My daughter the lawyer
Emmeline is destined for law school at this point in her life, at age six. Everything with her becomes a debate.
Today we go to my grandmother's house, as is our tradition, since we don't see her at Christmas. It's a long drive, and the kids often get bored there, so Bonnie announced, "Find one toy you want to bring with you."
"Like a Hot Wheel?" said James, rustling through his box of toy cars to find one sufficiently gleaming, candy-colored vehicle to bring with him. Bob wandered off to his room to find something.
"Like Yu-Gi-Oh cards?" Emme asked.
"Mummy said one toy," I explained.
"That *is* one toy," Emme argued. "It's one *type* of toy made of many cards."
"They'll get lost or something," I replied. "Forget about it. Find something else."
"So just *one* toy, one *thing*? A big toy or a small toy?" she demanded.
"A small toy -- something that you'll remember to take home with you when we leave, and something that's relatively portable," I said, exasperated.
A few moments later she returned from her room, with a look of concern on her little face.
"I can't find a small toy I want to bring. It'll *need* to be a big toy," she insisted.
"Nuh-uh. No big toys in the van ..." I said.
"I only have a *few* small toys I'd want to bring," Emme interjected. "Like a Barbie doll. I could bring a Barbie doll," she said.
This is the "wear the parent down until they capitulate to your demand" part of negotiations. She won.
Comments
Yeah, she did this at the hotel the other day, but giving the child her due, she does have a logical mind, and she's fearless.
James was playing with a plastic ring, the kind you blow up, in the hotel swimming pool. The lifeguards didn't say anything until their boss happened to wander in and told them to get it out of the pool.
Emme had wanted to play with the ring, and wanted to know (perfectly sensibly) why it wasn't allowed. It's the kind of thing she wouldn't "let go", so we asked the lifeguard.
It turned out he had no idea, either. He was pretty cool about the whole thing, and Emme found something else to lobby for, her "floaties", which were allowed.
She definitely has a destiny as an activist of some kind, let's hope that it's not for the Republicans.
Posted by: Capecoder | January 1, 2004 12:41 PM