Kiara+M’s+2016+OpEd+Article

= = = **How Little Kids are Actually Masters of** Deception = Little kids are adorable and hilarious, however, they really know how to push your buttons.

I live with my little sister, McKinley (we don’t share the same last name). I love her so much, she's my little Mikky. We watch Clifford and TMN Turtles together. We do arts and crafts, and play with blocks. I know this all sounds great and merry, but in reality it is just the opposite.

Living with a 4-year-old is just plain annoying. Have you ever been walking down the stairs at night to grab a quick drink, and feared for your life, because you don’t know what easity-to-trip-on-devious-toy might be on the stairs? I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve tripped on “treasures” just trying to make my way down the stairs. But the strategically placed toys don’t stop on the stairs, no. They are everywhere. Pull out the chair to sit at the dining room table, what's on my chair? A barbie that lost all of it's clothes on the way to it's current spot. Trying to wash my hands, only to be greeted with several ponies enjoying a lukewarm bath in the sink. Attempting to sit on the couch and being told, “you can’t sit there! My dolly is sitting there!”. My favorite however, is trying to shower while having to continually kick all the bath toys to the opposite side of the tub.

But the toys aren’t the worst of. Last Sunday I was woken up to McK’s screams when she was sent to her room(which, you guessed it, is directly next to mine) for a tantrum about a stupid bagel. Why is it important to start screaming about bagels at 9 in the morning? I guess to little kids, apparently it's really important. She is also not a very good listener, to say the least, it's very selective. And when you find yourself lucky enough to have her full attention, if she doesn't like what you have to say, she’ll pull all the stops to get out of it. “Weeeellllll,” “but I don’t have to,” “ummmm,” “mom, dad, this is MY house,” she’ll say. She’s very stubborn and will fight you to get what she wants(I think she may be a future lawyer).

My last argument(for this essay at least), is she loves to get into my things and personal space. If I’m just trying to watch How I Met Your Mother, she’ll come in pestering me to come chase her around the house, and on the occasion that I refuse, she’ll look at me confused, as if the idea of pretending to be a scary monster doesn't sound like the best thing to do in the world. But that's not the problem, the problem is that now she's in my room and I have to get her to leave, while also successfully shutting my door all the way. But once she’s in, she's in, and she doesn't want to leave unless I’m coming with her(she’s like a contagious disease). This usually results in her asking me question about various objects in my room to waste time, “what's this?” “It's a pen, what else do you think it is?”. As if going through my things wasn't enough, she generally feels the need to physically attack me by jumping on me like I’m a game of hopscotch. Can’t you go play outside? Or go bother someone else?

She's sneaky too. There have been a few times that she's snuck into my room while I was down stairs, and hid in my closet, and when I return and open my closet door, she’ll be sitting there on the floor playing with her “treasures”. Basically, having a little sibling is more than irritating, and takes getting used to, but on the bright side, I got stuck with a pretty cute one.