Smallsteps is eight, this is not a recent photo of her. But it is kind of fitting given the opener today, because it shows more of her cheeky side. She is generally pretty shy around other people, but at home with us, she is open and very talkative. However, lately she has also been showing a penchant for being a bit of an entertainer, and has been actively looking to be a little more outgoing and, putting herself in front of people. It started a few months ago when she put her hand up for and won a vote to be part of the student council of her school. It surprised us that she volunteered at all. Yesterday, she told us that she also put her hand up to be one of the hosts at the school Christmas party next week, talking into a microphone in front of the parents.
Very surprised.
However, last night, I was heading off to meet a friend for a coffee and only a few minutes after I left home, I got a call from my wife, saying that Smallsteps had a joke to tell me. Now, I can't tell it here like she did, but it made me laugh, even though it needs some work.
Here it is, as she told it.
After eating, you and your friend leave a restaurant and forgot to pay. As you are walking down the street, the owner of the restaurant comes running after and says that you haven't paid. Where you are walking, there is a sheep on the street playing the guitar for money, and you accidentally pay the money to the sheep instead. The sheep looks at the money he got and says, "125 euros, not baaaaaahhhd!"
It cracked me up.
Obviously, the set up is terrible and could be cleaned up a lot, but I think that in this case, because it is so bad, it makes the joke funnier, as the sheep is just so out of place, and the punchline unexpected, because it doesn't fit in with the original premise of the joke. I told my friend [who appeared in the joke] also. He said the same, where once the sheep came into the picture, he didn't know where it was going to go, so it had a surprise factor. My wife said that just after I left, Smallsteps became quiet for a few minutes and then said "Mummy, wouldn't it be funny if..."
Tangents are interesting.
This morning as Smallsteps was saying bye as she went off to school, I said that I had told my friend and I got another surprising answer.
"Then he will tell his partner, and she will tell someone and then someone else will tell another and then one day at school, someone will say, let me tell you a joke - and I will hear my own joke."
I am liking this side of my daughter a lot, as it shows that she is thinking how what she says impacts on others, as well as demonstrating an awareness of the social dynamics and making future predictions of behaviour. It is interesting to me because we haven't spoken directly of this topic as I recall, but we do have a lot of conversations about how things work, and how our behaviours matter. This means that she is starting to build her own perspectives and theories.
The other night, we had the parents of Smallsteps' friends over for the evening, and my wife was talking about how Smallsteps had woken up in the middle of the night sick, but had said to her how Daddy always reads books where people die. The other parents looked at me like I am some kind of child-beater, so I thought I would explain. We read a lot of books, and one of the set were from Roald Dahl, and a lot of the subjects are brought from his own life, where there was a lot of family dying, like his sister and father. People also died in the Narnia series, and we just finished The Hobbit, and she cried at the end, because Thorin, Fili and Kili died.
The parents asked, doesn't she ask questions about all of this death?
Yes. *That is the point. These are kids books, and there are also fantastical characters in them. She gets to use her imagination and build the world, the people, the images she hears about, and she gets to discuss the themes in a safe space with me, someone she trusts to be honest with her, but also trusts to protect her. Through funny real stories and fantasy landscapes, she get exposure and opportunity to discuss it.
I don't protect her from facts of life.
People die. She knows it, even if she hasn't experienced losing anyone very close to her that she has met herself. And, that is just one of the many topics that apparently, other parents aren't willing to talk to their eight year old children about, because they fear how the children will feel or react. However, I believe it is better to have these discussions with me now, than be exposed to them in the future with inexperienced and ill-informed friends, later in life.
Like most parents with their kids, I believe that Smallsteps is pretty intelligent, but I have discovered that a lot of parents tend to underestimate the capabilities of their kids. But, I think it is more out of fear than anything else, because underestimation means that they can postpone the more difficult conversations that they don't know how to handle yet. Many will say they want to preserve childhood, and perhaps this is why so many of the younger adults are so incapable, so reactive, so impacted by the slightest of slights.
Bringing this up with my friend last night over a coffee, we were talking about how people react and how I believe that we focus on things that have little impact, so we don't deal with the things that actually affect us. For instance, I know people who would get very upset if someone used the wrong pronoun or "dead-named" someone. However, I wonder what the same person would do if they had the experience of my father when he was seven years of age, where he watched his best friend and his friend's entire family beheaded by the Japanese in the town square.
How can the two events compare?
Well, it comes down to experience, doesn't it? Without experience, there is no comparative context, which means that things of little importance will take precedence over things of significant importance that are unknown. If children are continually sheltered from the normal conditions of life until they come across them in their experience, they are going to be heavily impacted, because it was unexpected, a surprise.
We don't have predictive ability for what they don't know is possible.
Well, as you might have predicted yourself based on my writing, it might seem pretty obvious from where my daughter gets her propensity to go off on tangents. Yet, while you might be correct, you are also only looking at a part of the equation, because you don't know my wife. We overestimate our opinions, and underestimate the conditions, because one we know, the other we think we know. We shelter children to protect them, rather than starting discussions early and under conditions that are safe, risk-free, and guided, with the irony that the more we protect them, the greater the risk that they will be surprised by life in a negative way. They won't react with understanding, they will respond out of uncertainty and fear.
We all face uncertainty, and we all face adversity in some way. However, should we be reacting out of fear, or have the presence of mind to slow down, think through the circumstances, and then respond? Perhaps our intuition will react on one way, but perhaps with a little thought, it is clear that a tangent is what is needed.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
She's a lovely little girl and it speaks highly of her upbringing and her own general nature that she is able to find joy in those little jokes she makes and it's nice to hear she's starting to find herself a little more and come out of her shell...or mouse hole. Cute as a button too.
Becca 🌷
I will show her this in the morning. She will love it!
I have a feeling with a bit of practice she will have that joke down solid. I used to have one about a brick and another one about a frog at a bank and the set up definitely makes the joke. Given what my wife does, she usually has some pretty strong opinions about death and when the right time is to talk to kids about it and things. I can't tell you the specifics (in case you wanted to compare), I just know there have been times when she said (they shouldn't have taken the kids to this funeral or that funeral). Then there are times when she thinks it is totally okay, so I am guessing it is situation specific. I don't know, I just work on computers all day!
It depends on the child. If they have been raised to be fearful, or avoided death altogether like many I know, then they might not be ready for a funeral, and the parent not ready for the feelings and questions to follow. For me, death was just part of life. I think I was around Smallsteps' age when I went to my first funeral, for my mum's best friend who died of cancer. It was sad, but not bad.
I used to! ;D
I remember being little and having to be a pall bearer for some relative I hardly knew. It was honestly quite traumatizing, so I kind of get it.
She's obviously a thoughtful person. People who know the joke will probably add their own thoughts to it. There will be a difference between the joke Smallsteps hears from his friends and the original joke. That might be the real surprise for him. Maybe she's curious about it.
I will have to ask her what she would do to change it, or how she would feel if she heard a better version of it.
Yes, I agree it's better to discuss those 'difficult' aspects of life like death with our kids, so they don't hear them from the wrong people and therefore form crooked perspectives about life. You are doing a good job raising your daughter and her mental and intellectual growth is commendable. About her joke, the 'baaaaahhd' aspect was what cracked me up. You will surely be proud of her when she becomes an adult.
She makes me laugh in some way daily, just by the way she navigates her world.
Some have some very strange views indeed!
It must good for you to see her getting self-confidence slow by slow. I think this phase is important for the personality development of a child as well as his/her parents to interfere in case of a negative situation.
There is a balance point in letting them fly, and letting them fall, as well as supporting both. It can be hard to navigate in this world today, because there are so many ways to avoid parenting.
In this season, I become somewhat melancholic because of the memories of my daughter Sofia. I spent those beautiful years with Sofia, the same age as Smallsteps, moments of joy and happiness, moments of uncertainty and worries… Moments that will never come back. I am so glad that Smallsteps is growing up, happy, confident and with a wonderful future. Blessings.
P.S. I have been restrained from leaving comments because a friend who is keeping a close eye on me is taking it upon himself to downvote my replies…
It must be hard all year, but harder still when there are normally times where family gather.
Why are you on spaminator's list?
not bad at all, hehe.
:D
Children At that age are great. My son may have been a little younger when we were at a Barbecue and he told a group of parents that is dad was going to teach him how to be a jedi knight. It got a great laugh! I was already coaching his under 8 football team, stepping up to Jedi Knight instructor could not have been much harder !LOL
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