Words of a Child

We visited the Getty Museum last weekend. My six-year old, “Deep Thinker,” had lots of questions about the paintings we were looking at. I didn’t even really stop to think that there might be nude paintings or that they might surprise him.

Anyway, we were walking through the room with the still lifes and portraits. He was asking questions like “Who is that? Why did they want to paint him?”

Pretty soon we cross into a room with a few nude paintings, but traditional, 17-18th century stuff, nothing alarming. Still, Deep Thinker suuuuuure needed to let me know. So, he fit little announcements about the nudes into his questions. As we slowly walk around the room, here is a transcript of a few of his comments:

“So, where is that place there with all the boats? WHOAH, there’s another naked girl….And why aren’t there any…WHOAH, another naked girl…people on that boat??” (Also, as I am answering, “I’m not sure why there aren’t–” he interjects, “OK MORE naked girls”–“where’d that boat go?”)

It went on like this for several minutes. Then suddenly, I guess we went into another room with portraits, and my son asks, “Um, when are we going to see more paintings of naked girls?”

I’m not sure if that meant that he wanted to see more naked girls, or if he was simply preparing himself just in case. Poor thing–next time I’ll check out whether the exhibit includes nude paintings before taking my sons!

Filed under: Child Speech, Child Thoughts, Lessons Learned, Uncategorized