I have a tank of water containing three plastic jellyfish. Through cleverly-contrived motors, the plastic jellyfish move in lifelike fashion. To Niall they are beloved pets. We buy them food at the local aquarium shop. He always says “hi” to them.
This is the most severely I have ever lied to my son. There’s no lie even close to this, which makes me extremely uncomfortable about this one whenever he greets the novelty fishtank.
Others in his life have no such qualms. They lay myth on top of him, thinking that they are giving him charming stories. Most of the stories are profoundly not charming, and I spend a large portion of my time with Niall trying to undo the Gordian knot of mythos that his grandparents, for instance, see fit to inculcate in him.
Why are they not charming? Because Niall is hyperintelligent, hypersensitive, and possessing the typical (but still scary) sense of responsibility that frequently accompanies children of his brilliance.
Before the age of five, Niall would pick up every newspaper he saw and start to read it. Really read it, with total comprehension. When asked why, he would respond, “I have to make sure that everything is OK in the world.” Egads. Niall needn’t be worried about the content of newspapers as a preschooler. That’s not lying, that’s responsible parenting. The adults in his life need to take newspapers away from him. And take myth away from him, I contend.
Of all his myths, he is most captivated — and disturbed — by the Babylonian/Judeo-Christian myth of Noah and the Ark.
In a recent reverie — that’s his default state, much to his teachers’ frustration — he began visibly shaking and was on the brink of tears. I quickly asked him what was wrong. He told me that he was “worried about the penguins on Noah’s Ark”, because Noah failed to take any fish onboard, and he was sure that penguins couldn’t go forty days without food.
Funny how this problem occurred to my then-four-year-old and escapes over half the adults in the U.S.
A big part of my education of him is differentiating “stories” from “real life”. I have used many arguments that I’m rather proud of, but one of the coolest I’ve generated is that stories are fun if we control them and bad if they control us.
And he gets it. Mostly. He has come up with a charming alternate world called Character Land, for instance. In Character Land, he explains, there are no real people, but every character (yes, he uses that word) from stories lives there.
I love this. I was creating worlds by his age, too, and they are great tools for imagination — far better than those insipid, preachy, parochial Thomas the Tank Engine stories he likes. I encourage him in this pursuit, and ask very leading questions. Such as: “Wow! So Nemo, Pooh, and Noah all live there?”
“Noah from the ark?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply.
“Um, yes!” he responds.
Which is all very good until the next weekend I see him, by which point he has either forgotten my tutelage or been reinfected by sharp-clawed religionists.
So, parents: really, really, really think about the content of the stories you are ladening your children with. Just because we were raised on them doesn’t mean you need to pass on the memes. I am sure you don’t want your children to lie awake at night asking, “Why did God turn her into salt for looking at something? Why did the woman amputate the tails of three disabled rodents with a carving knife? Why is a fat man going to give little boys and girls lumps of dirty coal for Christmas if they’re naughty?”
To close with Thoreau, my son’s middle-namesake: “It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.”
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