My three-year-old: The Bad Influence

It’s amazing how ten minutes in kid world can become a microcosm for life in general and, if you look hard enough, a fast forward glimpse into what these little rugrats have in store for you. Lauren and I recently took the kids down to the pool for an afternoon and The Girl made fast friends with a little boy who was there with his mom. At three years old, The Girl has pretty much grown used to always being the youngest kid in a group, but this boy was only two and it was obvious from the first moment that he was in love and would follow her anywhere. She must have sensed this too, because within minutes she began testing his loyalties.

Standing on the side, the two of them would talk for a second, then The Girl would spontaneously announce, “I’m going over there,” and run to the other side of the pool. The little boy would have a moment’s hesitation where he looked at his mom in the water, then at my daughter beckoning him from twenty feet away. Then, making the hard decision, he would run, with many looks back, to The Girl. His mom and I would swim our way over to the two chatting kids just in time to hear The Girl announce that she was going back over there now, and run in the direction from whence we had all just arrived, forcing the little boy into another hard decision.

Personally, I didn’t mind shadowing my daughter all over the pool—that’s why we had come down here after all—but it was apparent that this boy’s mom was tired and really didn’t feel like swimming back and forth just to follow her son while he followed a girl. We learned earlier that she’d just had another baby six weeks earlier and this was one of the first times she’d been out of the house. But it was apparent her little boy was indeed prepared to follow our little girl no matter how many times she ran away from him. And the more The Girl scurried away, the less he looked to his mom for approval before pursuing. Sensing the mom’s lack of energy, I suggested to my daughter that we stay in one spot. Not to be deterred, she immediately changed tactics and began subtly taunting her newfound friend.

“How old are you?” she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be since she’d asked the same question a half dozen times already. It took the younger boy a few seconds to formulate his words and position his fingers into the correct number of digits. “I…two!” She immediately shot back, “Oh well I’m three!” After about the tenth round of this exchange with The Girl asserting her numeric superiority, the boy actually started lying to sound better. “I…tree!” he said. The Girl, knowing better (and knowing full well what she was doing I might add) mocked, “You’re not three! You’re two! I’m three!”

The mom, trying to keep her part in this whole thing as jovial and non-confrontational as possible, stuck up for her son with a lame, “Oh he’ll be three in a few months, won’t you buddy.” The Girl considered this for a moment, then looked at the boy and decided to taunt him another way. “That’s my daddy,” she said, pointing to me. “Your daddy’s not here.”

My stomach dropped. In five minutes time, she’d progressed from a coy little game of cat and mouse, to throwing veiled insults at the boy, to throwing veiled insults at his family. I was honestly rendered speechless. I couldn’t see scolding her over this. It was a perfectly normal three-year-old conversation topic after all, and she wasn’t blatantly mocking this kid by any stretch. But I knew better. We all did by this point. This wasn’t a casual observation on The Girl’s part. It was a well-calculated dig, hidden behind the mask of innocence. The boy’s mom once again spoke up in defense, “His daddy is at home watching his baby sister so mommy could go to the pool.” I jumped on this and rallied to the mom’s side, “Oh see, they have a baby just like us. His daddy is home with the baby.”

The Girl, already bored with this new line of dialogue, changed tactics again. “I wanna jump, Daddy!” She shooed the little boy away with a flip of her hand then leapt three feet off the edge of the pool into my waiting arms. She looked back at her newfound puppy dog with a look that said, “See what I just did.” Earlier, before she and this boy became fast friends, he too had been attempting this stunt… only he didn’t so much jump into his mom’s arms as lean out until he was in contact with her hands before falling the rest of the way. I’m fairly certain The Girl saw this and remembered it. Now, off the boy’s look of hesitation, she threw her arms around my neck, laid her head on my chest and said in a loud clear voice, “I love you, Daddy.”

That settled it. Even at two years old this kid knew that to impress a girl and steal her away from the man in her life, he couldn’t just match what she had done. He had to do it three times bigger and five times more dangerous. Just behind the ledge where The Girl had jumped was a slightly higher ledge. Just behind that was a brick wall about two feet high. The little boy, who not ten minutes earlier had been afraid to jump from the ledge two inches above the water, was gearing up for a stunt that was certain to impress the little redhead he was quickly falling in love with… if he didn’t split his head open in the process. Fortunately I, Lauren and the boy’s mom all had the good sense to stop him before he took a flying leap off Blind Man’s Bluff. One of us made up some lame but plausible excuse that would allow us to separate the kids before The Girl could convince him to elope with her.

Boy oh boy. She looks so harmless, but apparently my daughter has the potential to be that girl the other moms view as a “bad influence.” She speaks well. She’s sweet and courteous. She has a soft porcelain face that absolutely cries, “Innocence!” But let us not forget that fiery red hair and the temper that comes along with it. This kid is smart, shrewd, calculating. She’ll learn how to wrap people around her finger and use them to her liking. I only pray she uses them for good and not for evil. I don’t want to field phone calls from angry parents over why their son missed curfew and ended up in jail over a dare. I really don’t ever want to think of my daughter as being that proverbial “Madonna/Whore” package.

It does give me hope that when the boy and his mom finally left the pool, The Girl watched him go, forlornly waving goodbye, and spent the next two hours sadly asking, “Where the boy go? Where the boy go?” She really did love him. She just didn’t know how to express it. Maybe we’ll just keep her away from the pool for awhile.