“Come on, it’s time to sleep. 7:30, time for bed!“, I say to my 18-month old daughter.
She stops playing with her toys and instantly dashes off in the opposite direction from me, screaming “No” as loudly as she can. She follows it up with “NOOO, No no No no no NO NOOO”, still running. When she runs out of living room to run in, she simply makes a 180-degree turn and continues running.
“No” is, by far, her favorite word. She uses it more than all other words of her 18-month-old’s vocabulary combined. She can even say “No” in 3 languages. A few weeks ago, she realized that she can add “No” in front of other words to get more specific. “No Shoes”, “No Banana” and “No Bath” are among her favorite variants. In an O. Henry-esq twist, she has recently started adding “no” in front of “No” (i.e., saying No to No) to mean “Yes”.
“No-No” I say, trying to reason with her using her own vocabulary. “NOOOOOooooo” she replies, to which I say “Yes!”, which she ignores and continues running.
Communications have broken down at this point, so on her next pass running across the living room, I grab her and lift her up. Her feet are still running, despite being 4 feet off the ground, in a scene reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff and still continuing to pedal his feet in a desperate attempt to escape. She’s still screaming “No”, but my Dad-brain has learned to tune that frequency of sound off on demand.
She wiggles herself, still in my arms, turns around, points at the bookshelf and says “BOOK!”.
I stop walking towards the bedroom and look at her. I’m overcome with a moment of immense pride that my darling daughter has the same love for reading that I do. Well, well, the fruit has not fallen far from the tree. She wants to read in bed before going to sleep. I always knew that if I put in the time and patience, my daughter will learn all good habits from me, because kids always imbibe the best qualities of their parents.
I put her down as she runs over to her part of the bookshelf and picks up several children’s books. I shoot a meaningful look towards the wife, saying “See? She’s just like me!”. “Just you wait”, the wife says, not even looking up from her magazine.
Before I can ascertain what the meaning of “Just you wait” might be, my daughter is ready with 5 different books which she hands to me. “OK, lets go and read them in your room” I say to my daughter, as she marches over to her room.
I put her in her crib, sit down next to her, and open the first book. It’s about the “Very Hungry Caterpillar”. I open the first page, and start reading aloud to her.
At first, she’s paying full attention to me, as I swell with pride at how much she loves reading and loves books. About 30 seconds into the book, she starts climbing off the crib, and comes and sits down next to me, still looking at me with 100% attention. “…and so the very hungry caterpillar ate a banana…” I continue reading the book. She’s not in her bed anymore, but that’s OK. She’ll soon be so sleepy that she’ll go back into bed herself and put herself to sleep, I think to myself.
”…and the next day, the caterpillar was still hungry, so he…”
As I continue to read this book aloud I notice with the corner of my eye that the daughter has slowly scooted over to the toy box and has some toys in her hand. I wonder if I should pick her up and put her back inside her crib, but she’s still looking at me, as if saying “And then what happened to the caterpillar?”
I decide to ignore her and turn my attention back to the book. “…so the next day, he eats a pear…”. This book is going round in circles, I think to myself. By now, she’s got her Yoda doll, her guitar and her mini-mouse car out, and is full-on playing with them. I pause reading, pondering what I can do to get her sleeping. She notices I’ve stopped reading, so turns to me, points at the book and says “More!”
OK, I’ll continue reading I think. I read through the caterpillar story (spoiler alert: he becomes a butterfly), and then move on to the next book called “Five Little Monkeys”. She is now completely engrossed in her toys, trying to get Sophie the Giraffe to sit on top of Yoda. I read through more of the books, while she continues to play with her toys, but every now and then gives me just enough attention so that I’ll continue reading the book to her.
It’s 30 minutes since I started reading, and far from getting sleepy, she’s 100% back to playing with her toys.
I stop reading and look at her. She makes her cutest puppy face and looks at me with her deep eyes as if to say “Keep reading, keep reading. I’m listening. And then what happened to the monkeys?”. But as soon as I look toward the book and start reading, she’s instantly back with her toys, playing with them just like she had before bed time and completely ignoring the books.
“Oh my God!”, I think to myself as it dawns on me. This kid is scamming me. She’s not interested in the caterpillar or the monkeys at all. She’s just pretending to like books, so I’ll get distracted reading them, so she can avoid sleeping and keep playing with her toys. She’s weaponized my love for reading and is now using it against me!
I feel like a chump as I realize that I’ve been played by an 18-month-old kid. She’s managed to get me to do busy work for 30 solid minutes so she can have some extra playing time.
“All right, game over!” I say, as I put down the books, pick her up, put her in the crib and turn off the lights. She’s screaming “Book! More Book!”, but I’m on to her little game. As I close the door to her room, she’s looking straight at me. She makes her most earnestly honest face and with a melt-your-heart voice says “Book?”
I pause. Does she really want me to read to her? As I’m considering it, the wife’s earlier “Just you wait” comes to mind. Oh, no. This is another scam. I’m not falling for it again.
Just as I close the door, I catch a glimpse of the naughty expression of a satisfied con man on her face. She’s won this round.
I see a flashing vision of all the future scams she’s going to pull on me - Getting me to pay for Disneyland tickets because it’s a “team building exercise”, Buying her a car because “She can spend more time studying instead of commuting”. I’m sure there are going to be many more.
She’s almost 2 years old. Only 16 more to go.
