I’m sure when people are talking about short attention spans in the context of toddlers, they’re not referring to the child’s mental staying power but that of the adult. Akra Jr’s capacity for tedious repetition (“Again, Mummy! Again!”) knows no bounds and you soon learn devious diversion techniques before your brain dribbles out of your ears.

Today’s repetitive task was to move six cars from one part of the sofa onto my legs and off again, while Mummy counted each car aloud. Ennui set in after the twentieth encore so I switched to counting in Spanish (well, he does know 1-4 courtesy of Dora and Muzzy so it was in the interest of broadening his vocabulary, honest). Then I thought what the hell and counted in any language I could remember. I was fairly impressed with myself as I managed Russian, Welsh, and French.

Still the game held interest for my two year old (probably my fault for introducing variation, but at least I was retaining my sanity) so I went for full scale messing with his mind, randomly calling out any number I could think of as he passed the cars around: “FIVE… TWENTY-SIX… NINETEEN… ONE…”

Fortunately he thought it was hilarious. I don’t think I’ve set him back educationally too many years…