How To Mess With A Three-Year-Old

How to mess with a three-year-old: Put the princesses in all the wrong dresses.

I sat on the floor and watched how with one simple action–putting Belle in Cinderella’s dress–caused upheaval and confusion in the big blue eyes of the wee one with the blond curls. So without her looking, I switched them all.

It starts young. The need to play by the rules. For the boxes to be drawn and the need to fit inside them. Even at a young age there is a need for organization, security, “correct beauty”, and for our world to be right. For a three-year-old, this is especially true in princess world. Belle wears yellow, Aurora pink, Cinderella blue, and Snow White…well, we all know the poofy sleeves and headband she’s famous for. We learn there is a right way for a young lady to act and look, and the not-right-way. Do not, under any circumstance, do it differently. Do not change it.

Then somewhere along the way, someone messes up our dresses. They mess with our order, our routine, and our expectations. On the one hand, it can be extremely freeing and can open up a whole new world. In this case, I managed to sell her little mind on the idea that the princesses were going to have a fashion show and needed to wear each others’ dresses. I explained that’s just what girls do, they borrow clothes and it’s okay for them to wear different dresses. They like it. I could tell that deep down she wasn’t quite sure about this new concept, but didn’t at the moment have any argument to refute my adult logic. I figured I just opened up a whole new world for her….or probably wouldn’t be invited back to the playroom any time soon.

I sat among the tea sets, ponies, and princess costumes and couldn’t help but smile. How often does God, just to mess with us, switch something up. Not to be mean, not to make us cry–but just to be playful and give us new options and help us grow in our own little world of make-believe. Something that we never even thought possible and that seems completely ridiculous is suddenly set in front of us as an option. Maybe in the same way we can either choose to roll with the new scenario and expand our world of play…or kick Him out and not invite Him back.

Either way, it still makes me smile.