Dad Rules

Here’s a story…

Saturday.  7 30 am.  I’ve just put the baby in the high chair.  I sing to her one of my favourite Killers song:  “You’ve got soul, but you’re not a soldier.”  You may object that that’s not the correct line, but that’s one of the pleasures of having a baby:  you can say whatever you want. (One of the pains of babies, is you get to hear other people, doing the same thing). 
 My daughters are listening. 
 “Babies are not good soldiers,”  says Cassady (4), the mad lisping one.  “They are too small to hold the guns.”
 “But that is why they are GOOD,”  says Grace.  She’s six, and a classic older sister.  She’s like a barrister, always waiting to demolish all arguments.  “Babies can dodge the bullets.  And also they are good at spying, because they can crawl through windows.”
 An argument breaks out discussing babies’ suitability for combat.   Babies sometimes have sauce all round their face, argues Grace, so they probably wouldn’t mind wearing camouflage.  And they are very sweet, so people might pick the babies up, and then the babies would be able to shoot them.
 “Babies MUST NOT have guns!”  insists Cassady.  She has conceded a few points, but about this she is absolutely firm.  I’m considering intervening at this point, but I’ve been reading Affluenza where Oliver James argues we’d all be a lot happier, if we listened more to the playful logic of our children.
 I sing the Killer’s line again.  Once you’ve started singing it, it’s quite hard to stop.
 “But Daddy,”  says Cassady, “do you know what is a soul?”
 “Ah!”  says Grace.  “It’s on the end of your leg.”
 “I do not have a soul on my leg!”  says Cass.  She’s inexplicably cross about this.
 “You do!”  says Grace.  “It’s underneath your foot.”
 “That is NOT a soul.  I will tell you what is a soul.” 
 Cassady went to a religious school for a year, so actually this is one of her areas of expertise. This is definitely something I want to hear.
 “Well,”  she says.  “You know you have a body, what can eat and it can pinch?  But you have got another body, what does not eat, and it does not pinch, it’s just a ghost and it lives forever.”
 Her big sister’s a bit taken aback by the theological display. 
 “But who has a soul?”  she says.
 “Everyone,”  says the scholar.  “Babies and grannies and everyone.”
 “So can the souls be soldiers?  Because they would be like ghosts and they would go through walls.”
 “Souls are NOT soldiers,”  shouts Cassady.  Like many religious people, she’s furiously zealous about her standpoint.  “And babies are NOT soldiers.  They HATE guns.  They THUCK them, and you must not THUCK GUNS.” 
 I withdraw from this one.   Playful logic is all very well, but the baby needs porridge.  I start making it.  Cassady starts singing to the baby.  She sings:  “You’ve got jam, but you’re not a jam jar.”  She sings:  “You’ve got toes, but you’re not a toenail.”  And then she sings:  “You’ve got eyes, but you’ve not got eyeballs,”  which makes me feel a bit weird. If Oliver James wants to listen to their wit, he’s welcome to come round and feed breakfast. I can’t take too much more for the moment.

 What things do your children say?  Tell us.