Children bring a fresh view of life to the delight of their mom, dad and grandfather – who shared the following stories with me.
My nephew in New York posted on Facebook that his five-year-old daughter stopped singing one day, looked up at him and said, “I have a frog in my throat. Daddy, feel my throat.”
As he felt it, she said, “See, doesn’t it feel like the body of a frog?”
Evidently the frog continued to hang around because the next day she told him it felt like the frog was trying to blow air bubbles in her throat.
A grandfather told me about an outing with his grandson that included a tricycle race track bordered with hay bales.
The other children raced for a while and left but “all he wanted to do was pedal around and round until he was all by himself,” Papaw said. Finally the lad stopped and leaned on his handle bars.
“What’s wrong?” Papaw asked.
“I came in for tires and my whole pit crew quit and now I have to race with old tires,” the child sighed.
He looked up and saw the trail of a passing jet above them.
“Look Papaw, there is an airplane. My whole pit crew is leaving on that plane.” That boy was just not having the best of days at the race track.
I happened to have a very rare visit recently with my aunt and cousin with our paths converging at my daughter’s house. My husband chatted at length with my aunt while our grandson tried in vain to catch Grandpa’s attention.
Finally, loud and clear, our grandson asked, “Why do you like her so much? Huh? Why do you like her so much?”
All conversation stopped as we all looked at him.
Grandpa shifted gears a bit to include the child.
Usually older folks do focus on the little ones, as they did the day my daughter took her 4- year-old son, 2-year-old daughter and newborn to see their great-grandma at the nursing home. They gave an impromptu choral concert.
“All the residents of the nursing home LOVED Eli, Daisy, and especially Caroline, who handed out hugs rather freely upon our departure. Even the ones with dementia enjoyed the kids . . . and asked, “do I know you?” she mused on Facebook.
She recently moved away from a busy street to a quiet circle street where 5-year-old Eli can cross the street by himself. “He asked to play ball with the neighbors, crossed by himself and now he’s making friends. When did he get so big?” she pondered as she watched him from the window.
He is getting big – almost big enough to not need a nap – at least he doesn’t think he does. My daughter put the children down to nap and then collapsed onto her bed. While she slept, Eli slipped out of bed, pulled on his cowboy hat, chaps, boots and vest and went prowling with his toy gun. His mom woke up to find one little cowboy sprawled sound asleep outside her door. She took a picture to post on Facebook and wrote, “It looks like a crime scene from the old west, but really it’s just Eli trying to do whatever he can to a…void fall…ing a…sleeeeeeee … zzzzz!”
Like most children, Eli struggles to obey instructions.
Told to dress to go home after Mother’s Day Out, he pulled his socks over his hands instead and had them talking back and forth to each other as puppets.
The teacher noticed and said, “I love that you are playing puppets. That is very creative, but I did tell you to put on your socks and shoes.”
One sock puppet turned to her and said, “Okay, but I’m going to die,” because it would no longer be a puppet – only a sock.
Another time it was the necessity of changing shoes that triggered the following discussion.
“Why do I have to change my shoes?” he asked.
“Oh, because at the hospital they make us parents promise to make you kids as miserable as possible,” his mom said.
The child responded, “Well, I have a handbook telling me how to be mad!”
With or without a handbook, he knows his night time rituals. At the end of a busy day he came home and said, “I’m SO tired. Do I have time to brush my teeth, or not?” After brushing he declared, ‘Dad, just pray for me and sing me a song, and I’ll go to sleep’ – and he did.
Old enough to know his need for sleep and his dad’s part of the routine.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
Kid talk
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