Words of a Child

Aunt Super Cool gave the boys a bunch of scientific magazines for kids. They have awesome pictures of things like gross bugs, animals, all the types of things little boys love to learn about. We try to read each night we can. I let the boys take turns choosing which book, magazine, or article we’ll read. It’s so fun to see what the boys choose and listen to their reactions to the things we read.

The other night, it was Rowdy Rebel’s turn to choose. I wasn’t surprised when he wanted to read an article that displayed a huge photograph of a horrible looking spider with fangs and fur. We started reading the article and then Rowdy Rebel started screaming, “How BIG is the spider? How BIG is it??!” This particular spider is one of the biggest in the world, about 10 inches across the full span of its legs.

I said, “It’s about this big,” and showed the boys a span of about ten inches using my hands. Then I asked, “What would you do if you saw a spider this big?”

I thought I’d get fun responses of screams and jumping up and down. Instead, Rowdy Rebel said, “I would STEP on it! I would squish his head!” I thought that was pretty gross, and explained it’s also not very nice–no need to step on bugs, just walk away from them! Then I turned to Deep Thinker…And I saw that he had tears streaming down his face! He was so sad it concerned me. I asked him what was wrong.

He cried out, “Why would you DO THAT? You can’t just kill an innocent creature! It’s like at school, when kids find lots of ants, they just step on them over and over and over! The ants didn’t hurt anyone. They’re just innocent creatures crawling around on the ground…” I tried to comfort him by saying the bugs don’t feel pain.

He eventually calmed down and felt a little better. Rowdy Rebel reacted to the whole thing with wide eyes–he knew he’d upset Deep Thinker, but was thoroughly confused about why. He quietly whispered with a concerned look on his face, “But Deep Thinker, no one likes spiders.”

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