Toddler morality

The other morning I discovered that my two and a half year old is well on the way to a life of petty crime… I was in the kitchen attempting to repair the carnage that breakfast in our house inevitability brings, and the munchkin was happily playing in the dining room.  I could hear her ‘tidying’ the coasters and ‘putting away’ her toys.  All is well, I thought, and ploughed on with the washing-up mountain.  Next I hear her ask, “Can I play with Stanley, Mummy?”

Stanley is a plastic money box that Nanny brought her a few weekends ago.  Nanny works in a well-known bank (as they say on the Beeb!) and the plastic money box is in the shape of the aforementioned ‘Stanley’ the dog, which is in the adverts at the moment.  The money box caused some hilarity (and some squirming from me) when, the munchkin went round asking all the guests in our house for “some coins for my moneybox”.  That’s OK when it’s the people who brought the moneybox, and even Mummy and Daddy, but when she started pouncing on friends we had staying and saying, “No, I want a silver one!” it got a touch embarrassing!

Anyway, I digress, on this particular morning she was merrily playing with Stanley, “Shall we go over here, Stanley”, “Come on Stanley let’s go for a walk” etc and then I heard the tinkle of money being dropped into the money box.  I knew there were a couple of pennies on the side that I had found in the lining of my handbag earlier, so I paid no heed, but then I realised there were a good deal more tinkles that there had been pennies…

I popped my head around the door to see the munchkin emptying coins, one by one from my purse into her moneybox.  She looked at me and in all innocence said, “Look Mummy, I’ve found some real money for my money box”!

R

If this two and a half, what hope is there?!