John John loves his sister, but sometimes he needs to exclude her just to have something for himself. Some space in an idea that he doesn’t have to share everything.
He often likes to engage in food related pretend play, where he is the server, John and I are the customers. Some days he is selling ice cream, some days he is selling restaurant food. Some of the time, he will tell me, “You and Papa can have this, but Koko can’t have any, okay?”
It cracks me up that he gets some satisfaction withholding pretend food from a girl who is not even around or interested when this type of activity is usually happening.
She is around, though, on occasion. And then, he will have to make up a food that she can’t even pretend to eat.
The other day he was playing ice-cream shop.
“Mama, do you want ice cream?”
“Okay. What flavor is it?”
“It’s a grown up flavor, so Koko can’t have any.”
“What kind is it?”
“It has caff, caff…” he struggled to find the word for that thing we don’t let him drink. We drink a lot of coffee and tea, and he knows it’s not for kids.
“Caff…caff… It has alcohol,” he finally came up with.
Yes, that is the other interdit for children in our house.
**on a side note, he was recently playing restaurant and asked me what I wanted to order. I asked him for an ice cream sandwich, and he goes, “That’s disgusting!!” and I realized he had never had an ice cream sandwich, so took the words literally. Ice cream sandwich, extra mustard, hold the mayo. Yuk.