Funny Things Kids Say
Author: Stef Daniel
Around every water cooler, there is a parent sharing a humorous story about something funny that their kid said or did last night. While the other adults laugh and smile – it is always funnier to hear kids talk in person about worldly things that they really don’t know anything about than to listen to it secondhand. But we listen anyways. Add some older siblings and an overheard grown up conversation or two to the mix, and the funny things that your kids say will be truly revealing about what really goes on in your home (and in their mind).
Every child has one favorite question. Why. When you give them an answer, they will simply and honestly follow it with another request for more information. Why. Eventually, adults just end up telling their child that things are the way they are, or they end the annoying conversation with the words “because I said so” in order to avoid more whys. Then, when the same child uses this same logic on the playground to try to explain to a friend why they get to be the leader again, it doesn’t work and maybe even gets them sitting in a small rendition of preschool timeout. Similarly, the answers we give them about everything from childbirth to Christmas shape their insight - fueling even more insightful and hysterical responses as they grow up.
Ask any child under the age of 7 about the planets and you will no doubt get a book full of amazing facts, figures, and hypotheses about what makes them go around the sun. Ask these same children about money or try to tell them that you don’t have any – and they will tell you to just use your debit card instead. Ask ten kids about how Santa gets around the world in one night, and you will have some interesting and amazing ideas about time travel that are not only believable, but plausible as well. Where do babies come from? The answer to that question from the mouth of a child can breed answers that could keep any adult rolling on the floor with laughter for hours.
The best thing about all the funny things kids say is that they are all founded in honesty and belief. Children want to believe their parents. They want to believe their teachers. They want to believe that what they over hear on the news or from an adult conversation is really not depressing or negative. The truth is that children will see the positive in everything as long as those who know better in their life allow them to. This is a powerful message for every parent. The first seeds of doubt that the world isn’t perfect are ALWAYS planted by adults, unnecessarily and often in a futile attempt to explain something that a child is explaining wrongly. How about that?
In today’s world where we are privy to so much information – both heavy and factual, there is a push to make our children understand the ways of the world long before they really need to. Try as we may to explain global warming, presidential elections, and the state of the economy or childbirth – there will hopefully always be a child present to put the adults back in perspective. To make them laugh with funny words of wisdom and truth that perhaps many of us have just become too old to understand ourselves. From the mouths of babes comes the purest of thought, emotion, and as always…laughter.
