Grandpa's Sleeping

My parents are visiting this week. That means Nora is sleeping in our room for the first time in months. The first night they were here, Nora woke up at around midnight and cried and cried, demanding water, but then taking only a sip and pushing it away, and the immediately demanding more water when it was clear that I was going back to bed instead of giving her my undivided attention. After a half hour of trying various things, her mother mentioned that she needed to be quiet because Grandma and Grandpa were sleeping in the next room. Completely unexpectedly to us, Nora nodded and repeated "They're sleeping. Don't wake them," lay down, and stopped crying. Two hours later when she started crying again, her mother said, "Be quiet. They're sleeping," and Nora obeyed, repeating the sentence to herself. It was really bizarre. On subsequent nights, we've been able to use the same sentence to make her shut up and lie back down. From what I know of child psychology, she doesn't have the capacity for empathy needed to follow The Golden Rule, so it must be some other line of reasoning.

Last night, as I was preparing her for bed, I interviewed her about her grandfather already being asleep in his bedroom.

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