“Mama, I want to tell you something funny that Maddie said,” our son related over the phone. Since the two-year-old started talking several months ago, she astounds us with all the pent-up knowledge she had been keeping to herself! “We were watching a thing on TV where these guys took a helicopter to the top of a mountain, then snowboarded down,” he explained. Then he went on, “Maddie was standing there, and I heard her say worriedly, ‘Be careful!’”
I got a laugh out of that, and told Jamie that her nurturing and protective side was coming out. Watching children grow and develop is so fascinating, and the things they say often gives insight to the way they think. I laughed over two face book posts as an example of what comes out of their mouths. One mother of a 7 year-old boy wrote that her son pondered, “Why is it that God is in charge of us, adults are in charge of kids, kids are in charge of babies, and babies do whatever they want?” I guess he was feeling caught in the middle somewhere.
Another friend shared a story of a 5-year-old’s point of view on losing a pet. His mother was trying to explain that God’s plan is that after life on earth, all eventually die and go to heaven to be with God. The little boy retorted, “Yes, but what does God want with a dead dog?”
The other day I was alerted to watch a mini-video of my grandchildren at play. 5-year-old Anne-Marie and Maddie had called their daddy in to look at their surprise, which he had them re-create for the camera. When all was in readiness, Anne-Marie stood in front of a gigantic pile of toys and, with a flourish of her hand, announced dramatically: “Surprise!” Just then Maddie popped out of the toys like a jack-in-the-box, grinning from ear to ear and giving her own belated, “Surprise!”
I had gotten Maddie a Jack-in-the-Box for her first birthday, and she loved the suspense and surprise of the monkey popping up, which always brought squeals of delight from her. She was giving us a re-enactment. Which is what all kids do in their own way as they interpret life, never failing to give us a surprise!
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