The Apple Doesn't Fall Far

There are members of this family who walk to the beat of their own drums. If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that I'm certainly not one of them.

(OK, if you've known me for awhile, particularly in high school and college, you're laughing and saying, "um, yeah, RIGHT.")

However, I married someone with a slightly larger penchant for procedural deviance than myself.

Case in point:  When Shaun was just a wee lad in kindergarten, his very sweet kindergarten teacher asked the class to draw a picture of an animal.

Shaun didn't much like the constraints of this particular assignment. 

But he did it anyway.

Sort of.

The teacher received a piece of paper with nothing on it but a giant black circle, completely filled in with black crayon. 

Knowing kindergartners were capable of more than just giant blobs, (and frankly, probably curious as to what the heck this thing was), the teacher asked Shaun to explain himself. 

And explain he did, "It's a black bear. In a cave."

Yeah.

So, of course, one of our children was bound to end up following in her father's footsteps.

Today, Lex and I were working through some phonics stuff on the floor in her room. Not to be left out, Caly clamored for her own book so I set her up with a book of random preschool activities.  The first page she turned to had a maze on it. 

This particular maze had a pirate at the top and various pirate-y things surrounding it, (a ship, a parrot, etc), and a giant treasure chest at the bottom.  I showed Caly how to start at the top and made a vague path through the maze and told her that her job was to find a way down to the treasure.

She bent her head over the book and put her crayon on the pirate, concentrating. I turned back towards Lex, thankful that this would probably keep C busy enough that we could finish our phonics review.

Ten seconds later, C pipes up, "Mama!  I'm done!" 

I glanced over at her book, about to congratulate her on finding the correct path so quickly when I noticed something odd.  Her path started at the pirate...

But then it was a straight, bold line directly down to the treasure.  The maze borders were obviously just a suggestion.

I looked up at Caly and attempted to reexplain the directions, "Uh, kiddo, you have to follow a path down to the treasure... you know, you have to see if there's an open way to go..." I traced my finger on the paper, showing her potential routes through the printed borders.

She stared at me and flatly said, "Momma, the pirate reached the treasure."

I tried again, "But Caly... the edges of the maze are like... walls. You have to go around them..."

She was totally nonplussed, "No. The pirate went through the walls. He got to his treasure. I'm done." And with that, she turned the page.

I applaud the kid's creativity. But she's going to wreck havoc on my sanity, isn't she?