So there we were in the car, heading to my parents’ for a family dinner.
We were playing a silly word game, the one where you have to come up with a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word. Hey, I’m nothing if not about providing my child with abundent educational opportunities through play.
It went a bit like this:
Me: Car (I have such a great imagination, don’t I?)
Flea: Ratatouille (I presume she means the movie, not the food)
Me: Elephant (getting a bit bored already)
Flea: Tremendous (I think this is Flea’s favourite word in the world)
Me: Soul (half an ear on the radio, mind beginning to wander…)
Flea: Lesson
Me: Necrophilia!
Akward pause.
No, I don’t know which dark recess of my mind that came from, either. Obviously, though, I dealt with it in my usual textbook positive parenting manner:
Flea: Mummy, what’s neck filler?
Me: Oh, look at that squirrel!
I must confess, “Oh, look at that squirrel” is basically my standard response to any difficult parenting moment. Try it yourself – it works in pretty much any situation. Squirrels are fast and small, so if it just so happens that there isn’t a squirrel nearby it should be followed up with, “In that tree, there, can you see him? Oh, he must have run away.”
Flawless.
