![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
everyone is on god's side. Just ask them.
Jan. 28th, 2012 10:43 amI have a tiny little cold. It mostly seems to involve my face hurting and my voice being rather husky. So I can practice singing, "Feelings" in a funny voice. It is good to make your own fun.
I am reading a rather interesting book on one particular night of the Blitz. I want to get through one section before I begin writing an extended review about it as it is absolutely fascinating stuff. (especially in regards to cultural observations made by German and English people about the war)
Last night Mr. Jenner and I were talking about Peppa Pig with the kids. Both are keen fans. I mentioned that there was a Peppa Pig World in England and that maybe once we move and are settled we might do a visit there. Senor Onion and Miss Biscuit were absolutely wowed by this idea and wanted to see pictures of the place. I showed them some. Senor Onion was thoroughly disappointed and upset when he found out that Peppa Pig World was not animated. Now one might laugh a bit (because it was a little funny) but I also felt for the kid. Imagine being told you could VISIT where Peppa Pig is and being five your world can be a bit literal at times. Only to find out it won't be exactly as you imagined it. He is going through a period right now where he is trying to divide everything up into real and pretend. A common question these days is, "Is that really real?" Eventually he was all right with the idea of Peppa Pig World not being an animated world that he could join in on. He wanted to see Peppa's house.
There are a lot of complicated questions to answer when asked, "is that really real?" But then, none of his questions seem easy. Yesterday he was building something with his lego and he asked what it looked like. Mr. Jenner said it looked a bit like a battle ship. Senor Onion then asked what a battleship was and we gave him a loose explanation. This lead to a discussion about war and the moral vagueness that comes with good and bad guys. Being five there is very much a sense of good and bad guys. But somehow the discussion got onto the detail that both sides tend to think they are the good guys. And then somehow the idea that sometimes good guys end up being held by bad guys. Senor Onion said, "Why are good guys being held in jail? Because only bad guys go to jail. Not good guys." (I was mentioning that my Great Uncle fought against some people who weren't very nice and helped to free some people held in a jail by the bad guys. I didn't want to say, "Yeah so my Great Uncle helped to liberate a concentration camp." So there are indeed some really really bad guys out there.) Yes. Well. Good question. One of those where you want to give the answers but sometimes the answer might be too abstract and you also don't want to go into extreme detail. I told him that sometimes people think they are the good guys and they might do things that aren't very nice. And that sometimes good people do things that aren't very nice. It was a tough one to wrap his head around.
One doesn't really want to get into the whole hairy subject of war crimes with a child. I tend to walk carefully around this because when I was about six/seven years old a class mate sat down next to me on the bus and told me about this guy called Hitler who would kill me because I happened to have brown hair and brown eyes. This completely horrified me. She was an awful precocious little girl with a talent for bitchery that would make Joan Collins recoil in terror. I asked her to explain why because well... it sounded fucking insane. She proceeded to tell me all about the holocaust. It blew my mind and gave me a good old fashioned anxiety attack. Of course I went home to my Mother to ask her what the hell was that all about? She was rather good at answering the questions without getting into too many freaky details. But I know later on she said that she was pretty damned pissed off at that precocious little child for introducing me to man's inhumanity to man in that fashion. (understandable) Mind you it set me off on a childhood of reading all I could about it in an attempt to understand, "what the fuck is wrong with people?" I was kind of a wound up kid.
Anyhow, I think we explained things pretty well. So now in addition to trying to understand what is real and what isn't real, he is getting his head around the abstract idea of "The right side." Gah...
Thankfully the rest of the day was spent doing less morally complicated lego. I helped him to build a ferry. It was something else. Three levels. Just like the ones we take across Puget Sound. Just needs chowder and video games.
I am reading a rather interesting book on one particular night of the Blitz. I want to get through one section before I begin writing an extended review about it as it is absolutely fascinating stuff. (especially in regards to cultural observations made by German and English people about the war)
Last night Mr. Jenner and I were talking about Peppa Pig with the kids. Both are keen fans. I mentioned that there was a Peppa Pig World in England and that maybe once we move and are settled we might do a visit there. Senor Onion and Miss Biscuit were absolutely wowed by this idea and wanted to see pictures of the place. I showed them some. Senor Onion was thoroughly disappointed and upset when he found out that Peppa Pig World was not animated. Now one might laugh a bit (because it was a little funny) but I also felt for the kid. Imagine being told you could VISIT where Peppa Pig is and being five your world can be a bit literal at times. Only to find out it won't be exactly as you imagined it. He is going through a period right now where he is trying to divide everything up into real and pretend. A common question these days is, "Is that really real?" Eventually he was all right with the idea of Peppa Pig World not being an animated world that he could join in on. He wanted to see Peppa's house.
There are a lot of complicated questions to answer when asked, "is that really real?" But then, none of his questions seem easy. Yesterday he was building something with his lego and he asked what it looked like. Mr. Jenner said it looked a bit like a battle ship. Senor Onion then asked what a battleship was and we gave him a loose explanation. This lead to a discussion about war and the moral vagueness that comes with good and bad guys. Being five there is very much a sense of good and bad guys. But somehow the discussion got onto the detail that both sides tend to think they are the good guys. And then somehow the idea that sometimes good guys end up being held by bad guys. Senor Onion said, "Why are good guys being held in jail? Because only bad guys go to jail. Not good guys." (I was mentioning that my Great Uncle fought against some people who weren't very nice and helped to free some people held in a jail by the bad guys. I didn't want to say, "Yeah so my Great Uncle helped to liberate a concentration camp." So there are indeed some really really bad guys out there.) Yes. Well. Good question. One of those where you want to give the answers but sometimes the answer might be too abstract and you also don't want to go into extreme detail. I told him that sometimes people think they are the good guys and they might do things that aren't very nice. And that sometimes good people do things that aren't very nice. It was a tough one to wrap his head around.
One doesn't really want to get into the whole hairy subject of war crimes with a child. I tend to walk carefully around this because when I was about six/seven years old a class mate sat down next to me on the bus and told me about this guy called Hitler who would kill me because I happened to have brown hair and brown eyes. This completely horrified me. She was an awful precocious little girl with a talent for bitchery that would make Joan Collins recoil in terror. I asked her to explain why because well... it sounded fucking insane. She proceeded to tell me all about the holocaust. It blew my mind and gave me a good old fashioned anxiety attack. Of course I went home to my Mother to ask her what the hell was that all about? She was rather good at answering the questions without getting into too many freaky details. But I know later on she said that she was pretty damned pissed off at that precocious little child for introducing me to man's inhumanity to man in that fashion. (understandable) Mind you it set me off on a childhood of reading all I could about it in an attempt to understand, "what the fuck is wrong with people?" I was kind of a wound up kid.
Anyhow, I think we explained things pretty well. So now in addition to trying to understand what is real and what isn't real, he is getting his head around the abstract idea of "The right side." Gah...
Thankfully the rest of the day was spent doing less morally complicated lego. I helped him to build a ferry. It was something else. Three levels. Just like the ones we take across Puget Sound. Just needs chowder and video games.
