All The President's Toddlers

Hmmm. I'm going to try to walk a tightrope here with this short post. I want to share an amusing little anecdote, something Kiernan said that touches on politics, albeit barely, without straying into making any sort of political statement. I have strong feelings in this arena--how can anyone not these days?--so this is hard. But this blog is about Kiernan, not about me (no matter how much I might talk about myself), so I'll just focus on the Kiernan-ness of the moment.

To help me start out in the right frame of mind, I'll insert an unrelated picture of a lion here...


Okay. Cool. That helps.

The other day, after Wendy picked up Kiernan from school, she sent the following text to my phone (we've found texting to be a convenient way to share and preserve the great little things he says until later when we can write them down):

Mom: "What picture did u make today w/ shapes?"

Kiernan: "President Bush."

Mom (after laughing): "Who was talking about PB today?"

Kiernan: "I was. With my friends."

Now, we still have not figured out the context for Kiernan's responses in this exchange, if indeed any context exists. I was supposed to ask his teachers the next day if they had any idea, but I forgot. Hopefully when Wendy takes him to school tomorrow, she'll have a chance to ask. We both thought his responses were hilarious...and amazing, and even a tad disturbing. Not darkly disturbing, mind you. Just, wow-where-does-he-come-up-with-this-stuff disturbing.

Until I know for sure I won't just write off the exchange as random. We've long since learned that just about nothing that Kiernan says is random, unless it's one of his made up words, and even those follow a certain situation-usage logic (see calakanarius and bikkin-bo-bikkins). Most of the things he says, even when they seem random, link back to something that he heard earlier. Something someone was talking about on the radio. Or something someone said to him five minutes before, all but forgotten, except by Kiernan, who has been mulling it over for the last few minutes.

I don't know what it means for the larger picture. Are we unwittingly raising an Alex P. Keaton? The next Barack Obama or Jon Stewart? Who knows.

We don't talk about politics in our home a great deal, regardless of how passionately we feel about what is happening in our country right now. There simply isn't time when your days are filled with singing about the fifty states while doing impressions of the girls in Kiernan's preschool class. "Now can Nicole sing the states song? Now can Talia sing the states song? Now can Moira sing the states song?"

Still, little things slip out. I watch news shows and political commentary, and even listen to a skosh of talk radio, so names come out here and there. At some point one of us mentioned President Bush. Or else his image appeared on the television.

"Who's President Bush?" Kiernan said.

He is fascinated with his puzzles of the United States, so this was fairly easy to answer. Wendy even came up with a great way of putting it when the answer, "He's the president of the United States," didn't suffice.

"He's like the boss of the country. Of the United States."

We didn't editorialize. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I know of plenty of parents who wash their children in their own political beliefs. I have a startling anecdote from a minister friend in Mississippi about the time his daughter did a report on Bill Clinton in her elementary school class. I just want Kiernan to be able to think, even if he doesn't think like me.

Whether this means shielding him from my political beliefs, or being open about them, I'm not sure yet. Although I do know I shouldn't have to worry about it before he's even three years old.

I suppose if he's already having political discussions with his friends in preschool, though, it's too late. He'll probably just say, "That's nice, Dad. But I prefer to stick with what I talked about with the twins during Outside Choice Time today. We call it the Winnie-the-Pooh doctrine."