on the way home from kindyhouse yesterday ethan starting telling me about a kid he decided he doesn’t like anymore. when i asked him why, he responded:

“**** yells mean things and hurts people and laughs.”

i agreed that wasn’t going to win a lot of friends. ethan went on to say:

“**** says his dad is better than my dad.”

so playground terrorism apparently starts around five. before responding, i wanted to see if ethan understood the slight and asked what he thought that meant. he responded:

“**** thinks that i don’t have a good dad and that his dad is a better dad.”

ok, he gets it. i doubt you’d find this in the writings of dr spock but the first thing that came to my mind was:

“that’s ridiculous. there isn’t an objective measure to determine who has a better dad. i’m sure **** loves his dad and thinks he’s the best dad just like you love me and think i’m a good dad”

ethan seemed happy with that response and said he was going to tell **** he is ridiculous the next time he says that. so we’ll have to see how that goes.

and while i believe its only partially true there are no objective measures of a good parent, on at least this count, i can tell ****’s parents

“my son is better than your son.”