Stoop-erman!

Let me bring you up to speed on the antics of Sam-the-Man. The boy, who just turned three last Tuesday, has now moved officially into the "SuperHero" phase of development, clearly delineated by Piaget.

This phase appears somewhere between the "sensory motor period" (0 to 24 months) and the "preoperational period" (2 to 7 years). What happens, according to this researcher (me), is that somewhere between two and three years of age, a small boy discovers that it is immensely funny to jump from increasingly higher objects.

Then he discovers that it is even funnier to do so while wearing nothing except training pants and a towel around the neck (as a cape).

Then he discovers that if one jumps, so attired, and also yells, "Stooperman!", his parents dissolve into giggling fits.

And as Skinner would tell you, that's reward enough to encourage the behavior. *sigh*