One of the prerogatives of the parents of a small child is ascribing intent to their actions when probably there is no intent. Little EC will often reject a pacifier by swatting at it with her fist. She’s been doing this since she was only a couple weeks old—too young to actually know that she has fists, much less be capable of bending them to her will. Nevertheless, I started out thinking that she didn’t want the pacifier because of her movements. Only later did I notice that if I offered repeatedly that she would take it. Probably she had an instinctive reaction to move that arm when something was stuck in her face. No intent, but we as parents get to read into it.

We get to do this all over the place.  We can pretend she likes or dislikes certain things or people. This was most fun during the presidential campaign. When she hits at a toy, we can pretend she’s boxing or exercising or giving her opinion on its merits. For most of EC’s short life, this has been a flight of adult fancy.

But at what point does this not hold anymore? Here at 8 weeks, she’s clearly intending to smile at us, laugh at things we do, and occasionally I think that the wild arm and leg flailing actually has some meditated forethought behind it. Sometimes when she spits out her pacifier, it’s because she did something she didn’t mean to do. Sometimes, she actually doesn’t want it.

Intent has everything to do with behavior. That makes the question an important one…because you have to deal with intentional actions much differently than random or instinctual actions.