Imagination

Part of the fun of having a 3-year-old is playtime that knows no bounds, that has few rules.

In fact, only 2 major guidelines seem to exist, both of which seem inspired by his own understanding of the universe.

First, whenever you have a smaller and a larger version of an item, the smaller is automatically the baby and the larger is the mommy. If there are 3 of an item, then the biggest is the daddy and mommy reverts to the medium sized one. And the littlest one will invariably act like a baby, i.e. cry and cry requiring mommy or daddy to pick him up and comfort him.

This works well for sea turtles and bears, but becomes really odd when your son has 3 different sizes of Yoda and Darth Vader. The Star Wars purist in me tries not to make too many faces.

The other major guideline is that there is no aggression among toys tolerated and the aggressor will get a timeout.

So then you end up with fascinating little play scenarios like this:

The big alligator (of course my Florida son has such a thing) was walking through the room, came across baby Darth Vader and proceeded to give him a swipe. Baby Darth Vader started to cry and Daddy Darth Vader came to the rescue, cuddling his little Sith Lord and scolding alligator fiercely. Then alligator had a timeout.