Child’s viewpoint

“Dad how long after that flood were you born?” My husband looked at his 8-year-old son. It was spring and flood stories prevailed.
“Which flood do you mean?” my husband was puzzled.
“You know, the big one where Noah took all the animals. How long after that flood did you live?”
Once my husband recovered, he made a time line on an 8-foot board to demonstrate how long after that flood he was born. My husband is old, but not quite that old.
Another child was not concerned with his age as much as his unshaven face. The chid had been climbing all over him in a solitary game of “conquer the mountain.” IN the midst of another climb over his chest, the little one stopped, stared and pointed at his face, “Ants!”
His whisker do feel like fire ants. Sometimes he still rubs his chin and declares, “The ants are back. Time to shave.”
When children lack words for something, they create their own. My mother preferred the discrete “breaking wind.” My not-so-discrete toddler didn’t understand and proudly announced, “I burped my bottom.”
Sometimes they simply have a unique view of life as when I asked a toddler what he wanted for supper. He said, “soup.”
“What kind of soup?”
“Chocolate soup.”
I served chocolate milk.
Chocolate milk and Band-aids make up a child’s world. Band-aids were the magic cure for every hurt with one of my sons, “It hurts, Mommy, put a Band-aid on it.”
“But it’s an earache. A Band-aid won’t help it.”
He insisted. I don’t sweat the small stuff. I pulled out the box of Band-aids, split open an envelope and taped one over his ear. No more complaints about his earache,
Some complaints are heard too much. At a kindergarten open house for parents of the morning and afternoon classes, my son showed me everything in his classroom. Then he too me to his table for a snack of doughnuts and punch. At his table, he stood scowling at another mother sitting in his chair.
“That is MY chair.”
“Oh, excuse me. Do you want me to move?” she smiled.
“Yes.”
She graciously moved while I silently recovered from my shock and embarrassment.
I worried about the shock to our clinging toddler when I brought home his new little brother. He was such a momma’s boy that he used one of my nightgowns for his blankey. He stood in the doorway holding our nightgown, staring at me and the baby sitting on the couch. When the infant cried to eat though, he ran into the room and thrust the cherished nightgown at the wailing infant. He knew the best thing for comfort when life warranted tears.
But who says children have to be under 10 to do charming things? Recently my oldest stepson was studying a picture of me and his dad early in our marriage. He looked at me. “I can understand why Dad married you, Mom, but why,” he looked back at his father in the picture, “did you marry him?”
I told him to get a headstart collecting cute kid stories.


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