The Dichotomy of a Two Year Old

Feb

27th

2008

Tonight my son said two completely opposite things that 1) totally surprised me and 2) almost made me cry.

First, as we were sitting on the floor coloring Grover yellow and purple, he looked up at me, stood up, and said in a very forceful voice “GO AWAY, DADDY!”. I had never heard him say anything like that, and am still a little confused on where he picked that up. Regardless, it shocked me.

An hour or so later, we were hunting for dinosaurs. I sat down on the couch to rest (because dinosaur hunting is so very exhausting, mainly because of the large spear you have to carry around), and my boy walked up to me, wrapped his arms around me, looked up, and said “I love you, Daddy“. He’s said that before, but the manner in which he said it was completely different.

So, for the past hour, I’ve been searching my brain trying to figure out these two opposite statements and how they fit in to his little mindset of how things work in this big world. Initially, I shrugged it off as him just simply repeating words he has heard before as he seems to be at the age where his mind is a sponge that is soaking up new words every day.

But, I think the manner in which he said them and his body language discounts the sponge theory. He knew to put some force behind the “go away” words, and he hugged me when he told me he loved me. His concept of the context these phrases belong in is right on target.

I can completely understand him telling me that he loves me. His mom and I tell him that all the time, and we were having a blast at the moment just prior to his expression. However, we were having fun coloring too, yet he felt he needed to tell me to go away. I don’t know what it was the prompted him to say that. I’ll probably never know for sure.

Maybe I’ll be more careful about coloring Grover’s nose green next time.