Talking about death with kids has always been awkward. In one aspect, it’s unavoidable, so it has to come up sometime. Sam still sometimes asks about my dad who passed away last year, and we’re straight forward with her about him. And it’s everywhere else. Sure, Elmo may not meet his grisly end no matter how hard you wish it, but it didn’t take Sam long at all to pick up on the concept of “killing the bad guys.” I’m still not sure where she first picked it up, but she’ll often ask about killing things and sometimes make specific requests, like her own little private hit jobs. I try not to comply, but she’s just so cute when she asks.
Things got a little weirder over the weekend when Sam and I watched Disney’s Little Mermaid together. Here’s a fun fact: Ursula the Sea Witch scares the bajeezus out of Sam. Whenever this villain come on screen, Sam would squirm and climb into my lap until the scene was over. At the climax when Ursula met her end (um, spoiler alert, I guess?) Sam seemed almost palpably relieved. Later she asked, “Prince Eric killed Ursula, right?”
“Well, he got rid of her,” I said, trying to avoid the subject of assault with a deadly sailing ship. “She’s gone.”
“No, but he KILLED her, right? She’s dead, right?”
“Well…”
“She’s dead and not coming back. He KILLED HER DEAD.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That’s good. Can I have a cheese stick?”
So I’m left wondering if Sam has either done a superb job of absorbing a troublesome new fact of life into her burgeoning world view in such a way as to maintain her mental health and development, or if she’s taken another baby step towards becoming some kind of psychopath. This seems to be becoming more and more the norm, as kids seem to get more and more complex as time goes by and none of the books I read warned me about this.
Besides witch slaying, Sam has been developing more innocuous skills. I took her to the library on Saturday to get her out of the house and she made a bee line for the computers that they have set up near the kids’ books. These machines have cute little headphones shaped like ladybugs and are loaded with all kinds of kiddie games from all your favorite corporatized, hypermarketed brands. I mentioned last week that I had introduced Sam to the computer, but I was really surprised at how quickly she’s picked it up and how adept she was at pointing, clicking, and dragging with the mouse. I’m pretty sure I could still crush her in one-on-one deathmatches if we were to load up some of my favorite first person shooters, but she’s getting better at it. We only ran into a few problems since she was wearing the headphones and when she got stuck even I couldn’t figure out what the hell Tigger wanted without hearing him. So I just started clicking on random stuff until the computer crashed. But after it came back up she was back to using a net to fill jars with the right number of fireflies and completing patterns by dragging the right shapes on to some dorky looking dragon’s bookshelf. She’s my girl.
My other girl Mandy is also coming along quite nicely. She’s self feeding now, which means that it’s a lot easier for Geralyn to just dump some steamed peas and diced carrots onto her tray and let her go to town instead of feeding her every spoon full. Of course, Mandy still throws half her food in whatever direction strikes her fancy. She has, however, developed this curious habit of picking something up in her little fist and then trying to hand it to whomever happens to be nearby. This is good for when she picks up a clump of cat hair or anything else we don’t want in her mouth, but it’s odd otherwise. I have a strong suspicion that this developed after weeks and weeks of Samantha immediately deciding that she wants whatever Mandy has just picked up, and so Mandy just thinks this is the way things ARE. When I get something, I have to offer it up. If Those Who Are Larger decline it, only then may she keep it.
So, kids are not only complex, they apparently are each complex in their own way, starting out early. Fantastic.
Not to mention the fact that kids also give each other *complexes*.
That they do, though in this case I’ve only see the giving go in one direction.