My almost-six-year-old daughter wanted to play a rousing game of “toy or garbage?” this morning, which apparently involves her holding up an item and asking if it’s a toy or garbage, and then putting it into the appropriate box once she’s gotten an answer. Obviously, she needed a supply of garbage, which I realized she was getting by crumpling up good, clean unused sheets of her drawing paper. I told her I didn’t want her to do that, and she got a very puzzled look on her face and asked, “Why?”
So I explained that I didn’t want her to waste perfectly good paper that hadn’t even been drawn on. She said OK, and I headed downstairs to get ready. When I came back up, she was still playing the game with her sister, but I saw that whenever she needed some garbage, she very carefully took a piece of paper, drew a picture of a man throwing away some garbage on it, and THEN crumpled it up to use as garbage.
Well played, dear.