Cause and Effect

This morning my wife made one of our favorites for breakfast, a delicious, thick, blue berry, strawberry, black berry, and banana fruit smoothie to go with our German pancakes. My son and I drink every last drop within minutes of starting breakfast. Our little girl typically doesn't finish hers, so we look forward to devouring what she doesn't finish. After turning my head away for only a second, I heard my son yell, "No!" I whipped my head back around to find fruit smoothie all over my little girl, the table, her booster seat, and the floor. The look on her face was one of fascination, rather then guilt. I immediately cleaned her off and put her in time-out. How could she waste something so good! I told my wife that it was a dumb thing to do. Like any good mom, she immediately jumped to her defense: "It wasn't dumb. She was experimenting. Kids that age love to learn cause and effect. Don't stifle her creativity!" I let our daughter out of time-out and responded, "Now she knows that the effect of dumping her food is a time-out. There will come a time when you'll want me to stifle that 'creativity' of hers." As luck would have it, we had spaghetti for dinner tonight. Our little girl's "creativity"--which apparently  is a euphemism for messiness--sparked up again, resulting in noodles all over the table and floor. My wife and I looked at each other knowingly and laughed. Although I helped get her to stop, I had to fight hard to suppress a compelling urge to say, "I'm not going to stifle her creativity!"