Thursday, March 15, 2012

Toddler Logic

I spend the majority of my conversational time on any given day engaged in dialogue with a toddler. Especially with Yoni gone the past few days, adult conversations are hard to come by.
As a result, my brain is trained to speak in ways easily received by a toddler's logic. Yesterday, I had to stop and laugh on many occasions as I held my tongue and narrowly avoided making a fool of myself.

At the grocery store, the cashier rudely turned to the "help" and said, "Why are you just standing there? Get me a price on..." Immediately, my brain (thankfully not my mouth) started responding, "Can you please use your manner words?"

While walking through the makeup aisle at Target, I overheard a teenager (I guess this one isn't so different from a toddler...) whining to her Mom, "How come you never get me what I want??" While the Mom ignored her (which might be the preferable response when dealing with teenagers), my brain voice started saying, "Please use your big girl voice. Mommies do not understand whining."

Twice (thankfully within the confines of our house), I actually said out loud the words of my brain. This time, the humor was not because of conversing with adults, but rather the opposite...

"Libby, if you act like a good girl, you can do more things that you enjoy." (after I wouldn't let her outside because she kept going out to bark)

In response to his oh so famous screeeeeeeeeeeeching... "Ze'ev, please use your words." Whoops... he doesn't have any words yet.