One of my kids waited until 2nd grade to master the art of playing dumb when it benefited her. The other one is an early bloomer and such.
HI, MISS MILA.
Miss Mila absolutely understand numbers. She can count past twenty and she definitely understands the concept of numbers. I dare say that if she's in the mood to admit to such things, I could show her three cookies and ask her how many she'd have if I took one away and she'd know the answer.
Buuuuut, there's a good chance she'll act a fool and pretend she has no idea what I'm talking about if I ask her that question. It's about 50/50. Sometimes she clearly gets it, but other times she basically twists her hair, tilts her head, and says, "Like, what are, like, numbers and stuff?"
She plays dumb REALLY well, you guys. REALLY, REALLY well.
We legit had this conversation the other day.
Me: "How many pieces of candy are there?"
Her: "I don't know."
Me: "Let's count. One ... two ... what's next?"
Her: "I don't know!"
We repeated that little thing for a few minutes. I tried to get her to practice counting things a dozen times and she acted like she had never heard of such a crazy thing before. Finally, I gave up and handed her a piece of candy while putting the rest away.
Mila was stunned by that who "put the rest away" thing.
"I need more candy!" she declared. She "needs" things these days, by the way. She doesn't say she wants anything, she says she neeeeeeeeeeds them. It's very clever, if you think about it. It's just not clever enough to work on me.
"No. You can have one piece," I replied.
"I need two pieces!" Mila said.
"Nope. You get one."
"Mila needs three pieces of candy," she replied.
We went back and forth for a minute, with Mila repeatedly demonstrating that she knows numbers and stuff. I stuck with nope because I am evil. By the end of it, she had clearly counted out ten pieces of candy as she tried very hard to convince me to give them all to her.
Worse, though, is what happened later. I put the candy away because, again, I'm evil. Mila got to eat her one piece and that was that.
Except it wasn't because Miss Mila later busted into the pantry, climbed the shelves, and helped herself to a nice handful of candy. I caught her sitting in the pantry with a pile of wrappers in her hands.
"Mila, where did the candy go?" I asked.
SHE THREW THE WRAPPERS IN THE AIR, JUMPED UP, AND SAID, "I DON'T KNOW!" Then she started acting like she was looking for it.
If she gets better at faking dumb, I'm going to be in big trouble. Big, big trouble.