Cause and Effect?

First, I want to wish all of you who keep time by the Gregorian calendar a Happy New Year! Those of you using other calendars can play along if you wish, however. No need to feel left out.

OK, I just wanted to mention a curious fact I noticed recently regarding a 3-year-old's sense of cause and effect. It's not at all similar to an adult's. Whenever something gets spilled or knocked over or broken, Jasmin has learned a new excuse, "it happened by itself." Well, at first, I thought this was just a child attempting to get out of blame by the ol' stand-by: lying about it. But, as it turns out, from her "view of the universe" I think she's actually calling it exactly as it appears to her. She just sees causes and effects differently than we do in our "grown-up world." The two recent examples that have convinced me there is more to this than simple mendacity:

"I didn't break it. I was carrying it across the room and it fell out of my hand and when it hit the floor it broke all by itself."

"I didn't break it. I was just pounding it on the table like this - bam, bam, bam, bam - and then it broke all by itself."

You be the judge.