Toddler's Adorable, Lawyer-Like Argument Championing Cupcakes for Dinner

It's one of the oldest tricks in a child's book: if Mom says no, ask Grandma instead.

But mother Linda Beltran was too cunning to let that happen when her son Mateo tried to sneak cupcakes after refusing to eat dinner. Mateo had a few thoughts to share himself -- and mom caught the hilarious exchange from the 3-year-old, who seems to be a lawyer in the making, on camera.

"Gramma told me he didn’t want to eat his dinner. I let [him] know that we would not be having a fun night unless he ate his dinner. He found some hidden cupcakes and was on a mission to have them," Beltran told UberSpotlight earlier this month. "After a back-and-forth of 'Mommy pleassseee can I have them?' and me telling him not until he had dinner, he decided to wait until I wasn’t paying attention to use those cute eyes of his on Gramma, which was not-so-secretly hilarious."

"Mommy’s spidey-sense kicked in, I grabbed my phone and thought, 'Let’s see where this goes.' Gramma and I had to keep a straight face. The end result was the video. He was unaware the camera was on as I was pretending to ignore him and be busy with the phone," Beltran said of the video posted Feb. 19 that has since gone viral.

Image source: YouTube

Perhaps what makes the mother-son exchange so funny is that Mateo calls his mother by her first name.

"OK, Linda. Linda, listen, listen, listen," Mateo said.

Beltran explained to UberSpotlight that Mateo started using his parents' first names after learning them on a family trip.

"We came across a lost boy, who could not for the life of him tell us his name or parents’ names. We felt horrible, and as we handed him over to park staff we realized we’d never really told our boys what our names were -- they only knew us as Mommy and Daddy. We didn’t want them to ever be in the same situation and not know our names, so we taught them, and they quickly learned. This made Mateo feel a little empowered," Beltran said. "For the most part we are still Mommy and Daddy,  but when he is serious and wants to make sure we are paying attention, we quickly become Linda and Kenneth."

"I said no cupcakes, and you tried to get cupcakes and you tried to ask Grandma," Beltran said.

"You and [little brother] Kevin don't listen, so I have to give you pow-pows in the butt," the mother continued as the son tried to argue.

When Mateo tried to avoid getting spanked, his mother said she then had to spank Kevin.

"But he's my little PaPas," Mateo countered, trying to protect his brother. "Linda, honey, honey, look at this, right now we can't do anything if we can't get anything out of the wall. And we're going to break everything down."

"I'm not breaking anything down. I'm just letting you know that you cannot have cupcakes for dinner," the mother said.

Mateo seems to argue that the cupcakes might not belong to his mother, at which point Beltran told her son she was done arguing.

"You need to listen to the things that I say because I'm the mom and I'm the adult," she said.

Still, he continued.

You might think Mateo is being disrespectful. But Beltran disagrees.

"In an effort to raise independent young adults, we let our children have a voice. I’m a new parent and I’m learning as much from my kids as they are learning from me. The arguing started way before Mateo could talk -- he would let us know he didn’t like certain shoes or clothes with his baby blabber," the mother said. "I love seeing a little more of their personalities as they grow. Mateo has his own spunk and is becoming his own little person. I love that about him. The boys know when mom is serious and when they can engage in some healthy debate. In an effort to raise my kids with a voice, I pick my battles and sometimes let them feel like they’ve won…or at least give them the chance to try."

(H/T: Daily Mail)