“Can you give me a sec?” I plead to my son. “How many’s that?” He says. “A means one,” I respond, looking down at my laptop. “One… Muuummm!” He shouts. “Okay. I’m sorry. What I meant was five minutes to respond to a few emails.” Well, how many will that take?” He questions so innocently. “Count to sixty. Five times then I’ll be done.” I say, knowing very well he is yet to learn how to count to sixty or have the patience to repeat it five times. “But I can’t.” He softly declares with his head bowing towards our old wooden floorboards. “That’s okay. How about a Smartie cookie (store-bought nonetheless), and I put on the Paw Patrol movie to help pass the time?” He reluctantly agrees. This is not an isolated scenario. He’s often waiting for me to just reply to an email/dm/message/comment/thread, which now I can probably get 30 minutes of work in if I set up a movie, play dough, colouring-in and a snack bar that rivals any gold class cinema.
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