Throwing Pancakes

How do you explain to a child what objects are for throwing and which ones are not? Well the general rule in our house for sometime has been, "if it's soft you may throw it. If it's hard, you may not." Brock really is a good kid, and rarely breaks this rule, but every now and then he cracks and a marble goes flying. Without fail, his standard response to a scolding is to quickly reassure us he knows the rules. "But you can throw Murray though. Murray is soft," he says as if that gets him out of trouble. (Brock still refers to himself as "you") If you press him to acknowledge his misdeed, he'll just keep repeating over and over, "but you can throw Murray though!"

It's also obviously time to update the definitions. Brock was inspecting a candle in a jar that Holly got for her birthday. He scratched the wax. "See how soft the wax is Brock?" I asked him. His eyes lit up like Christmas morning as he excitedly asked me, "you can throw wax?!?" No Brock, you may not. Thankfully, he nearly always asks permission first. 

My favorite throwing-permissions discussion though was over breakfast last week. Brock was enjoying some frozen mini-waffles when he got an idea. 

"Can you throw mini-waffles?"

"No Brock, you may not throw mini-waffles."

"But you can throw mini-pancakes though."

"No Brock! You can't throw mini-pancakes either. You can't throw any kind of food."

"But you can throw BIG pancakes to momma at the aquarium!"

Oh man. He got me. I never expected he'd already be recalling events from previous years to win logical arguments with me. (And this was literally the first time I'd heard him talk about Holly catching pancakes in Omaha.) I explained to him that if he ever worked at a "Penguins and Pancakes" breakfast at an aquarium, he could most definitely throw pancakes. Until then...