She was four. She meant, "Mine", of course. I'd intentionally never used that word around her (nor did my wife). Even when she fed the VCR a peanut butter sandwich because she thought it was hungry, I didn't say in All American vernacular, "Don't ever do that! That is Daddy's and you should not touch it!" Instead, I had her watch as I took the cover off, showed the components to her as I cleaned them and explained that no one in the family could enjoy the VCR if she did that again.
For years I've had this argument with people. Anyone who has ever been around a one year old with a toy ball knows that humans are born with a compulsion to share. The baby holds the ball, hands it to you, you hand it back, and so on for literally hours. The pro-Capitalist almost always retorted, "Yes, they give you the ball, but then they want it back!" My standard reply was, "Yes, they want it back because they want you to demonstrate you understand the importance of sharing as well." But sharing is an anathema to a Capitalist society, so we very early on teach our children the words, "Mine", "Daddy's", "Mommy's", "Yours", etc. Ownership is everything to us and teaching them those words sows the first seeds of greed - upon which our entire culture is based.
For years I've had this argument with people. Anyone who has ever been around a one year old with a toy ball knows that humans are born with a compulsion to share. The baby holds the ball, hands it to you, you hand it back, and so on for literally hours. The pro-Capitalist almost always retorted, "Yes, they give you the ball, but then they want it back!" My standard reply was, "Yes, they want it back because they want you to demonstrate you understand the importance of sharing as well." But sharing is an anathema to a Capitalist society, so we very early on teach our children the words, "Mine", "Daddy's", "Mommy's", "Yours", etc. Ownership is everything to us and teaching them those words sows the first seeds of greed - upon which our entire culture is based.