K
ids ask tough questions, like: “Do fish get
thirsty?” I replied that they did, and the most
common cause of preventable fish death was
greedy ones drinking up all the water in their
tanks.
“And why isn’t there a country called Old Zealand?” the
child continues (questions rarely have logical connections
with previous ones.)
“It sank,” I said, “which is why they had to build a new
one.”
It’s tough being a Dad, because we naturally fall into
role of ‘Font of All Knowledge’, despite having a fraction
of the memory storage capacity of the average woman,
smartphone or pedometer.
Still, if the kids are asking you questions, at least they
are not telling other people stuff about you. Children’s
natural truthfulness (reinforced by idiot educators at
schools, temples, churches, etc) is what really makes
parenting difficult.
“My Dad’s so fat that if you hit his tummy once, it just
keeps on wobbling for AGES.”
“Mum and Dad let me watch TV as much as I like on
Saturday evenings because that’s when they do wrestling
practice in their room.”
“Mum can’t come to the phone because she’s doing
a poo but I am supposed to say that she is having a
shower.”
Yet I console myself with the fact that at least I don’t try
to combine the roles of Dad and criminal, as one man did.
A jewellery shop security guard who approached a pair
of shoppers heard the six-year-old daughter scolding her
father, according to a news story sent to me by a reader.
“Dad! Stop breaking into jewellery cases,” she said.
Too truthful tots
Nury Vittachi
, father-of-three, ponders how best
to handle the honest and the innocent.
Police detained the 31-year-old jewellery thief, who
told them he had walked to the store. “But, Daddy, we
came in our car,” said the girl, pointing out the vehicle to
officers, according to a TV news station in the US state of
Milwaukee.
That report reminded me of a case a few years ago
when police went to arrest a woman at her home but
couldn’t find her. “She’s upstairs, hiding under the bed,”
her giggling child explained. “I’ll show you where she is.
She's in that room over there.”
But the good news is that you can, sometimes,
outsmart children. When one of mine demanded a night
light because “she was scared of monsters”, I told her
that she could not have one, as night lights made it much
easier for monsters to find children. “They have special
machines that detect night lights from far away,” I said.
“and they tell all their monster friends.”
In my household, Dad is okay to accept general and
technical questions. Such as: “Daddy, why do teachers
only give you grades A, B, C, D or F? What happened to
all the Es?”
“They ran out,” I said. “They gave them all to me when I
was at school.”
But I do think we are entitled to deflect questions that
relate to sex, gender, relationships, etc., because that’s
stuff guys are not good at and don’t like to talk about.
Such as: “Since Donald Duck never wears trousers,
how come he wears a towel when he comes out of the
shower?”
“That’s a body parts question. Go ask your Mum.”
Nury welcomes your comments and ideas at his
Facebook page:
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