When Your Kids are Wittier than You are

A couple day ago, I was running work errands with the girls for a few hours. Daphne has a habit of shrieking loudly when she’s both angry and happy. It’s a brain splitting, ear piercing shriek, and she gets reprimanded for it quite a lot. It happens much less now than it used to, but on this particular day, she shrieked 6 times in a row in the car. All in happiness and playing, but my brain turned to mush. After the fifth shriek, I yelled back,”STOP IT NOW. Seriously Daffy, you must stop. It’s hurting my ears. If you do this again, you’ll be in trouble.”

That hurt her feelings, tremendously, and she sulked in blessed silence for about 3 minutes. And then she shrieked again. 

“You’ll be in trouble when we get home, Daffy,” I warned.

“Mama. Listen. Dat was my bwud,” she reasoned seriously.

We got Daphne this singing bird for Christmas and she really loves it. You push a button on its chest and it sings to you. Its little birdcage hangs on her bunkbed.

“Daphne, that wasn’t your bird. That was you screaming again,” glaring at her in the rear view mirror.

“Tweet twee tweeeeee twe tweeet,”said the bird. “It was the bwud, mama!!! You heard it!” she said pushing the little button.

I gut laughed, and Daphne says,”You happy now, Mama? You not mad anymore? YAY YAY!!!!” 

“I still kinda wanna kick your little booty, but I guess you’re off the hook,” I said laughing.

“Tweet tweet,”said the bird triumphantly as Daphne made this exact face back at me in the mirror.

The other evening at church, Luna asked a little boy if he’d like to be friends with her.

“Hi!! I’ve been thinking about this: would you like to be friends?!!”

“NO,” said the little boy, running away from her.

Luna told us this without bitterness, happily swinging on her bedroom swing so we assumed it didn’t bother her too much. But then she brought it up a few more times and admitted it had hurt her feelings after all. She wondered why he didn’t want to be friends. Had she done something wrong maybe, or was he just rude?

I told her probably none of the above. He’s at a confusing age where little boys feel awkward around girls, plus his family may have rules about who their kids can be friends with.

A day or two later I wore this shirt, and she asked me what each word meant.

I explained to her how we can sometimes forget to love people and instead despise them when they treat us badly or when we have differences. But God calls us to love both our neighbor and our enemy.

Her eyes lit up. “Like frickin’ [name redacted lest any feelings get hurt!] when he wouldn’t be my friend!” 

Then she got out a marker and filled in the bottom line on my shirt.

I laugh every time I wear it now.