Breaking out the big guns.

“Mom!” Neva wails, running into the bathroom, where I’m putting away laundry, getting ready for the day. “Barrett’s not sharing his mints! He’s not letting me eat them!”

“Where are YOUR mints?” I ask her, knowing the answer. 

“I ate them already! I ate them one-at-a-time!” HER mints, which were distributed as equally as those of her brothers, have been gone for weeks. It took two days for hers to disappear. 

“Honey, Barrett is saving his.”

“He’s not! He’s not, Mom! He won’t give me ANY!”

“That’s because HE wants to eat his own mints, Neva. He’s saving them so HE can enjoy them.”

“No! He’s NOT, Mom! He hasn’t eaten any in a WEEK!” To Barrett and Neva, a “week” is the greatest conceivable measure of time. It’s longer than a year. (Definable lengths of time have no basis in their reality. I often hear phrases like, “It hasn’t been my birthday in a WEEK.” “Ten minutes to put away all these clothes? That’s like, one second!” “Forty-five minutes?! That’s like an hour!”)

“Honey, he doesn’t have to share them if he doesn’t want to. YOU got your own mints; you ate yours. He wants to eat his.”

“Well, fine,” she concedes rather maturely. She shrugs, tosses her hair over her shoulder, and then continues in three-year old babble. “But I think it’s inappropriate. And if you don’t care about me—” another pause— “well then, I’m not going to be on the girls’ team anymore. I’m on the boys’ team.” She blinks and looks at me defiantly. 

I give her my most exaggerated shocked-high-school-girl chin-drop gasp. “No. You’re not going to be on the girls’ team anymore, Neva?!”

She breaks into a big, little-girl smile. “I’m just kidding. I’m on your team, Mom.”