Fun With Play-Dough

I’m going to my friend’s house tonight,” my daughter Isabella announces to a complete stranger at the playground. “She’s extra Jewish; they walk on Shabbos!”

The other child looks at Isabella as if she’s just sprouted tentacles all over her body.

My daughter barely notices; she doesn’t come into contact with non-Jewish kids very much and encounters like this are few and far between. Does the other child think she’s weird? It’s impossible to tell, and either way, my daughter wouldn’t care. Doubt about whether she should act a certain way is nowhere to be found at this age; she is who she is.

I wonder at what age the insecurity sneaks its way in, because I know at some point she will start questioning herself. Is my hair the right color? Am I wearing the right clothes? Do I say the right things, feel the right things, or believe the right things? I can only hope that, when the big questions start to come, she will focus less on the exterior, and more on what really matters. After all, worrying about your hairdo is a very effective way to ignore your inner life.

And what kind of inner life do I want her to have? What can I teach her now to prepare her for later, and will any of it stick? How do you introduce values and belief systems at an age when kids are still mostly concerned about what dress Barbie should wear, and whether mommy and daddy will remember to buy the right cereal?

Luckily, there’s help: she’s in school, and many, many things happen in school that are the perfect jumping point for learning life’s lessons. Put a group of six-year-olds in a room together, day after day, and watch what happens; it’s like a combination between Washington politics and professional cage fighting.

Every day when I pick Isa up, I ask the question: “How was school today?” The answer is always the same: “Good”. This tells me nothing; it’s the statement that follows it that explains what kind of “good” she is talking about.

As in, “Good. I went to the office because I refused to do my work this morning.”

Or: “Good. We went to the Museum and I had fun.”

Or: “Good. I had to stay in for recess because I kicked so-and-so.”

You get the idea. So, does she really believe her day is always good, no matter what happened? Or does she use the word without thinking about it? I tell her that kicking another child doesn’t exactly sound “good”, in fact, it sounds downright ugly, but it falls on deaf ears. My daughter chooses to accentuate the positive; she practices the sort of historical relativism that only children can get away with. I ask her if she thinks that kicking other children is acceptable behavior. She gives me that look that says: I cannot believe you just asked me that. Are you insane?

“Then why do you do it?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know why she kicked, she just knows she did. Isn’t that enough? So I deliver a speech about violence, and how it doesn’t solve anything; maybe some of it will stay with her. That’s really all we can hope for at this point. Plus, this other child will sooner or later return the favor, I know she will; then my daughter will have a different kind of “good” day.