No Fair! No Fair! Why You Cannot Argue With A Child’s Logic

When our Little Miss was about two and a half, she was crawling out of her crib on a regular basis. As parents, my husband and I thought avoiding head and neck injuries from falling while crawling out of a crib was a good thing. Therefore, we bought her a day bed.

Little Miss was our third daughter and by this time we had learned to ease in change. Therefore, we left her crib set up, but with the side down and put her thousands of stuffed animals in it. We told Little Miss that she could sleep in her big girl day bed while her stuffed animals slept in the crib.

This worked well. At least until we thought enough time had passed that it was safe to take her crib down. Generally by morning most of the animals had been retrieved and were in the day bed with Little Miss. Therefore, we concluded that the crib was no longer needed.

So one fine Saturday morning, my husband got out his rechargeable drill and began disassembling the crib. Little Miss was occupied with eating cereal in the living room and watching cartoons. But she wandered upstairs to see what dad was doing.

Apparently taking the crib down was not on her playlist. She began running around the house with her hands in the air shouting “No fair! No fair! Daddy’s taking my lid off.”

Being adults, my husband and I had lost the essentials of childhood logic and it took us a little while to grasp this concept. In the meantime, Little Miss stood in her Tinkerbell jammies holding her Mickey Mouse flannel blanket staring at my husband with a terrified look on her face.

Ultimately he asked Little Miss if she wanted him to stop taking her crib apart. With a quivering lip she solemnly shook her head no. “Then I won’t, he assured her.” That solved the dilemma and life went on.

Growing up, our three daughters had many pets. This included our share of hamsters and gerbils, dogs and cats and at one time ducks and rabbits. The rabbits and ducks were gifts from the Easter bunny one year. We had a large fenced in back yard and the rabbits and ducks got along well enough with our two basset hounds. Or rather, they got along pretty well with our male basset hound, Buddy boy, but not his mother.

By summer we had two of the three original ducks left and one rabbit. The rabbit was a large lop eared fluffy rabbit we called Abby Rabbit. We let Abby Rabbit roam the back yard during the day time and she would take refuge under our deck. Under the deck was Mamma Hound’s territory and the two squared off. All of our basset hounds got plenty of exercise and none were the lumpy Pillsbury dough boy type of fat bassets. Mamma Hound was particularly small and lean.
After some initial growling followed by a warning ground thump, mamma hound was excised from under the deck by a series of powerful kicks delivered by one Abby Rabbit to a howling Mamma Hound. From that point on Mamma Hound grudgingly agreed to share the space under the deck with Abby Rabbit.

Ducky didn’t fare so well. Ducky had a bird brain and was dumber than the basset hounds, which themselves were dumber than a box of rocks. Let’s face it, hush puppies are loveable but if you’ve ever owned one you know they aren’t known for being the smartest canines.

Ducky wandered the back yard, swam in the kids’ wading pool and ate bugs from the garden. Ducky ate things by pecking at them. Ducky also ate dog food from the bowl. This was fine with Buddy Boy but Mamma Hound was still a bit teed off with the burgeoning pet population, was most likely still holding a grudge against Abby Rabbit, and was not about to share food as well as napping places.

Mamma Hound warned Ducky with a growl that her food bowl was not to be touched. Ducky continued pecking at Mamma’s food bowl so Mamma nipped Ducky. Ducky pecked at Mamma’s nose and Mamma charged. Ducky was used to playing chase this way with Buddy Boy so Ducky turned and waddled away as fast as ducks can go. Mamma, however delivered one powerful chomp to Ducky’s behind leaving a bare spot, leaving Mamma with a mouthful of white duck feathers.

After consulting our neighbor who raised birds, we spent the next few weeks using diaper rash ointment on Ducky’s behind until his feathers grew back. We also moved Mamma’s food dish out of harm’s way.

Ducky’s companion was Lucky Duck who also played chase with Buddy Boy. Buddy Boy was a growing pup who could be a little rowdy. It turned out he was a little too rowdy for Lucky Duck the day he picked Lucky Duck up in his mouth and broke Lucky’s neck.

Then our children who were five and under came up with their own plan. We needed to have Ducky lay eggs so we could have more ducks. My husband and I explained, delicately, that we didn’t think that would work because we only had one duck. So if Ducky was going to be the mamma duck and lay eggs, we needed a daddy duck.

Children make their own sense out of the world and have their own reasoning and logic. The lack of a daddy duck didn’t slow down their plan. They simply used creative thinking and decided that the rabbit could be the daddy. It is impossible for adults to argue with logic like this and so my husband and I gave each other “that look” and agreed that the rabbit could be the daddy. Why not? After all we believed in diversity!

However, we were not prepared for the next series of events. As fall approached, Ducky laid an egg. All along we had thought Ducky was a dude. Being city kids, my husband and I forgot that fowl can lay unfertilized eggs. Therefore I looked at the migrating ducks in the sky and wondered if some fly by night rascal duck had violated our pet. Our bird savvy neighbor straightened that concept out.

Our oldest daughter started kindergarten that week and proudly took Ducky’s accomplishment for show and tell. Ducky’s accomplishment was accidentally dropped in the backyard, to the delight of Mamma Hound who loved eggs with anything. Ducky tried to lay another egg but became egg bound (according to our neighbor’s diagnosis) and succumbed to the inevitable.

But as for me, these days when life seems unfair and someone is trying to take my lid off, I try to remember to think out of the box and apply the concept that all things are possible and all problems are solvable. After all, why can’t the rabbit be the daddy and, if ducks can lay eggs, why can’t they be golden eggs?