Kids often imitate their parents when they play. You'll see little girls acting like little mommies and little boys acting like their dad. Unfortunately, you'll also see little ones imitating parental flaws.

Like barking orders loudly at their toys.

So I've come to expect a little humiliation when my kids play. It's good for a parent's soul. It might be one of the rare ways you'll ever get some real feedback on your parenting and thus gives you the opportunity to change your ways. But I never expected to witness the following scene in our home the other day.
From the kitchen I could hear my three-year old son shouting commands. Get OFF! Get. Down. Get down NOW. I said get down now!

Anticipating the sight of him ordering one of our cats or one of his toys around, I popped my head into the living room to see what he was up to.

There he was perched on the end of the sofa sitting on his knees with his back to me, staring down and barking like a drill sergeant at what?

Aiden, who are you talking to?

My foot.

Your foot?

Yes, it won't get off the sofa.

(Okay, who's been yelling at their body parts in front of the little one?)

Aiden, you have to move your foot yourself.

Oh.

You know, this child is bright. He knows his ABCs, he can count to ten, he can recite entire episodes of SpongeBob, he has a vocabulary that sometimes knocks my socks off and he has some advanced comprehension skills for his age. And yet here he was yelling at his foot to obey.

I think God builds children with these idiosyncrasies to keep parents from getting too proud. There's no way I'm going to brag that my son can read the satellite channel guide when two seconds later he's going to order the food on his plate to jump into his mouth.

Have my husband and I muddied the gene pool or are these moments of unexplainable lunacy the side effect of genius?

I know my husband has a high I.Q. but I've seen him roll the car window up on his finger...five times in a row to see what would happen.

And I've been known to astound people with brilliant questions like, What's Mr. Brown's last name?

My other kids are pretty smart, too. And yet one just stuck his finger in the car cigarette lighter to see if he'd get burned and in doing so repeated the exact same thing I did as a child his age.

Whatever the reason for this kind of behavior, my grandmother was right. The nuts don't fall too far from the tree.

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Jelly Mom is written by Lisa Barker, mother of five and author of "Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane... Doesn't Mean You Are A Bad Parent!" and is syndicated through Parent To Parent . To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments, please visit www.jellymom.com . Sign up for the complimentary Jelly Mom weekly newsletter and receive a BONUS GIFT!

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