Lock Em Up and Throw Away the Key!

Conversation with my five-year-old after passing a work-release crew on the drive to daycare:


-Mom, do kids go to jail?


-Well, sometimes, if they do really bad things, they go to a special place just for kids.


-Like sometimes when I do bad things?


(chuckling at the thought of locking my kid up for not cleaning up her room)


-No, honey, you have to do REALLY bad things, like hurt someone, for a kid to go to jail.


-Like punch someone in the face?


(slightly violent thought from my baby)


-No...worse.


-Like punch someone in the face, HARD?


(time to change the subject before this conversation turns deadly!)


******


I grinned the rest of the way to drop off my sweet little girl at daycare.  To be so innocent that she thinks punching someone in the face will get her thrown in jail!  Well, to be honest, I restrained myself from asking her where she got the idea of punching someone in the face.  But then I decided to be thankful that THAT is her idea of prison-worthy violence!


I'm not naive enough to think it will stay this way forever.  I remember what school was like.  I was in the first grade when an older kid on the bus offered me drugs for the first time.  I am terrified of what next year will bring for my Angelyn.  And the year after that.  And the year after that.  And when she's a teenager?  The HORROR!


And I remember my time actually working in a daycare in a land far, far away.  The kids there had a slightly different version of what sort of behavior is acceptable.  In my brief tenure as head teacher of the school-age class during one summer, I heard such things as, "I'm going to stab you!"  "I'm going to stab your eye out!"  "I hate you and I'm going to kill you!"  And my very favorite, from a first-grader: "I will slit your throat and cut you up with a chain saw into tiny pieces."  And that last one was actually directed at me for taking away a classroom toy that the angelic-looking thing was using as a weapon against another child.  Needless to say, I promptly put in my appeal to transfer to the infants' room (I know when I am defeated)!


Imagine my delight to learn that my daughter thinks punching someone in the face will get her locked up into kiddie jail!  If that's the worst thing she has learned at school/daycare so far, THANK GOD!


So, for now, I'll keep on being that over-protective, paranoid mother who only wants her kid to watch Nick, Jr. until she's about twenty-one.  And I'll thank God that she thinks a knuckle sandwich will earn her a stint in the can.


So very blessed.