Posts tagged kids
good times
Apr 20th
I totally forgot I still had this on Youtube and rediscovered it while looking for another video. This is actually part two–where I confront Maddie about her bad language. Part one was where she first went off on a tourette’s-like rant in the car. I took that one down because we kept getting hate mail from people who thought we were awful parents. They may have been right, but they didn’t need to be so mean about it.
BTW, Maddie hasn’t dropped an f-bomb in about four years, so I don’t think this ruined her for life. Just sayin’, judgmental peers.
Child Slavery
Dec 15th
Have you ever tried to explain slavery to a four-year-old? It’s not easy.
“I’m going to make Timmy (not his real name) my slave,” my youngest daughter randomly mentioned the other day. When I asked if she knew what that meant, she admitted she didn’t. So I got the chance to throw some education her way.
“A slave is someone who has to do anything another person asks them to do, even if they don’t want to,” I offered.
“Oh!” My four-year-old replied, with a look of recognition. “So I’m Mommy’s slave!”
“Um, no. You never do anything Mommy tells you to do.”
“So Mommy’s my slave!” she countered.
“What? No. Nobody is anyone’s slave in this house. It’s a bad thing to be someone’s slave. A slave doesn’t have freedom to go where he wants to go and do what he wants to do. He’s a prisoner, kept against his will and forced to do someone’s work for them. It’s a terrible thing. And slaves are treated like property–their masters say they own them like you own a doll or a toy. And you can’t own a person, right?”
It seemed like I was getting through to them, despite my stumbling and poor choice of words. I thought I was teaching them something important.
“Oh,” my older daughter said. “You mean like in aidy.”
“Aidy? What do you mean? Like 1000 A.D.? What’s aidy?”
“Dad,” my daughter explained, becoming impatient and taking on that ‘how could you be so dense’ tone that only a little girl can pull off, “You know–aidy! Like seventy, aidy, niney. Aidy!”
“Do you mean like in the 1880’s, like the time your American Girl doll is from?”
“Duh, dad. Like Kirsten. She had a slave in aidy. Everyone had slaves in aidy.”
“Um, Kirsten didn’t have a slave, sweetie. The slave girl was another American girl, in the other book you read. Remember? Making someone your slave is a bad thing. Not everyone had slaves back then.”
“Did kids have slaves?” my youngest asked. Finally, she was internalizing the discussion–we were on the path to enlightenment.
“I’m sure some of their families did, sweetie,” I answered.
“I wish I had a slave,” my oldest offered.
“I wish it was Timmy,” my youngest added.