Loops and Tangles

It seems an uncertain question; there are, after all, trivial occasions and results, but what of habituation? To the one, you say to the child, “I am going to [do this]. What do you think?” To the other, you say to the adult, “[The child] wants [this].” When it is what one intends to feed the child, perhaps this isn’t a particularly important distinction. But it really does feel, in other moments when you tell people what the child wants about various things, like a setup. And at some point amid the repetition it does occur to wonder: Is it that you don’t think I hear? Or do you really think telling a child something and then asking a binary question establishes what a child wants?
     To the one, we are all human. To the other, that this is not necessarily uncommon behavior is part of the point. Or the problem. The rest is less certain; perhaps there are occasions when the child says no, but on the occasions I do, in fact, hear, it seems a pretty predictable process.