A favorite book of Tommy’s these days is The Little Engine That Could. Every night he has us read that to him, and then he in return reads it back to us. (If you are unfamiliar with the story, essentially an engine has broken down and needs another engine to take its trains over the mountain. It stops 3 engines– a passenger engine, a freight engine, and a rusty old engine– all of which refuse to help. Finally a little engine, one that is only used to switch trains in the yard, appears and offers to take the trains over the mountain. And, of course, it repeatedly says, “I think I can”– demonstrating the power of positive thinking.)

However, Tommy seems to have gotten entirely the wrong message from that book. Rather than coming away with “I think I can”, he seems most riveted by the phrase used by the rusty old engine: “I can not, I can not, I can not.”

If he doesn’t want to do something– be it eat, brush his teeth, or put on his clothes– he tells me, “I can not, I can not, I can not.” I try to tell him that the rusty old engine wasn’t nice, because he didn’t even try. Doesn’t matter. He likes that phrase better, it seems.

Today, his retelling of the story was a bit different. He was doing really well, right up until he got to the rusty old engine. After that, every page became, “I can not, I can not, I can not.” The little blue engine that came to help instead said, “I can not, I can not, I can not.” ….The end. Sad story. :(

Come on, books shouldn’t use such a catchy bad phrase! Tommy couldn’t possibly be the only kid over the last 80 years to take away this message instead… could he?