Following Directions!

Eli’s Uncle Jeremy visited us one afternoon this past week. Eli was quite excited to see him and started “showing off” by running around and sliding down his slide repeatedly. (Usually Eli spends more time sending his toys down his slide than sliding down himself!)

Missy had gotten Eli a little wooden Christmas ornament, a frog driving a truck, with the truck having real working wheels. Eli had this ornament in-hand, so I asked him, “can you slide your truck down the slide?” Eli walked over and did it! Jeremy thought that was cool, but he didn’t seem to be convinced that Eli was following my directions rather than just acting on his own.

So I tried to come up with a “test” that would show that Eli really was listening to me. I thought that Eli knew what the “trash” was -- he likes to play with our metallic trashcan with the flip-top lid that we have in the kitchen. Eli also had his truck back in hand (having retrieved it from the bottom of the slide). So I said, “Eli, can you put your truck in the trash?”

Eli thought about this for a second, and then walked off towards the far end of the room. He bypassed the doorway to the kitchen, so I thought he didn’t get what I was saying. But then he continued past the front door, pushed open the door to the bathroom... and dropped his truck into the little trash bin that we have in the bathroom! He then proceeded to turn around and grin at us!

Jeremy was pretty impressed! He finally acknowledged that Eli has become “smarter than the dog” (Jeremy’s dog, Camper)! (This had been an ongoing tongue-in-cheek discussion/debate between the two of us for a while.) I was pretty surprised and proud, too. I was expecting Eli to head for the trash can that I had in mind, the one in the kitchen, but he followed my (silly) instruction correctly and put his little truck in the bathroom trash can instead!

Now I just need to make sure that Eli doesn’t *continue* to put his toys into the trash!