Humpty Dumpty

This morning my (almost) two-year-old daughter thrice discovered the results of disobedience.

In the first case she took her chocolate Easter bunny out of the Easter basket after I told her to put bunny and basket back in the refrigerator. She dropped the unfortunate confection; it broke in two; and she burst out crying. Of course I pointed out to her that it would still be in one piece if she had listened to daddy—

A little while later she brought to me pieces of her mother’s work (cell) phone, which she knows quite well is off limits to her.

“It’s broken,” she said.

She had managed to remove the battery cover, upon which the battery had fallen out. Of course she did not know how to fix it. Daddy put the phone back together and after appropriate disciplinary measures, my daughter resumed playing.

Not so long after, the same little girl came to me, a big crocodile tear rolling down her cheek, and confessed, “the cover came off the ABC book.”

“OK, Mary,” I said, “where is it?”

When I found the book and cover it was clear what had happened. The outer paper cover had been glued to the insides of the back hardback cover and had been ripped off, taking strips of the paper that had been glued to the inside of the hardback cover with it.

Now my daughter has been warned repeatedly about taking the covers off of books, and she was generally saddened by the destruction of a book she liked. I took the opportunity to explain again the consequences of disobedience. It often causes good things to fall, come apart, and be broken. After my lecture, which little doubt did more good for me than it did for the precocious toddler, she helped me glue the cover back on the book, and then we read it together.