Tiny Man Talks

I have written previously about conversations with my daughter. I finally have managed to capture certain discussions with my son, who is nearly four. Below is his latest attempt to delay bedtime.


“Mommy, dere’s a bug on my bed.”

“No, son, there’s no bug on your bed.”

“Dere’s a bug IN my bed… in da covers.”

“No, son, there’s no bug in your covers.”

“Dere’s a bug under my bed. It flew up into the sky.”

“Tiny Man, go to bed.”

His stalling tactics are brilliant. Since we moved to another state, I have had a hard time getting him to talk on the phone or web camera to his father, who lives 8.5 hours away. We used to bribe him. It stopped being effective this past fall.

“Tiny! Daddy is on web cam,” called out his sister one day.

“No, no talk right now,” he answered as he looked at a Martha Stewart Living magazine, the Halloween edition.

“Daddy says he has a shark! Come see the shark.”

Tiny Man turned a page sharply, slapped it down, and sang out without even looking up, “Not workinnngg!”

Aside from dancing naked at bath time, we are having a particularly hard time motivating our little boy to cooperate with this same specific thing again—talking on the phone.

“It’s time to talk to your father,” I said this week and began directing him to the stairs where his sister was on the phone.

“No. I no want to.”

“It’s time. Go talk.”

“My tummy hoits.”

“No, it doesn’t. You’re fine. Your father is waiting,” I said again as I picked him up and carried him up the stairs. “Just say hi, so he hears your voice, and then you can go play.”

“I fink it’s time to brushy teef!”

“No, son.”

“Hey—dere’s dis time, and my dad, he holdy me.”

“Here we go, Tiny Man. Daddy is on the phone.”

“Noooooooooo.” Within seconds of my putting my son down, he weaseled out of my arms and scampered down the hall.

You know those expressions-- nailing jello to a wall or herding cats. Yes, exactly.