Before I had children, I
loved the Laura Numeroff books.
If You Give a Moose a Muffin
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
If You Give a Pig a Pancake
Now they just hit too close to home to be funny.
My children are the Moose, the Mouse and the Pig.
There is no end to their
string of requests.
A big ball of
string.
A big ball of
never-ending string.
Unlike the Moose, the Mouse and the Pig, there
doesn’t seem to be a coherent reason for the next necessity.
If you give a pig a pancake she’ll want some syrup to go with it.
Sequitur.
If you take a boy to the pool to play he will ask for a box on the way home.
Non sequitur.
If you give a mouse a cookie he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.
Sequitur.
If you give a boy a cookie he’s going to ask for 3 more cookies, a trip to the park and a piece of scotch tape.
Very long and winding non sequitur.
That is the root of the problem. It appears that the Moose, the Mouse and the Pig are
more reasonable than my children.
I am raising kids who are
less reasonable than fictional barnyard animals.
Lately I have tried preempting the post-offering request:
When we go to the pool, mommy will decide what else we do and where we go and who we see and you will thank your dear mother for the trip to the pool and thank God for such a sweet mother.
When I give you this cookie, that is it. I would be glad to offer a glass of milk to drink with it, but nothing else. Not even scotch tape.
The basic problem with the preemptive post-offering request is that I am not as creative as my children and can’t even come close to covering all the crazy demands that they find so important.
So I just say NO.
And they just say WHY.
And I find myself in some crazy explanation why I don’t carry a box of 1000 paperclips in my purse that they need, that we can’t drive to China and that Venus Flytraps don’t usually eat people and aren’t sold at Target so we won’t be buying one today.
And this is where my boys could learn a lesson from the Moose, the Mouse and the Pig:
Reasonable requests are hard to turn down.
Of course you can have syrup with your pancake.
Of course you can have milk with your cookie.
I would need some syrup and milk too.
How can you have pancakes without syrup?
How can you have cookies without milk?
And while we are on the subject of things we can learn from fictional barnyard characters, I would like to point out that the mouse swept the entire house then washed the floors…
I only knew about If you give a mouse a cookie because we got it as a gift. Now, I’ll have to go check out the others too. My son love the mouse book and asks for it at least once a week.
I’m with Shannon, I am raising kids who are less reasonable than fictional barnyard animals. –> Too funny.
After too many unreasonable requests and whys, I revert to a family favourite and holler, “I’ll slap you to sleep and then I’ll slap you for sleepin’!”
Sometimes it works.
What a sweet post and photo. The whole time I was reading it I was picturing them with moose antlers, mouse whiskers, and a little curly tail. I’ll keep my fingers crossed your mouse gets busy on those floors…
Oh goodness this made me spit out sweet tea. This line was the one that ruined my couch – “I am raising kids who are less reasonable than fictional barnyard animals.”
Thanks for that:)
I am so behind on blogs and found myself deleting them without reading them, from my reader. So glad I read this, I love it… and it’s so true!
I had a “If you give a ____ a ___” post swirlling around in my head last weekend….and now this is the third I’ve read since then! Great minds must think alike! ; )
Oh my goodness, this post makes me happy. I can very much relate and love the comparison!
OH! We absolutely LOVE those books in our house here too!!! 🙂
They’re WONDERFUL!