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One thing I have noticed about our toddler - your toddler may vary - is that if he is ever up to anything bad - say, for example opening DVD cases and ripping the inserts out of them, and we STOP him - he will proceed onto things of "equivalent badness". For example, he will move on to pulling out shelves, or pulling out glass bakeware, or tipping a TV tray with things on it, spitting his food out on his lap or teetering dangerously on top of something. It takes him quite a while to get out of this pattern: that seems to require either actually getting away with something on his laundry list of toddler evil, a change of scenery or on rare occasions, a feeding.
I don't know how else to phrase the "equivalent badness" aspect other than to say it consists of activities that require the same amount of parent alarm and intervention.
So here's my homegrown "law" - I'd like to know if it applies to the toddlers of other parents:
A toddler thwarted from an activity will shift to another activity of equivalent badness.
It seems that you have found a new natural law; the conservation of badness. I wonder if it holds up in later ages as well…
Perhaps it is conserved in later life, but not on an individual basis, but rather, in a population?
I haven’t tried to microwave my head or drive really fast or pull over bookcases just for fun. Not often, anyhow. I wonder who got my allocation of badness? :)
Well, it could just take another form. Perhaps you turn from someone who pulls over bookcases to someone who prevents someone else from pulling over bookcases. Isn’t that also bad (to that someone who wants to pull them over)?
Or, perhaps there’s a mechanism that transfers badness between people. What could be the medium for that?
“Not only does it apply to every toddler I’ve seen, but it also applies to dogs.. I’d like to call it the ‘poo-licking law’.. ;-)”
So what exactly does Brown’s Poo-Licking Law consist of? :)
I’ve only ever really had one coprophagic (yes, that’s a real word!) dog, but I’m not sure whether you mean consumption, or that the dogs lick or eat that and then go on to lick other things or toddlers or…
…please clarify before my horrible imagination gets the best of me!