I take my children to the local library every fortnight (good mummy). Last week I allowed my son to borrow a Thunderbirds DVD (not so good mummy) - his friend enjoys watching and "playing" Thunderbirds and he'd been talking about it a lot lately. That afternoon I let him watch the DVD whilst I was out of the living room cooking the dinner (bad, bad mummy: TV ought not to be used as a "babysitting device").
It wasn't long before son was asking "mummy, what is a gas explosion?"
"Where have you heard about gas explosions?" came my reply.
"On Thunderbirds. A lady was trapped in her cellar when there was a gas explosion. Do we have a cellar...?"
And last night he had a nightmare that our house was on fire. "Do we have gas in our house? Why do fires happen? Will our house have a fire?"
It was hard to resist giving my natural response which would be something along the lines of "Yes, fires are a real danger with terrifying consequences; I sometimes go to bed fearing what might happen if the house were to catch light during the night. And I am forever double checking to ensure that I've turned the gas off. And that glass over there is half empty, son, I tell you, half empty."
But I did resist (good mummy), and he should sleep soundly tonight, safe in the knowledge that fires are extremely rare, and firemen are there to help in the unlikely event of one occurring.
We go to great lengths, don't we, to gradually introduce our children to the harsh realities of life. There was so much "Winnie the Pooh" in our house after Michael was born that I wondered whether he'd grow up thinking he'd been born into 100 Acre Wood. Piglets and Eeyores grinned down at him from cot mobiles, sang at him from toys and spoke soft cuddly rhymes at him from books. When would he realise that a bear would not actually appear yellow with a barrel of honey in one hand and a pink piglet in the other. How was he ever going to recognise a real, live cow from the pictures he'd seen of smiling, flower-chewing Ermintrudes in his board books? I was mildly concerned but not at all surprised when he actually saw a field of cows and said "look sheep!" on the way to Wales a couple of years ago.
TV does accelerate the process of getting to grips with reality though.... a little too quickly sometimes. I'm not sure whether I ought to continue watching the daytime news now when he is in the room.....
I'm off now. He wants me to get him some ice-cream (not so good mummy), one hour before dinner time (bad, bad mummy). Well, it's hot outside.
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And when I say firemen I mean, of course, fire-fighters.
Bad, bad, bad mummy
See, you're a good mummy, you shield your children from the harsh realities of life. Mine have been brought up on "No, you hold onto mummy's hand by the road so you don't go squish squash under a car..."
Bad, bad, bad mummy!
PMSL (well, not literally...) - we left one of Ruth's cups at church one week. It was seen around during the following week, but wasn't there on the Sunday. Adam was very concerned about this, and was getting rather stressed. People were trying to reassure him that someone had probably taken it accidentally, or maybe someone had taken it home to wash it - none of this helped. So I, his loving mother, bent down to him, and said in sepulchral (yes, I did have to look the spelling up for that one) tones
"Maybe a burglar took it."
Suppressed gasps all round from the adults, but...
small boy cheers up instantly, and goes round telling everyone that a burglar took Ruth's cup!
I remember now, I love my children!
Ha ha ha... It is funny how one can be both a good, and bad mommy at the same time?
I do not think that it is necessary for a little one to have to grasp all of the worries, and apprehensions available for them to know at such a young age. They need to know that fire can be dangerous when it is not under control.
What I did is I showed my children a lit candle, and explained how we can use fire as a tool for so many wonderful things.. like warming our house, or cooking supper,or even for decorating a birthday cake.... but that fire has to be under the control of an adult for it to be safe. If they see a fire is they feel is out of control they should get as far away from it as fast as they can, and tell an adult.
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