If You Give a Toddler a Book About a Cookie

You already know he's going to want 400 unrelated things to go with it.

If you give a toddler a book about a cookie, he will ask for a cookie before you have finished reading the first page.

Then he will ask for a cookie after the second page.

Then he will begin screaming COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE so loudly that you cannot finish reading the book, and one of your eardrums will split open, and halfway around the world, the glass in the Sydney Opera House will shatter.

Once you have promised that he can have a cookie at dinnertime, he will ask for milk.

The milk will remind him that he wants to read his farm book, so you will get that out, and he will press all the farm animal noise buttons at once, and the baby will wake up (after somehow sleeping through the cookie screams).

Seeing you holding, kissing, and changing the baby will remind him that he is the main character of the universe and that any attention bestowed on another child is the equivalent of a war crime.

Once you have calmed him down, he will ask to go outside and play. You’ll have to find his shoes and socks.

The shoes and socks are in the Tupperware cabinet for no apparent reason. Also, he wiped his nose with one of the socks, so you’ll need a clean one.

Getting a clean sock will remind your toddler that it is fun to put socks onto his hands and yell MITTEN PUPPET and demand that you make his mitten puppets talk to one another.

The on-the-fly conversation that you hastily put together on behalf of the mitten puppets will be unsatisfactory, and your toddler will scream with rage.

You will try to get him to calm down with the Daniel Tiger “give a squeeze, nice and slow, take a deep breath and let it go” routine and he will immediately request a posthaste viewing of Daniel Tiger.

However, he has already exceeded the maximum recommended daily screen time for children of his age, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, so you will say no, and he will scream with rage.

But by now the baby is also screaming with rage and you need to feed the baby, so you will say to heck with the American Academy of Pediatrics, and turn on Daniel Tiger once your toddler has grudgingly said “please.”

Watching Daniel Tiger will remind him that he is thirsty.

He will ask for a cup of milk. You will still be feeding the baby, and unable to get a cup of milk, so he will bang on the refrigerator repeatedly until he spots a torn-paper mosaic craft that he made last week hanging on the refrigerator, and it will divert his attention for 0.8 seconds.

He will want to make a new craft, so you’ll get out crayons and glue.

Seeing the glue will make him want to become stickier than Winnie-the-Pooh stuck inside a honey tree.

When you mention this, he will ask you to read him a Winnie-the-Pooh book (while still sticky).

Reading the Winnie-the-Pooh book will remind him that he wants to read the cookie book again. He will be unable to find it (it got shoved under the sofa during the Daniel Tiger interlude) and he will scream with rage.

You will find the cookie book under the sofa, and he will pat your arm affectionately, and say he wuvs you.

Your heart will explode, and you will yearn to give him everything he has ever wanted.

He will ask for a cookie.

And chances are…

if he asks for a cookie…

…he will spill the milk that you give him to go with it.

This piece originally appeared in Frazzled in October 2023.

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