Well, readers, I had a real parenting fail recently.
I was cutting the gross stuff off some raw chicken breast while Mikey worked out of an activity book at the kitchen table when the question came out of nowhere: “Mom, how do you spell axe?”
Innocent enough, right?
So, I told him. “A-X-E.”
A moment passed, then, “Mom, whatever happened to Axie.”
Now, if you recall from prior columns, Axie was the name Mikey gave to the pet fish he won at the Patterson Fire Department carnival TWO YEARS ago. He or she lived exactly three and half days before we found it belly up, “sleeping with its eyes open.”
We disappeared him. When the child was at daycare one day, we disposed of Axie and put away the cheap little Amazon tank and just pretended like he didn’t exist. And for a short time it worked! It was truly “out of sight, out of mind.”
About two months later he asked about the fish, and I panicked and said it was at the animal doctor. There was silence for another few months until he asked again, and again I said it was at the veterinarian.
Now, asked for a third time where the darn fish was, I decided it was time to be honest.
“Well, buddy …” I didn’t look at him as I answered. “I’m pretty sure he died. Actually, I’m sure he did.”
“How do you know?”
“The animal doctor told me.”
“Was he sick?”
“No, Mikey. Well, I don’t know, to be honest. But goldfish don’t really live very long.”
A moment of quiet, and then, “Is that because it was junk?”
So, let me explain this statement for you, because I know exactly where it came from …
It is not uncommon for the 6-year-old to win something at the arcade, or talk us into letting him buy something on the cheap, and when he immediately breaks it, both my husband and I tell him “that’s because it’s junk.”
We try to explain to him that instead of wasting $20 at the arcade winning enough tickets to get a kazoo, he could save that money and buy a legit toy at Walmart. But, obviously, that’s not nearly as entertaining for a kid.
And so he ends up with some little plastic toy that he breaks before we even get home and my husband or I yell to him in the backseat, “That’s because it’s junk.”
Fast forward to me trying to explain to him that a fish doesn’t have a long lifespan, and he relates to it being “junk.”
Oh, dear.
I said, “No, Mikey. It’s not junk. It’s a living thing and it is actually kind of sad that he (I took the liberty to give it a gender) died. But things die. Plants die and pets die, and even people die. Like Nonna. Remember her?”
He probably doesn’t remember Nonna because we tried to disappear her, too. We are terrible parents …
The questions continued.
“Did you flush him?”
“No.” Lie – I definitely flushed him. “We took him to the lake.” I don’t know why I felt the need to fib about that. Clearly, he heard from somewhere that dead fish get flushed, since he asked. But I panicked!
“So, why did he die, if he wasn’t sick?”
“Well, Mikey, sometimes fish just … die.”
“Was the water dirty?”
“Maybe.”
“Because we didn’t clean it.”
“No. Well, maybe. But it’s not our fault. It just happens.”
“Did we not feed him enough?”
“No! It wasn’t anyone’s fault. These things just happen.” My heart was officially breaking for the kid, so I offered up the first thing that came to my mind. “Do you want to get a new fish?”
An immediate, “No.”
Then it was me pausing, before asking, “Why not.”
“Because they’re junk.”
Another pause. “Yeah … Yeah, bud. They are junk.”
Here’s the real kick in the pants: after another moment I questioned why he asked me how to spell axe in the first place, and he said he didn’t – he wanted to know how to spell “ask.”
Holly Crocco is editor of the Putnam County Times/Press and mother of a 6½-year-old. She can be reached at editorial@putnampresstimes.com.
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