the child notices, like he had just seen them, the train cars hanging from the display. He points out several new double car sets. Great-grandma explains that they cost too much. The boy continues to scan the display naming the train cars that he already had. Then he came to one named Patrick. “This one is Patrick. I don’t have him.”
“Maybe you’ll get one for Christmas.”
“But Patrick is my little brother and I love him.”
No need to describe how this story ended.
© by Sharon D. Dillon, May 26, 2013