“Who’s that,” asked the Little One, as we sat in front of the television watching a story about the Kadima party on the evening news. “The Prime Minister,” I responded.
“I want him to die,” said the Little One, rather innocently.
The husband and I exchanged glances over our child’s head. The Little One’s only concrete knowledge of prime ministers revolves around the lessons in preschool about Yitzhak Rabin, whose assassination he learned about last month during the annual memorial. He’s also reached a stage where he’s curious about the concept of death and dying, and I can only surmise that a four year-old’s comprehension of a prime minister’s murder and his limited understanding of death resulted in that rather out-of-the-blue comment.
“That’s not a nice thing to say about someone, sweetie. We don’t want him to die. We just want him to go to jail,” I explained, making the husband smile.
“Okay, Mommy.” He thought for a moment. “Is he bad?” the Little One queried. “Yes, sweetie. I believe he is. He’s in trouble with the law, and the police are investigating.”
“What about him? Is he bad too?” I glanced at the television screen and saw that Tzachi Hanegbi was speaking. “Yes, sweetie. He’s in trouble too,” I responded.
“And him?” the Little One asked. Now we were watching Roni Bar-On. “Yes,” I sighed. “He’s also in trouble with the law.”
Just another day in the Israeli political arena. With politicians like these, is it any wonder that we can’t be bothered to summon up the energy to get excited about the upcoming elections?
So where did this death wish come from??? Too many violent video games or something?
I think it’s a combination of factors. The only prime minister that he’s actually learned about was Rabin, and he died. Combine that with the fact that he’s at a stage where he’s curious about death (though he still doesn’t understand how we brought our two goldfish to the store “to be checked”, and when we brought them home, they were both suddenly smaller and more orangey), and I think we have our answer. It’s not like he was malicious. He didn’t rub his hands together and cackle gleefully as he said it, and we were quick to point out that death isn’t something that you should wish on someone (though wishing jail time is acceptable), and that it’s not a nice thing to do. I seriously doubt he understood the ramifications of what he said.
the jail comment made me laugh out loud! Our children will learn sarcasm all too early, me thinks….
Sad state of affairs there…. we just complain that our politicians are ineffective and quite possibly dumb as wood, but investigations are thankfully not pending!
I try not to tell my boys that anyone “is bad”. People make mistakes and they should be held accountable, but they’re not “bad”. (We didn’t get to the holocaust or just sadists yet).
Kids do have a funny grasp on politics. When our seven year old was told we have the elections coming up soon, he said he already knows who to vote for: Haim Ga’ash. Hey, it worked the last time!
Well, after spotting the bad guys for him, could you point him out some good guys as well… actually this more like helping me out with the upcoming elections – cannot see the good guys 馃槈
I’m too depressed by the offerings this year to even comment on our lack of respectable politicians, but as for the fish…
Our beta fish was blue, he went away on vacation and got a suntan, so he turned red, and then when that faded he was blue again ;-).