So, this is about my interactions with my 3-year-old daughter.
Stories rule the world. The way we learn, think, act and express are all governed heavily by the stories we hear, the stories we believe in and the stories we tell ourselves.
There is a lot of what we imagine that comes from what we see and how we interpret it. We all know and accept that based on our cultural orientation and personality type we have the ability to perceive the same scene in a surprisingly different way. With kids, it is interesting to see some natural orientation in action as well, some things that they are born with. And it’s also interesting to know how quickly they get influenced by the external factors — parent relationships, television, other kids.
Recently, I was telling the tale of the tiger and the mouse. The one in which, towards the end, mouse helps the tiger by cutting the net that tiger falls in to. One of the thoughts I wanted to drive home was of treating all beings with respect and to be honest, not mess with the household Ants she is fond of smashing. Might is right in the wild. But weak have right too —what is culture, if not this.
Sorry for the digression, but here is what happened after I revealed the climax, “The mouse and the tiger become friends and play happily ever after”. Keshavi (my 3 yo daughter) wasn’t satisfied with the end.
She asked, “What happened to the hunter”?
I was puzzled. Still thinking about how to respond to that. She was contemplative, with a frozen stare in the air. Waiting for me to answer.
After a few seconds, I replied “Nothing! the hunter just goes back to the city”.
She was not happy.
She still struggles to form new sentences. Particularly multiple complex ones like in a story. However, almost instantly she cooked up her own version of it and presented in the broken sentences with a very funny use of tenses.
Can’t recall the exact phrases but the essence was that the hunter needs to be punished. So, the Tiger and the mouse gang up to kill the Hunter… bang! bang! bang!
Startled, I resented, “No! Why do you want to kill the hunter.”
I don’t think she replied in a way I could comprehend. “Why?” is anyways the last thing humans learn to ask and answer, unfortunately. But, she was clear that the hunter had to suffer. And she quickly moved on to other distractions in life, the joy of being a kid. While I was stuck wondering where did this come from. It wasn’t difficult to smell the influence of Cartoon Network and Pogo.
All stories repeatedly create a divide between good and bad in our mind, all the time. There are very few that fall in the greys. Very few that don’t end, or end abruptly. Very few that you wish weren’t. I feel those are very important stories to be told. I want to find and tell more such stories and keep it real for her.
Imagining alternative ends is a great exercise.
