Work it out

Katherine and Clara sometimes fight. (I blame their bickering on my mom because I'm pretty sure she wished fighting daughters upon me hundreds of times when I was a kid and fought constantly with my sister.) I try not to get too involved in their disputes - they seem better able to work it out if they think no parent is around. But lately they've been having a hard time with the scooter. The problem is that Katherine has a scooter, Clara doesn't, Clara wants one, Katherine doesn't want to share. Going out to ride bikes usually dissolves into tears over the scooter pretty quickly.

Why not just buy another scooter? No way. I don't like the things to begin with and I'm all caught up in the House on the Prairie books in which Laura and Mary are content with corn cob dolls, so buying a second scooter when both girls already have bikes seems awfully excessive.

Anyway, at first I tried to help them negotiate some kind of reasonable arrangement, but  that failed miserably. So I switched my strategy to total indifference. "Work it out," I call over my shoulder as I walk away. 

After weeks of this problem, they finally figured it out. Today Katherine informed me,  "Mom, we decided only Alexandra can ride the scooter" (which she can't actually do because she is 1). "Oh? Is that because you can't figure out how to share it?" I asked. "Yes. No one gets to ride it. This way I don't have to share. "