Now let me start off by saying, my 3 year old is not always content. In fact, yesterday, he threw a fit (in church no less) because I broke his granola bar in half. The audacity of me! But the other day I took him and his 3 siblings to Toys’r’Us to use gift cards they had received and I couldn’t believe what he taught me.
(Yes, I should get an award for taking 4 kids to Toys’r’Us. The funny thing is, my almost-9 year old and 10 1/2 year old have only ever been in this store one other time in their lives!) But anyway, back to the story.
The gift cards they had to spend were $15 each and I knew that my 3 year old had zero concept of money. So we went around the store looking at toys. (It IS a fun store!) We spent about 30 minutes looking and he kept saying “no thank you.” At one point he threw a hideous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pillow in the cart but then 5 minutes later said, “I don’t want it” and put it back. Thank goodness!
We came to the Thomas the Train area. This kid is obsessed with all things trains and loves Thomas too. He has a train table with tracks but only a few trains. I figured he would fall in love with everything there. The older kids kept showing him toys in his price range and he said, “No.” Finally he said, “I have enough trains.” Wow. For some reason that really sobered me because he LOVES trains but said that his 2 were enough.
We moved along to blocks. I asked if he wanted some more blocks. “No thank you,” he said. “I have enough blocks.” Wow. Who is this kid and who has parented him? 😉
By this time it’s been over an hour and we’ve got to leave soon to get the girls to gymnastics. I asked him about tons of stuff. The only thing he even seemed remotely interested in, of course, was a $400 ride-on 4-wheeler. But he was happy with sitting on it for a few minutes and leaving. I finally had decided that he was going to have to leave empty-handed but right before he left he spotted the basketballs. “I want that!” he grinned. Apparently he didn’t have enough basketballs already. (Just 1)
But I kept mulling it over in my head. How many times do I think I need more clothes/shoes/makeup/purses etc when really, I have enough?
Thank you sweet boy for the lesson you (inadvertently) taught me!)
About Kelli Hays
