Six Year Old Particle Physics and Four Year Old Theology

Last night as we were saying prayers
before bed, Xander reported that his friend Daryl had told him there was only
one God. Being a good monotheist, I had to tell him I agreed with her. But, he
asked what about Zeus and Athena and all of those guys? Oops. Aodán has
been doing Greek mythology fora while and I never thought about what Xander was
making of it.

Xander has clearly been
trying to figure out what things are real and not for several months — Santa
Claus, leprechauns, the tooth fairy. And since he watches more television than
he might if I didn’t spend significant chunks of time feeding a baby, changing a
baby’s diaper, straightening the house and just not being as present as the
perfect mother in my head would be, I’m a little worried about how real to him
are the kids on the Magic School Bus
(his current favorite television show, and the likely source of the
information that went into Aodán’s drawing, above). Actually sorting out
the real and the pretend, the trustworthy and the spurious is a big task for my
kids.

Except for a brief period when
Aodán was about Søren’s age and I’d conspicuously blow lights on
and out with my hand discreetly on the switch, I’ve mostly made it a policy not
to lie to my kids. Part of it is being convinced that they are smarter than I
am and will catch the smallest of inconsistencies, part of it is that I am a
terrible liar, and part of it is just really valuing my credibility with them.
But when Aodán lost his first tooth it was sort of a dilemma. I suppose
a lot of Christian parents face this much earlier with Santa Claus, but I grew
up in a Bahá’í household where Christmas was downplayed and Santa
Claus was never really an issue (except for the kid in preschool who told me I’d
go to hell for not believing in Santa Claus. Bahá’ís also don’t
do a lot of sulfurous brimstone eschatology, so I was a little “if I don’t
believe in WHO I’m going WHERE?”) We’ve worked pretty hard on training our kids
not to spoil it for other kids, and Xander has had a preschool teacher or two
who really like Santa Claus so he’d insist on the reality of Kris Kringle when
Raven and I flat-out denied him, but that’s only an issue three or four months
of the year, right?

The tooth fairy
was different. Aodán had been playing games like leaving coins under his
Grandad’s pillow when visiting them in Albuquerque and I think he really wanted
to believe in a tooth fairy. Except that I don’t think the tooth fairy really
made sense to his little rational brain. So, budding scientist that he is, the
first tooth he lost came with “I don’t want you guys to take it, I want to see
if the tooth fairy is real.” Ha. Dr. Spock doesn’t have anything about this
one!

So the next morning Aodán
found under his pillow a small gift and a card with a note that suggested the
importance of losing teeth has something to do with leaving babyhood behind and
growing the teeth that would last him through his adulthood, and that one of the
best things about childhood is being free to believe in things that are just a
little fantastic, and that with nineteen teeth left to lose he shouldn’t rush to
leave childhood beliefs behind. However, the note concluded, he was free to
choose to believe or not, and all that was asked of him was that he, should he
choose not to believe, he have the courtesy not to mess it up for his younger
brother or any other children of his acquaintance who did choose to believe.

Without my knowing it he responded to
this card with a little card saying thank you and “I believe” — it disappeared
from under his pillow, and I only know about it from finding it under the bed
when I cleaned a month later. Occasionally since then, he’ll announce in a
challenging way in my presence that there is no tooth fairy, and I just get a
little evasive or change the
subject.

Now if I could just get them
to believe me when I tell them that if they don’t pick up their toys they may
never see them again!

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