Last night I went to an Xbox 360 party with my building manager and some of his friends. He had his son with him, although I’m terrible at guessing ages he was a little guy so I’ll say he’s maybe 4 or 5 years old.
At some point, somebody gave him one of the spare Xbox controllers and he had been holding on to it, though I can’t imagine he had it for more than maybe 30 minutes, probably less. There came a point where someone needed to use that controller to adjust a game setting, and they politely coaxed him to hand it over.
Well as soon as they took the controller he broke out crying and went over to his dad. Dad tried to calm him down saying “It’s OK, we’ll get you another one”. Within 30 seconds the guy who took it gave it back to him explaining that he just needed to adjust a setting, and the kid stopped crying.
I found it sort of funny because of the fact that the kid had no idea what an Xbox controller was for or how to use it, and it couldn’t have really given him any benefit, yet in that time he was holding onto it he seemingly developed some sense of ownership over the thing and was heartbroken to see it taken away from him. Do kids assume anything given to them is theirs forever? Or is there some other reason for this behavior?
Sure, but why did he want back the controller that he had no idea how to use anyway? I guess I’m trying to figure out how the ownership mentality works in kids.
I take it there was actually a game being played on the X-Box and that the child was pretending that it was playing, or something?
If the child was just holding the controller and it didn’t appear to be doing anything, I’d expect it to get bored fairly quickly and not mind it being taken, but if the kid thought it was controlling the action on the tv, it doesn’t seem surprising that it might get upset if it was stopped from doing so.
I suppose it has to do with “ownership” curiosity. Much like when you first show a baby a red ball, or any weird object, it will focus all attention on it, till’ it has some form of idea of what the object is, even though the baby does not know what its function is.
The kid probably was very interested in trying to get an idea of what the control is for, and when you took it away, you probably interrupted this process and he started to cry in anger.
In his view, I doubt he thought he was doing nothing with it. He had probably attached some significance to it, whether he pretending to control some sort of action with it or had decided it was a 1920’s style “Death Ray”*.
Makes sense… sort of like the adults who press elevator/crosswalk buttons over and over, imagining they are actually exerting some control over their environment when they’re really not?
Childhood can be very frustrating, because you have very little control over anything. Having stuff taken away and given back by people three times your size when you don’t really understand why has got to be a very disturbing thing, even if you aren’t particularly attached to the object.
hijack hijack - isn’t it 'til? Until with the un missing?
Back to OP - It’s interesting, one of the things you show a baby is to how to give you something - then you give it back to them. It’s a little giving game. The kid is now 4 or 5, and expects the same game to be played out - he wants back his thing. Moreso because someone else wants to take it and not follow the rule of giving it back right away and kids know when that happens… well they might never get it back so they cry for the loss.
It doesn’t have to do ACTUALLY do anything so long as the kid THINKS it is.
I’ve seen this a lot at the library. Moms get on the comuter and they stand up and the kid jumps in and starts typing. The mom says “Honey, let Mommy have that you don’t know how to type.”
That’s true but the kid don’t care. It’s fun to pretend. Ever see a kid with a toy phone. They think it’s cool. Or even worse, the kid picks up an ACTUAL phone and starts babliing into it. He sees his parents do this and has no concept that a conversation is going on. All he knows is you make noises into the phone and Mommy does it for hours so it must be something worth doing.
I ride a bus and the if there’s a little kid on the bus I say “Can you pull the bus cord for me so I can get off at the next stop.” They just LOVE to do that. I pull the cord and the bus stops “AH-HA I’m POWERFUL.” LOL
This seems right to me. I give my three-year-old one of my calculators all the time when I need her to leave me alone for a bit while I work on something. If I try to take it back it’s a fight; all I have to do in that case is wait for her to move on to something else and pick it up. Another part of it, I think, is they just want to be a part of everything. Giving her the calculator makes her feel included in what I’m doing, taking it away pushes her out of the situation.
Um…I’m going to guess that you’re not a parent, Rigmarole.
Little kids cry because they’re little kids. They haven’t lived very long, by definition, and so they lack perspective. Five minutes is much longer to a child than an adult, and moreover they have yet to gain the emotional control that comes only with time, practice, and adult assistance.
Actually, that’s not quite so. Merriam-Webster lists till, til, 'til, and until as acceptable variants. I’d say that any are acceptable. When I am writing and editing, I try only to ensure that the usage is consistent throughout a document.
This. I remember what it was like to be a little kid, having absolutely no control over anything in your life. You have to do whatever people tell you to do, and people are always giving you things and taking them away. It’s frustrating, and the only thing you can do about it is cry.
That doesn’t really contradict what I said. “Till” is the original word and all the others follow from it. Other than “till” and “until,” though, the rest are superfluous and redundant, especially since they are pronounced exactly the same as “till.”
