From the moment he arrived to the moment he left he was the focus of everyone's attention. Rightly so, because he's a fab little man, smiley and engaging, with a definite cheeky edge.
I learnt something in that hour of toddler time: to a toddler, EVERYTHING is a toy. Specifically, the things which were not designed to be toys. Even more specifically, the most expensive things in the room which were not designed to be toys. To take it one step further, he was fascinated by the TV. He also quite liked the laptop, but we hid that. There's nowhere in our house that you could hide a reasonable sized flat screen TV, not if you ever wanted to watch it.
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| Not a toy. |
Little man's mum was alert to this, and had him under close surveillance at all times. A fact I am grateful for. She also managed to prevent him from eating my car keys, which was nice too. For him and me.
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| A toy. |
So how do they know? It's not unique to this baby, I've see other ones drawn like a magnet to iron when they're placed within sight of some expensive item. I don't think we did anything to highlight the value of any specific items to him ("hello baby, listen carefully, these are the ten most expensive things in the room, please feel free to destroy them as you see fit") and we certainly didn't make the mistake of refusing him access to the TV. Innate ability? Some kind of genetic affinity with the magpie? I don't know.
The nice thing was that he wasn't actually interested in mauling the screen itself, it was the faux-carbon fibre weave on the stand he liked; running his tiny nails over the texture over and over again, making the sort of scratching noise usually reserved for sound effects in bad horror films. I suppose that's it really, it wasn't some unfathomable addiction to the pricey he was displaying, but an entirely fathomable desire to do something interesting. Nothing else in the room made that noise, or had that feeling. Maybe he'd never heard that noise before in his short life. He was exploring the world, the world where almost everything is still new to him, and that's a lovely thing to watch in someone else's child, so I'm really looking forward to watching it in my own.
So true, although one of the upsides is that video players are now, generally a thing of the past. You see when our children were young enough to suffer from the 'must destroy expensive items' syndrome the video was fair game. The main thing being that it had an opening flap big enough to shove crayons through and then trap tiny fingers in the way out. Being fairly sympathetic I was always willing to comfort whichever one had damaged fingers, but the amount of times I had to dismantle that bloody machine, I love DVD players.
ReplyDeleteI have heard of a toddler working out the open/close button on a DVD player and putting a crayon in!
DeleteThanks for reading! :-)
Oh.. anything that isn't meant to be a toy will become one. There are so many cause and effect games for them to discover! Pulling, breaking, bouncing... the list is endless!
ReplyDeleteI love watching them figure things out, it's completely amazing! So clever even when they're tiny, love it.
DeleteI think you're now fully prepared for the worst. 18 months on and my husband still cries when 'his' tv is touched. It's gonna happen :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm leaving the fingerprints from our friends toddler as a reminder not to be too precious about it :-)
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