Having a conversation with a four-year-old can be like walking in a minefield. You never know what kind of gems will burst from their sweet little mouths, left, right and centre.
Sometimes you are amazed by their extraordinary wisdom, other times they embarrass you and make you want to escape the room and seek refuge on another planet.
At this point of their life their curiosity is taking over every single move they make, it is guiding their steps and taking them on a journey of discovery. Their little brains are beaming with questions they want to ask, new words they would like to use, and just a great deal of information they are ready to grasp.
When they start asking questions about God, their bodies, or… wait I have an even better one: “Mama Where do kids come from?”, they simply throw you off-guard, and you can never be prepared enough to get the right answer! In a day my four-years-old can make me sweat, laugh or even sometimes get mad with the endless questions, remarks and all sorts of things he can say.
And even though I am constantly looking for ways to improve my answers, he still manages to surprise me with things that make me wonder how and where did he learn this from? These little minds are working even when we are not looking, they hear you talking to your husband, your mum, your neighbour and even to the little sibling. They record everything and then, when you least expect it, they throw it your way, with a grin and charming eyes that you can’t resist.
There are some concepts that these brilliant little kids are still trying to wrap their heads around, like numbers, places, time…etc. It is so hilarious when they try to put it in a conversation. For example, when you ask your child to have three more bites of their dinner, and they say: “No, I will only have 10!” Or when you try to explain the idea of countries and cities or when they ask you to go swimming and you answer you will go when summer comes, so they keep asking every single day if summer has come yet. It’s things like these that irritate you to the core, yet still make you laugh somehow.
I would say the hardest one I have faced, was when I wanted to explain to my little boy that his grandfather had passed away. We embarked on the journey of life and death, and what each one meant. Things that myself I had doubts about, so trying to break them down in a way that would fit his still-growing brain was an extremely difficult challenge. Yet somehow my son took it all in, and still managed to bring out his innocence and his unique wisdom, one that can only stream from an old soul. It is amazing how these little humans that we are raising can change the way we see things, through the very little knowledge they have.
Conversations with a four-year-old can make your life more vivid and more intense, they can enrich your life and give you funny stories to tell, for when you are sipping a drink with your girlfriends – aren’t we all guilty of talking about our kids non-stop, when we finally manage to sneak away from them? These conversations will make great memories, you will remember them when your kids are old enough to laugh about them too, maybe you will remember them on their graduation day, and wonder how did they grow so big.
Conversations with a four-year-old are some of the the most interesting conversations you will ever have!
