Ever found yourself wondering what to do with your children (or age-deficient relatives) during the school holidays? How can you have fun while satisfying the humor and intellect of both age groups? How, as a parent, do you juggle such demands?
In the interest of science, today I endeavored to find out. Conveniently I have access to a small selection of cousins, nieces and nephews to practice my future parenting skills on. Thankfully, after practicing, I can give them back. Today’s child is Lucy.
Today’s fun game
What you tell the child: Sticky taping your thumbs to your hands to see what it feels like to be a dinosaur
What you tell the adults: Severely reducing the dexterity of a small child while you laugh at them fail a series of simple tasks
Task number 1. Unlocking the front door
The first hurdle of picking up the keys was met with initial frustration, but as soon as Lucy realised she could slip her tiny carrot-like fingers into keyring, she had the upper-hand. Lucy quickly got the keys in the lock and fumbled her way to success. The door never stood a chance.
At this point I started to feel like I’d picked a child of much higher intelligence than I anticipated. Maybe I should have chosen Sam, her monotone younger brother who sounds like Brick from Anchorman. I would have to step up my game with the next task.
Task number 2. Call her mum on the telephone
I was pretty sure this would be her downfall. Cats don’t use phones. Why? Because they don’t have thumbs.
Lucy picked up the phone with two hands and placed it down on the table in a very similar series of events that resembled watching a monkey trying to break into a nut. You could almost see the cogs of her tiny brain whizzing as she poked and prodded the phone, pushing it round the table like the final pea, trying to figure out how to get the phone to her face.
Eventually trial and error taught her to use her nimble little child fingers like a crab and dial the numbers with her nose – OMG, this child is a genius. Some kind of mathemagician!
My brain was going nuts trying to figure out how to foil the child. Because at this point it had stopped being a game, and started being a sport. A competition of child evolution vs. adult stubbornness.
Task number 3. Read the newspaper
At last Lucy’s hands we’re just too small to hold the paper and turn the pages. Picking the staples out of the spine of the newspaper while she wasn’t looking definitely helped the instability of the paper and sealed my victory. Child 2, adult 1.
I was on a roll. Small movements are tough with no thumb to stabalise what you’re holding. I quickly figured out where I was going to get the best effort to laughter ratio.
Task number 4. Buttons!
The fact the button was on her own jumper made it even funnier. At one point I almost chocked myself as I laughed so much I snorted some Hob Nob biscuit up my nose while watching her face contort with confusion. When she got angry at the button and started shouting ‘What’s wrong with the button. Why won’t you go in the hole?‘, and before I suffocated on the mushed up HobNob still lodged in my nose and throat, I stopped the game and declared victory. Child 2, Adult 2.
The final battle. The cruelest of all.
Task 5. Pealing of a piece of sticky tape off the roll
The very same sticky tape that had mocked Lucy only minutes earlier as she failed to open a single button. How would she fare? How could anyone, tiny child fingers aside, grasp the tiny, illusive corner of a piece of sticky tape with no thumb to wedge it against to gain leverage to pull? HOW?
Apparently child fingers are actually baby snakes. Baby snakes that can bend and twist into any shape, working individually with utter disregard for the laws of physics. This is the only way I can rationalise how she did it. Child 3, adult 2.
Game Over.
The next parental game we shall play will be with 4 year old Sam when I tell him he’s left the light on in the fridge and he has to figure out how to turn it off.
badly stuffed animal 