gfrancie | oh please....

If I hear one more parent tell me how their little Kaleigh or Madison is very "mature and precocious" for three I may have to take the parent and sit them down and tell them the horrible truth.
"No your sweet darling child is not precocious. I am sure they are highly entertaining... even spirited but they are not fucking geniuses."

I was working in the kids section and I keep getting these people wanting books for their kids and apparently we have a full generation of Stephen Hawkings wandering around the playground. They always start out with, "well she/he is very very advanced and they need something that will help them."
Right.
It was all I had within me to not hand a parent a copy of "War and Peace" and say, "Get back to me." I even asked one parent if the child was reading (I admit to be a bastard) and it seems the wee one couldn't read but was still...very very advanced for their age.

I understand all parents want to think that their child is brilliant, original and has great insight in their world but really one must face facts. Most three year olds are slightly distracted nose pickers. Often very funny easily distracted nose pickers but still...they are people who are prone to be very upset when they don't get their way and aren't known for paying attention to something for a very long time.
God Bless them.
I just have no patience for this self-delusion on the part of the parents. Especially when I meet the child and this precocious and very verbal child is spending their time with their thumb in their mouth and runs around the room and giggling when someone farts.

Whatever happened to wanting to raise a child who is kind of fun and normal. You know the kid may not play like Mozart or offer critiques of the work of Mondrian but can say, "please" and "thank you" when reminded and likes to draw you pretty pictures that could either be a dinosaur or Grandpa.
Just let the child be a kid and read to them, "Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel".

...

I had another interesting customer today. An rather waspy woman who found out her nine year old daughter had been playing doctor. It seems that she feels it is high time to have a chat about the difference between ladies and gentlemen and where babies come from. So she needed the right books to talk about this sort of thing. I suppose it surprised me a bit that she is now discussing these things. I admit I come from a very progressive family and these things were always discussed in the open. When I was three My Mother told me she was to have a baby and I was a bit curious as to where this baby was going to come out. She told me and I proceeded to share (when waiting with my Mother at the bus stop) with strangers this fascinating information. "My Mama is going to have a baby and it is in her uterus and is going to come out of her vagina." (Now I wouldn't call myself precocious at that age...just a bit of a smarty-pants) Strangers would look a little surprised and then say, "Ah...well...um...good." I bet I gave them a good story to tell friends. I then began to wonder how the hell the baby got to the uterus in the first place. My Mother explained all of that to me and I was all fine and dandy about that. My Mother is definitely keen on the idea of being honest with a child but she learned early on to first answer any question I had about sex with "How much do you really want to know."
She first came to that when I heard someone say something on the playground that confused me. I was about six. I came home from school that day and said, "I heard this one kid tell this other kid, 'My friend got fucked in the ass.' What do they mean by that exactly." My Mother later told me that internally she was screaming, "oh my fucking God what did my baby just fucking say...." but she very calmly explained a few things to me and I said, "oh...gross." and I went out to play.
So pretty much growing up when kids would hear things they would ask me because often I knew what was what and if I didn't know I would say, "well let me go home and ask my Mom she would know."
I think the only thing she wouldn't tell me was the definition of the word felching because she said, "it is just too disgusting to mention. Even Uncle Stephen thinks it is gross." Uncle Stephen being one of my many honorary gay uncles given to flamboyant behavior and saying anything infront of small children. I left it at that and when I finally found out the definition (accidentally from a friend one day when I was about sixteen) I was awfully glad she had not told me. Good lord...the things a person does to get their kicks.

So back to this Waspy woman she said to me when I helped her find books, "I am from New England we just don't talk about those sorts of things." I sort of ended up playing professional with her (this happens a lot in bookshops) and told her the best way to approach these things is to be honest, never shy away from questions and always ask, "how much do you want to know?" I then hooked her up with a copy of "Reviving Ophelia", Where Did I Come From, and What's Happening to Me. I like those two books because they have a sense of humour and offer some nice analogies. Plus the drawings are pretty darn funny.
I told her keeping a sense of humour was very important.
She left feeling much better about the whole thing.

What a day.

I also kept grace under fire when dealing with really atrocious conservatives. If I hear one more start spouting the dogma of their talk show host of choice I may be forced to use a copy of "Ulysses" in a manner for which it was never intended.