Monkey see, monkey do (Anna)

We have a countdown technique with Emma when she's resisting a transition of some kind. For example, if we need her to come out of her cardboard house to get dressed, or if we are asking her to put down a toy before we go out, we tell her that we're going to give her a countdown and that by the time we get to zero she needs to do whatever it is we're asking her to do. At around 5 or 4, we remind her what she has to do (sometimes she gets distracted, so it's only fair). This technique is extremely effective. Occasionally we have to force the issue (she can't say she wasn't warned), but most of the time, by zero, she's happily - even proudly - obliging. Sometimes she even requests a countdown when she has to transition into something.

All of that is preamble to a story...

Tonight, Emmy and I were playing around with the guitar while Caroline got dinner on the table. Caroline called, "Dinner," and I said, "Yup. Coming."

A few minutes later, I was still messing around on the guitar, and Caroline said, "Come and eat, folks."

I said something slightly facetious like, "Mummy's telling us to stop playing. We should probably go and eat, or we might get in trouble. What do you think?"

And Emma replied, "Countdown! Mumma? 10-9-8-6-7. 'tar [guitar] away Mumma. 5---3-4-3-3-1! Put it away!!" [we knew she could count to ten with reasonable accuracy; we had no idea she could do such an impressive approximation of counting DOWN from ten - we must be using this technique more than we thought!]

Needless to say, as soon as I realised what she was doing, I scrambled to put the guitar away, and just about made it by zero. She looked at me proudly and said," Did it!" and we headed to the dinner table.

I think we're past the days of doing anything without her copying it. There is something profound about that.

In a few years time, she'll be giving us curfews. *sigh*