Once upon a time my daughter Emma had a fish. His name was
George Jefferson. One morning as soon as my daughter in-law had dropped two
year-old Mackenzie off at the house for the day, she walked into the living room
to see “Mr. Jeff” (as she called him) swimming around in his bowl. Instead of
her usual comments, however, I heard, “Nanna, why is Mr. Jeff on the floor?”
Without bothering to go into the living room I answered, “He’s
not. He’s in his bowl.”
“He’s on the floor, Nanna,” Mack insisted.
Just about that time she heard Emma coming downstairs from
her room. “Emma, Mr. Jeff is on the floor,” Mack said, running toward her.
I decided I’d better go see what Mack was talking about, so
I walked into the living room and yep, sure enough, there was Mr. Jeff. He was
literally stuck to the wood floor. Dead…graveyard dead. Apparently in the night
he had jumped out of his bowl thinking there was more to life than swimming
around and around and around. There wasn’t…not for him anyway.
Emma came into the room about the same time I did. She didn’t
have but a couple of minutes before she had to walk out the door to wait for
the school bus, so she picked up Mr. Jeff, said something to the effect of ‘stupid
fish’, walked into the bathroom, and flushed him down the toilet while Mack
looked on wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
I answered all of her two year-old questions, but from that
day on (until we moved out of that house a year later) Mack wouldn’t use that
bathroom. At all—not even to wash her hands. And a few years later when “Finding
Nemo” came out, she talked about Mr. Jeff during the ‘escape scene’ in the
dentist’s office. I think it’s safe to say Mr. Jeff left quite the impression.
Mack is nine now, but she still remembers finding Mr. Jeff
on the floor. She even sees the humor in it now. She’s a farm girl, so it’s not
like she hasn’t experienced life and death, but that her first up-close-and-personal
experience, so yah, she’s going to remember it.
The point I want to make is that as parents you need to make
sure you aren’t giving your kids credit for being more resilient than they
really are. Yes, in this instance it was just a goldfish—and not a very smart
one, at that. But with everything going on in the world today; school
shootings, racial tensions, terrorism, political and religious discriminations,
bullying, and oh, so many other things, parents should not…cannot assume
answering a few questions is all it takes to set their hearts and minds at
ease. To make them feel safe. To make them feel confident. To help them
understand their thoughts and feelings.
Be pro-active. Talk. Listen. And most importantly, be
discerning in what you expose your kids to. Keep it age-appropriate, please.
Love,
Momma D
Copyright 2018 Darla Noble. No part of this can be used or copied without permission from the author.
