Out of the mouths of babes

It's always been amazing to me that children have such a beautiful and unbiased view of what's going on around them.  I've always had a liking to the expression "out of the mouths of babes" because it really hits the mark.  It's actually a misquote of "Out of the mouths of babes (oft times come gems)."

Ok, to please any random grammar police that stumbles by my Blog, it's actually an idiom, so there, I hope your craving to correct me has been satiated.

Time after time, as my children were growing, I would be pleased to no end to hear their unique perspective on events in life that we often overlook.  Children have a very pure and honest view of their surroundings until their parents inject their own opinions and cloud the child's perspective. A child is not born with prejudice and phobias, that is something they are taught.

This is not always a bad thing, we're not ruining our children with our own fears and prejudices.  They need to understand that some people are bad and they can't just jump in a strangers van because he's offered them candy.  Or even worse, purchase a water treatment system because some nice stranger did an at home water test for them.

But I digress, I was discussing the things children say.  When my son was around three years old we went to a friends house for a birthday party.  I could see he was getting upset about something as I was talking to my friends.  So I pulled him to the side and asked what he was upset about.  He said he was angry because all those people were calling me Ken when my name was Daddy.

I was completely thrown as I never had that situation come up before. The girls seemed to have figured it out or they had heard my name before, he had not.  Rather than laugh it off, I explained that he was one of only three people in the entire world that are allowed to call me Dad, everyone else has to call me Ken.

I guess the point is that children are not short little adults and we tend to forget that. Not that there's anything wrong with short little adults either, I mean Tyrion Lannister is about as close to a spirit guide as I can get without peyote and a sweat lodge experience. The point is that we would do well to remember that a child's brain is developing and they don't think the way we do. They need to learn from us, and with an open mind maybe we can learn from them too.