In this running series, I’ll document my daughter’s verbal pyrotechnics. My focus will be on less what she says than how and why she says it.
My daughter doesn’t like carrots, but they’re on her plate every night. Typically, we give her one more carrot that she will eat, then talk her into consuming what we really hoped she would eat.
Typically, she adopts the, “How many carrots do I have to eat?” tactic.
Tonight, she set off a rhetorical bomb by going after the carrot’s taste.
She announced, with no other fanfare, “This carrot tastes like the vacuum smells.”
Mission accomplished. After my wife and I had finished laughing, we let her out of that night’s carrot consumption.
The (perhaps) dangerous message we were sending? It’s not your objection. It’s how you object.
Learning Together 