Yesterday, I got to hang out with one of my, if not my all-time, favorite kids.  She’s absolutely precious and has this way of just melting my heart.  She’ll either say something so darn cute or do something and you can’t help but just smile.  For example, she discovered my old teddy bear, Squishy, when she was here one time and now she can’t wait to take off running to my room to get him.  I explained to her that she was more than welcome to play with Squishy, but she had to be very careful with him.  She looked up at me, cocked her little head and said, “I be VERY gentle.  He’s old?”  “Yes, be very gentle.”  “You sleep with him in your yittle bed when you were a yittle girl?”  (I’m gonna miss her trading the l for a y!)  “No, I got him as a gift when I was a little older than that.”  “Squishy your favorite bedtime animal?”  “Um…. Sure.”

This little lady will be three soon and right now she likes to know if something’s my favorite or not, which has me wanting to discover all of her favorites too.  That conversation about Squishy is only the beginning of our “Is that your favorite” discussions.  While playing with Play-doh, we discover our favorite colors.  Favorite Disney Princesses are learned doing puzzles, Daisy versus Minnie is discussed during a game of Disney Match, and since we sing practically all day—favorite songs get shared.  She knows my favorite color is pink and I know that she’s a sucker for a Twix.  I admitted the sunflowers are my favorite yesterday, to which she claimed “mine too”.  (I seriously doubt if she knows what her favorite flower is yet, but it was a good reminder that I’m being watched.)

I got to thinking, as we arranged stickers in a Dora the Explorer book and chose the beach scene over the city scene, if this is really how showing favoritism gets taught.  And, if so, was I failing her during some of her most impressionable days?  If I teach her that it’s okay to like one color over the other, will that same notion spill over into how she decides who to play with on the playground?  Gosh, I hope not!  I hope she’ll let all of her friends play together, or even go play with the kid that everyone else has left behind. 

Do I think it is okay to like sunflowers over roses?  Man, I hope so!  But I do wonder if that’s where the idea that we can exclude and play favorites when it comes to people all begins…