Naked trolls and near-death
We here at the Family Valued
executive washroom, microwave kitchen, and unified pressroom have randomly
selected a 10-year-old from among the one immediately available.
So, what have you been reading lately?
Thud!.
What is that?
It’s the latest book written by Terry
Pratchett. It’s funny fantasy. He is a very good writer from Britain.
The other ones I remember are Truckers,
about these teeny little people who live inside this store. Wee Free Men is about a witch who
realizes that there are little blue people that live in this hill and are a bit
smaller.
He seems to have a thing about little
people.
Yes, I’m not sure why.
“Thud!” seems like a very big book.
Yes, it’s the biggest book I’ve ever
read by myself. I wanted to know what happened and things did happen and it was
fun. The Discworld series has a very good creation myth: like some Godly figure
made this turtle and its four elephant bothers and they jumped up on its back
and its ectoplasm jumped up and formed the world. It was something like that.
Every book he tells about different people. Thud! is about the Watch in Ankh-Morpork, a city in Discworld. They’re kind of
police. Trolls don’t usually wear clothes. I guess clothes are not a troll-y
thing. Death always appears in all of his books at least once. He has to in
every book. He just does.
So you’re reading about death.
It isn’t exactly. He’s a character.
Death said that Vimes (Commander of the Watch) was having a near-death
experience and Death was having a near-Vimes experience.
Would you recommend the book?
Yes, I would. It has humor and
adventure.
— Craig Brownlie
Truth-telling
It’s a basic philosophical problem.
We base our actions on a reality that is subjective, created by our
perceptions. For young children this leads to conflicts between their internal,
magical world of imagination and our more rational one. Kids believe that they
can make their imagined realities come true. “Blue Bear ate the cookies, not
me!” “My toys play with me.” It takes years for kids to reconcile these
conflicts. As they are with all behaviors, kids are testing boundaries: to
learn what lies are and how they work… or don’t.
Parents often ask what to do as their
kids start lying. Should we demand, “Don’t lie!” Should we wash their mouths
out with soap? Should we put them in time out? Should we indulge them and let
them embellish their stories? The challenge for parents is to help kids learn
to buy our reality, our version of “The Truth,” without losing hold of the
creative power of their imaginations.
The answer is trust. Rather than
accusing kids of lying, simply tell them, “I don’t believe you,” then act
accordingly. Wait for the kid to figure out a face-saving way to be honest with
themselves, then us. At issue is the young person’s learning to find their own
truth to develop a trusting relationship. They need to run up against their
parents’ integrity and meaningful representation of the rational world. Of
course we continue to nurture our kids’ creativity… and always tell them the
truth.
— LaurenceI.Sugarman, MD
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2006.
