Getting a glimpse into your children’s thoughts and dreams is often very rewarding. A recent conversation with Beloved Offspring (BO) # 4 gave me insight into the possibilities that your life holds at 4 years old. It went something like this:
BO 4: Mum, when you get to be grown up can you be two things?
Me: What do you mean?
BO 4: Well can you be an aeroplane driver and also be a doctor?
Me: Honey, if you work hard and believe in yourself you can definitely be two things.
BO 4: That’s really good because I want to be a fairy AND a butterfly.
Now I don’t know about you but I certainly couldn’t go back on my assurance that she could be anything. I do wonder at how joyful life must be, to live in a world where anything at all is still a possibility, and how much potential is unfulfilled because we stop “believing” that a career choice includes mythical creatures and insects.
On hearing her first echo, BO # 3 stood still and with much awe and wonder said “Listen Mum, the world talked back”.
It’s these kinds of conversations worth remembering, unfortunately though they aren’t always rewarding.
The ones' designed to drive you to distraction usually begin in the why stage. “Why do horses have four legs?” should be a short answer. Unless your interrogator is 3, then there is no short answer, and any answer is responded to with why anyway. My advice to combat this is to start early and make your kids believe that Dad is smarter at “that stuff”, because when you’ve been forced to answer two dozen questions covering everything from “Why can’t I make a bomb?”, “Would you rather get eaten by a crocodile or a shark?”, and “If people go to heaven when they die why don’t you see dead people flying up to the sky?”, you might want a break, and if they think Dad is smart it’s easier to fob them off. We all know the truth anyway and sometimes the price of peace is never too high. Besides it has the added bonus of watching their Dad scramble for the answers you’ve spent the day trying to find.
If this is your first time around, a little advice might come in handy and avoid much embarrassment. Never assume that full disclosure is the way to go or that timing is not an issue. On the way to Aunty Sue’s house is not the time to tell a 3 year old the truth when he asks why you always get to have Macdonald’s before you get there. I promise you the first words out of his mouth when Aunty Sue opens the door will be “Mum says you are a terrible cook and never make enough food!”
Once you’ve survived the why stage though, you definitely get to the “good stuff” where their verbal skills match their absorbent little minds and you get a glimpse of what’s going on ‘in there’. Something no-one tells you though is that “why?” returns with a vengeance in the teenage years and doesn’t even have the cute factor. The relentless drone of ”Why can’t I go to the party?”, “Why are you so mean?”, “Why do you make my life so miserable?”, “Why can’t you be like everybody else’s mum?” makes you quite nostalgic for the first round of whys.
