Ned pulls out a big bowl for himself, and hands a little bowl to Alex.

"That's the sort of thing my mother would be very angry at," notes Jill.

Jill's mom has a theory that Ned sometimes tries to bully Alex. Like the other night at bedtime, when Alex was already asleep but Ned was bouncing around on his own mattress. Ned kept elaborately still when I told him that I needed him to go to sleep and not wake up Alex, because Alex had to get up a lot earlier the following morning to catch a school bus. "Want to sleep with Alex," Ned said. Fine, I told him, but don't wake Alex up. I went out and shut the bedroom door behind me until I heard the latch click. Ned can't open the door when it's latched like that; Alex can.

A few minutes later, and Alex stumbles out blinking at the living room lights. I dash in and find Ned sitting upright on his bed, under his blanket. He knows Alex can open the door, and he can't. So cute. So obvious what he did. I grab him. "I asked you not to do that, Ned!" I guide a perplexed Alex back to bed, and for the rest of the evening Ned slowly falls asleep on the couch next to Jill, and ignores me.

On the next night, while Ned and I are brushing his teeth, I deliver one of the first of my true Dad's Speeches:

"It's easy for you to take advantage of Alex sometimes, Ned," I say. "Alex is special. Some things are harder for Alex to understand than they are for you. You have to resist the urge to take advantage. Do you understand?" Ned nods, in the same way he nodded to when I told him I was depending on him to go to sleep.

Alex doesn't really talk. Ned talks. But sometimes I think it's plainer to me when I get through to Alex. Maybe Alex has a gentler nature, less devious.

"Jeff," says Jill, "Ned is only three." And they seem to love each other, always quick to shake hands or clasp each other in a cute and tight little brotherly hug until I wrench my hands in there and say, "Okay, break it up before somebody gets bit!"

Three, yeah, but cunning. And when he gets the chance, a little bossy. I often see him, his index finger jutting, commanding Alex in the same tone of voice he's heard us, mostly me, use: "Alex, why'd you do that! Alex, don't - do - that!

"Ned, take it easy."

He turns to me with a lost, slight shrug, as if addressing a comrade in the war of grown-up befuddlement. "I just don't know why Alex did that! Alex broke it..."

"Ned," I reply. "You broke it. I watched you break it."

"I just don't know why Alex did that!"

He is only three. There's no evil intent there, I guess. Who's to say who gets the idea, Ned or Alex, to wait until daddy leaves the room to begin monkeying with the DVD buttons or jacking his brother's favorite tape out of the VCR? Who yanks the expensive wooden blinds first? Who instigates the shoving match? Who bites first?

That last is simple: Alex bites first, at least he always has, a hard and empurpling assault on Ned's back, arms, or legs that belie any notion that Ned is the one picking on Alex. You should hear Ned howl. If you lived within two floors of us in our apartment building, you would hear Ned howl. Grown-ups with brothers or sisters about the same age assure me that this is normal behavior. Maybe normal, but certainly Alex getting even for any bullying. Besides, wasn't it Alex who, when Ned first came home some three years ago, nonchalantly held any toy both he and Ned wanted out of reach?

Until the other night, when Ned put up with a few minutes of shoving, then, perhaps his little brain recalling all the bites and all the toys held nonchalantly out of reach, pinned Alex down and clamped a deep dental imprint right on his back. Ned got up looking line a linebacker who's leveled a running back right one play after being penalized with a cheap flag. Alex cried, but not as long as you'd think, and even though he doesn't talk I saw him look at Ned and seem to say, "Yeah, yeah, okay." Nobody was special anything at that brothers' moment, and nobody was being bullied. Let's hope it stays that way.