Hello…again!  Yes, I did the schedule for MamaWriters this month and for some as-of-yet unrevealed reason, I scheduled myself with back to back dates.   So you’re stuck with me again.

I’m writing this at the very end of the day, after spending a wonderfully enjoyable afternoon with my family.  My sister in law brought her littlest kids over today and we had a full day of play – putting together what we’ve affectionately coined the “Toddler Brigade.”  (4 children at ages 5, 4 and 3. ) My son, being an only child, gets a full dose of what it’s like to have siblings, I get to spend time with my SIL (also one of my closest friends).   A win-win situation, all around.

And today, in discussing the things our kids have said and done since we last talked, dual stories popped up that made us stop, think and realize that our children are little adults in training.  They pick up so much more than we sometimes think they do, they form opinions — good or bad — based on their observations, and often times, the imagery and words they see are taken literally.  Very literally.

First story: A few weeks back, my told my husband and I that a friend of ours “didn’t like her husband.  She wouldn’t let him kiss her.”    And in fact, that week that he witnessed this exchange, she was rather irritated with her husband.   If you’ve been married anything longer than the honeymoon, you get irritated, it happens.  But what shocked us what what he saw (she wouldn’t let him kiss her) and how HE, as a four year old, translated that.  It meant, to him — “She doesn’t like him.”   There was no shade of gray for him, there was no “it’s complicated”, or “right now” or even, “just at this particular minute.”  It was an ending statement.

And if that wasn’t enough to make us truly consider how our words and actions could be construed, my SIL had a story to share, too.  Her daughter came to her the other day and said, “Steve Poizner is a liar.  And he drives cars off cliffs. He’s a bad man. He hurts people.”

Normally, I’m not one to ever mention politics on a blog and I’m not doing it now  (so please, no political opinion in the commentary – I only mention his name because it was specifically an ad on television, in opposition to this man — who is running for California Governor.  This ad includes words such as “Mr. Poizner lied about” and “he lied about this…” and it showed imagery of a car being driven off a cliff, with words to match that state he will drive California over the cliff. (Or something to that affect, I’m not entirely sure of the ad content.)

But what my niece took from this?  He drives cars over cliffs. He hurts people.

I would venture to guess that’s exactly what the folks who created the ad wanted people to think.  But a five year old?   It amazed me that she pulled so much from a 30 or 60 second commercial, that she formed such a specific opinion from the images and words she saw.  And it reminded me to never, ever underestimate how much awareness children have in the room.  Just because they are little and might seem not to notice doesn’t mean they aren’t paying very close attention.

What about you?  What surprising things have your children noticed?