There are no robots in the bathroom

Our three-year old Charlie is in that precious stage of life where he’s learning new things and fresh vocabulary every day. His treatment with apraxia is going well and he’s making his points known regardless of the time of day, relevance or how valid they are.  In his mind it’s appropriate to talk about next summer’s vacation, even though we’ve got a myriad of holidays, the entire school year and everyone’s birthdays, before that; but it’s OK for him to talk about them. He’s also into monsters and robots. Or he’s very scared of monsters of robots, depending upon when you ask him.

For a while he wanted a robot themed birthday party. He’d walk around the house in a staccato manner as if he were a 2’6” metallic boy and the next minute he’s impersonating a monster. Monsters and robots are the best friend to a young boy.  It’s Calvin & Hobbes for a new generation, or at least those kids that have imaginary robot or monster friends.

Everyplace in the house is a robot friendly zone, except for one. He stops 5′ outside of the bathroom; looks at us in a very concerned manner and says, “robots?”. We assure him that there are no robots in the bathroom.

“Monsters!”, he exclaims as a follow up question.

“No, there aren’t any monsters in the bathroom either”, we say.

Complacent in the fact that there are no monsters or robots in the bathroom he’ll go take care of business. Our take away from this is that both imaginary friends are fun and happy out of that area, but that room is a different story. The potty training happened easier than expected this past summer. No rogue robots or pesky monsters made their way to our toilet, to our knowledge.

He’s changed his mind about a robot birthday party. He decided to go with Minions, despite the fact that he saw it in theaters and I desperately tried to explain to him that’s it’s really a horrible movie. At least he didn’t go with a Home theme. Apparently he did listen to my movie advice on that one, which made Minons look like a Cannes film favorite in comparison.

Whenever he asks about the robot in the bathroom, which is invariable followed by the monster query my logical self wants to comment. Well there are monsters, but they take different forms and you can’t easily identify them. Plus, sometimes they’re a monster  while other times they’re normal. And the robots, accidents can happen, which are caused by robots, but that’s not because they’re intentionally causing them, I think.  A.I., the concept of thinking robots and monsters in the real world are topics that he’ll cross soon enough.

For now we’re just happy that he’s using the toilet and speaking at his approximate age level. There are enough bad movies, scary things and uncertainties in life for him to meet as he grows up.  We’ll gladly take a robot in the bathroom over those any day.