I spent the whole day yesterday baking with 4-year-old Big Brother. We made cookies, muffins, biscuits, and date loaf. It took us five and a half hours.
Big Brother was a “good little helper” in the way that only an eager 4-year-old can be, and we had a lot of fun. But by the end of the day, there were certain phrases that made me twitch. These are those phrases.
5. Why
4. Oops.
3. Now you can clean it up!
2. I can do it by myself.
1. Don’t worry, I can help you.
Jo Eberhardt is a writer of speculative fiction, mother to two adorable boys, and lover of words and stories. She lives in rural Queensland, Australia, and spends her non-writing time worrying that the neighbour's cows will one day succeed in sneaking into her yard and eating everything in her vegie garden.
haha! My oldest niece is in the “but why?” stage. I swear I wanna pull out my hair every time she says that. “Stormie, quit pulling on the curtains.” “But why?” “Stormie, stop tacklin’ your sister.” “But why?” I finally end up saying, “‘Cause I said so. That’s why.” Gotta love kids! 😉
I know, it drives me crazy. But I remember how much I hated “because I said” as a kid, so I try to avoid it. It doesn’t always work. 🙂
My most terror inducing phrase is, “nothing” as in, “what are you doing?” “NOTHING!!”
Yikes.
Yeah, Big Brother has just started on that one. At the moment, I can still get a legitimate answer to the follow-up question: “You’re actually doing nothing, or you’re doing nothing that you want me to know about?”
Soon, things are bound to get a lot worse.