He usually comes to me screaming

This boy usually comes running to me screaming " Ade, hand!"

Same hand stretched out to show me it's dirty, and so i can ask him to go wash it.

And he would usually happily say "okay!" before sprinting off to the bathroom to wash it. Of course, I would end up going there to supervise him...or eventually scream something like "cut it out" or "please turn of the water and come out" to get him to stop playing with the water.

Today he didn't sprint off. He kept repeating "Ade, Hand!"

As usual, I had nudged him to go wash it but without success. I even tweaked the instructions in so many ways, but he didn't budge. He just kept his hand in my face with the same words shooting out of his tiny voice "Ade, Hand!" – He was no going to leave.

It was usually never that hard. He was always waiting to hear "go wash it" so he could run off to the bathroom.

"So why does he keep repeating the same thing and wouldn't let me breathe!"

*sigh*

The persistence and repetitiveness had started to annoy me, so i put down my phone, held his face and said:

"Hey Buddy, what do you want?"

"Ade, Ade... Hand!"

"Okay"

With a smirk on my face, I raised my head, rolled my eyes, then took another look at his hand.

And right there, in the soggy clag; a mixture of melted candy and saliva that had soiled his little hand, was a dead creature of a nanoscopic size.

A dead ant!

Omg! This was all my sweet two-year-old had been trying to tell me!

He had been saying "Ade, Ant", not “Ade, hand”.

I had taught him that those creatures were called "ants" a few days ago, after noticing he calls every crawling creature a cockroach. He would usually tap me repeatedly, point at the creature; wall gecko, ants, cockroach, or whatever, then scream:

"Ade, Cockroach".

My little boy had just put what i taught him to good use, and all I had successfully done was to obtusely invalidate the new knowledge and impugn his perspicuity.

“What if it was even a scorpion and not a dead ant?”

"Shouldn't I have known that there was more to his persistence?”

“Shouldn’t I have trusted that once I showed him the distinction between a cockroach and an ant, he got it?”

“Shouldn’t I have just dropped the doggone phone and given him full attention?”

Instead i arrogated his sound judgement to puerile mischief and ended up misleading him.

This evening, an army of ants heaped themselves on the cheese balls he threw on the floor. So, my little boy ran to me, gave me a series of rapid taps on the lap and screamed:

“Ade, cockroach!”

I just sat there staring at the lilliputian creatures that looked nothing like cockroaches and gently restarted the lesson in a penitently calm tone:

“Buddy, those are ants, alright? - Oya say ant!”