Bravado

Kids say the darnedest things, don’t they? A conversation I had with my two-and-a-half-year-old, CEO-in-the-making daughter is still lingering in the forefront of my mind. I’ll share it with you and ask you what you think.

We’d just come home from her first Halloween festivity, a modest trunk-or-treat operation just around the corner from our house. She chose to don her Simba costume, and with a few quick swipes of my brow pencil, she had a nose and whiskers befitting the playful energy of a trick-or-treater. We marched through the cavalcade of decked-out trunks and collected our free candies. Next, we lined up to play a handful of familiar carnival games and I plotted how to ditch the bucket-fulls of sugar, vegetable oil, and artificial flavoring. The evening neared its finale as we stood in line for the final attraction—a towering bounce house in the styling of a castle.

My daughter, while not exactly nervous in disposition, could fairly be called a cautious, thoughtful person. In my estimation, at least 95% of her actions are premeditated, which is a rather extraordinary percentage for a toddler just shy of 3 feet tall. (She certainly has me beat for mindfulness!) She observed how many unfamiliar children were bouncing in the bounce house and she felt the tension between wanting to enjoy the revelries of those springy jumps for herself and also not wanting to mingle with too many strangers at once. After all, who knew what kind of kids they were? They might not respect her space or her words. But she ultimately decided to get in line and give it a go.

Brava! I thought as I watched her wait her turn in the arms of her dad, and then I carried on with plotting how to ditch the candy without too much fuss.

But my little girl never made it into the bounce house castle. She screamed in distress and, carried by her father, sought me out to tell me what had gone wrong.

My husband helped explain. The song, Thriller, could be heard energizing the scene, but my darling girl had heard the deep, resounding, decidedly-spooky laugh nestled within the song and immediately cried out in alarm. “There is an angry man in the castle!” she had announced to her dad in great distress as she prodded him to flee the bounce house.

Oh well, I thought. “Let’s pack it up and go home,” we decided.

Later that evening, after I’d put her little brother down for the night, my keen-minded girl crawled in my lap on the couch and decided to talk a little more about what had happened at the bounce house castle. She started the conversation by telling me once again about the scary, angry man and then asking, “But he’s in the castle. Yeah, and we’re home, so we’re safe?”

I assured her, yes we were safe. I explained the bounce house was safe too, and began to unpack what had been scary to her was a spooky song. I talked about how some people like that spooky song, but that maybe she didn’t and that that was ok. She began to demonstrate a little more confidence, but I could see her calculating mind was still trying to work through what had happened and what she could do about it. Her dad came over and joined in the conversation. We mentioned how that song was by a man named Michael Jackson and that he had other songs that were really fun, which of course was followed by sloppy but cheerful performances of ABC and Rockin’ Robin.

She nodded, taking in all this information, and then I saw the proverbial lightbulb apparate above her head.

“Can we talk to him? Can we tell him…” she stuck out her arm straight in front of her in that universal sign for stop and furrowed her brow seriously as she proceeded. “Can we tell him, ‘No spooky!’”

I delighted to hear this brilliantly simple idea issue forth from my daughter so organically. It’s always a moment of unexpected elation when your offspring generates a reasonable solution to their problem. “Yes!” I affirmed enthusiastically. “If we ever see Mr. Michael Jackson we can definitely tell him, ‘No spooky please!’”

She now brimmed over with this confidence as she recited this plan. “Yeah, yeah, we can tell him, ‘No spooky!’” And then she seamlessly added another brilliant idea, “We can ask for a better song. Yeah, we can tell him, ‘No spooky! We want a better song!’”

As you can imagine, I grinned from ear to ear and applauded this plan. The capstone to this beautiful little exchange came when she let me know she wanted to let her Nana in on the plan. So we rang up Nana and Pop Pop on FaceTime and quickly told them about the spooky song and our plan to confront Mr. Michael Jackson and ask for what we wanted. Nana gave her seal of approval to this scheme with many smiles and encouragements, and my daughter finally felt like the matter had been thoroughly resolved.

She slept with ease that night. No longer bothered by the haunting laugh. Two days later she enjoyed a Fall Festival and took no heed of the song Thriller, though it was definitely played more than once.

But as she moves on, I linger. Because kids say the darnedest things, and as every parent knows, they teach us as much as we teach them if we’re willing to learn. The lesson that loiters in my mind is simple and manifests itself like a child’s homework worksheet question:

> What would you say if you confronted the person that scared you most?

My daughter resolved to tell her monster what she would not tolerate and even asked for what she wanted instead. What if I had even half the wisdom or tenacity she demonstrated? Now that’s a call to action! Brava, little lady. Your bravado has not gone unnoticed, and I intend to better myself for it!

So, I pass the question along to you. What would it look like if you told your personal monsters “no” and insisted on something “better” instead?

Answers welcome below! 👇