Seeing as I am on vacation with my brother, his wife and their two children right now, I have had a lot of time to contemplate how one can best entertain young children. Now, the three year old does a pretty good job of keeping himself entertained - give him a couple of toy cars and a length of old Matchbox^TM car track and he is busy for up to nine hours. The 14 month old, on the other hand, has proven to be incapable of entertaining himself (or, in fact, feeding himself without help - when I was his age, I was already having to slaughter my own cows for hamburger - kids these days!). Thus, I have had to spearhead the development of a number of advanced techniques for entertaining the wee one.

I share my findings with you.

What’s This?

“What’s This” might be the best game ever invented. Basically, you walk around to things in the house while carrying the 14 month old. You stop at thing normally out of his or her reach and ask “what’s this?” They spend a few seconds cooing over the object, and then you move on to another. Best thing is that within ten minutes, they’ve forgotten what they looked at, so you can walk back to the same item and ask “what’s this” again and again.

Better yet, when you find which five or six items they like best, you can go to those items exclusively. This will be the purest enjoyment they ever experience in their whole life. They will spend the rest of their days trying to recapture this feeling.

Destroy All Race Tracks!

Really, you replace the “Race Tracks” in the title of this game with any thing that an older child happens to be playing with. Bring your 14 month old to a place where an older child is building something and then let them toddle over to it. They will destroy the thing the older child is working on and then make a goofy noise and smile.

The older child will, naturally, be angry, but will know better than to seek revenge. As soon as the older child has rebuilt the thing they were working on, release the toddler again. Repeat until the older child has a life long complex.

Not For Eating

As soon as the 14 month old places something in their mouth that is too big for them to swallow under any circumstances (like the rim of a baseball hat or a basketball) move it away from them and say “not for eating” with an outrageous Eastern European accent. Repeat each time they try to eat the too-large-to-eat item.

It is important that you don’t play this game with things that they could actually swallow or that could break and be swallowed, unless it is an object that you don’t really care about. Indeed, I suppose, unless it is a 14 month old that you don’t really care about. In the case of the latter, consider letting somebody else watch after the 14 month old.

Hang Around and Look Cool

This requires a pair of dark sunglasses for the baby and a pair for you.

Find a public area with a park bench and some shade. Place the sunglasses on the baby and the other pair on you. Whenever somebody walks by, act real cool.

The 14 month old will look cooler than you, but that is good, because nothing makes you look more cool than sitting with a cool looking 14 month old. All sorts of people will stop and talk to the both of you.

Make sure to keep one hand on the 14 month old at all times just to keep track of him or her. It doesn’t hurt to handcuff yourself to them, in which case you can claim that you’ve arrested a dangerous suspect.

Fetch

This is actually John’s game. I tried teaching my brother’s 14 month old this, but I ended up doing most of the fetching. Come to think of it, the kid spent a lot of time laughing at me.

Drat! Outsmarted by another ankle biter!

Pass The Book

This is a simple game. When the toddler picks up the book and hands it to you, put it back where the toddler found it. The kid will pick it up and hand it to you again. Repeat until nap time.