When Matt was little all us earthy crunchy granola moms used to sit around discussing the most heated of parenting subjects. One of the hot parenting trends of the moment was to eliminate the word NO from your vocabulary when speaking to your child. This is how it would work: Let's say that my cute little baldy boy Matt was being held captive hanging out in his high chair and I gave him some paper and some crayons except he thought the crayon would look much nicer on the arm of his high chair. And I stopped yacking on the phone long enough to register observed Matt graffiti-ing drawing on his restraining device high chair. I would not, as instinct would dictate scream NO! and angrily grab the crayon out of his hands screaming about how much the chair cost or how his daddy worked so hard to provide him with nice things he didn't have any respect for, instead I would calmly approach my child and say in a sing song voice "Crayons go on paper" and then I would demonstrate the proper use of crayons on paper and Matt would imitate scribbling with crayons on paper and I'd clap my hands in false only for toddlers excitement and say "Yay! Crayons go on paper! That's right Matt!" sigh. Those were the days of my unlimited patience, I have to tell you, I fear I would barely recognize myself. But that method did work like a charm, especially for Matt who was born eager to please, much like a good quality pure bred german shepherd puppy. Woof!
So, this is how I did things back in my youth, and this is how I got the best baby of all time, and I never ever once told Matt NO! and I was pretty proud of that. I figured (hahahaha) he would never say NO! to me either.
Now, Matt was a tall baby and if you have a tall baby people tend to think he is older than he is and they completely ignore that he is toothless, drooling, fat like a baby, and completely bald and they start to ask him questions that he can't answer yet. So I would stroll around Brooklyn with my tall for his age year old baby in the stroller and nice friendly well meaning folks would bend over and ask 1 year old Matt "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" and before I could tell the annoying stranger they were talking to almost still an infant baby Matt would scream out NO! and for the first 27 times I could not for the life of me figure out where in the world Matt got the NO! from. Pretty much Matt's response to any question was NO! I had never told him NO!. I was sure of it. I was dumbfounded. And then one day I was thinking about the NO! as I walked the dog with Matt. And when the dog went to sniff something indescribably gross I said "NNOOooooooo" and when the dog was about to bark at a passing by dog I said "NNNOOOooo" and when the dog tried to cross the street on his own I said "NNNOOOooooo" and as if the heavens parted and the angel beam of light shined right on my head I realized that Matt must be talking to dogs when he says NO! to every probing stranger question.
This did not explain why Matt used to crawl around our living room with a ball in his mouth, or enjoy a playful game of fetch before dinner, but at least I knew where he had gotten the NO! from.
LOLOLOL Oh my god was that hillarious! Thanks for the laugh.
Posted by: Laura | March 18, 2008 at 10:46 AM