Humor

This morning we tried to explain to Edith what April Fool's Day is. She was interested in the idea of playing a joke on her teacher and friends, and on the way to school, urged us to help her think of one. But if humor is hard to define, it's harder to teach. As any parent of a preschooler knows, figuring out what's funny to other people can take awhile. (Though if your audience is all three years old, poop is a good bet...)

Tom suggested that instead of putting out the mats for Circle Time in a circle, the kids could put them in a square or a straight line against the wall.

"No, you're only allowed to put them in a circle," Edith said. "That's the only way they can go."

Then I suggested that we could pretend we were dropping off Alice for the preschool class instead of Edith--we could put Alice's things in Edith's cubby and set her carseat down in the circle for Circle Time.

"No, she's too little to be in my class," Edith objected. "She can't walk."

Finally I suggested that Edith could just be silly and wear her sneakers on her hands. She looked at me confused. Surely I knew that sneakers go on the feet.

As we arrived, Edith's idea was to hide from her teacher behind a bookshelf. That would have gone fine, except that when Ms. Kate asked in a loud voice, "Hmmm...where is Edith? I wonder where she is?", the other kids were eager to help by running over and pointing her out, then dragging Ms. Kate by the hand to come see her. Ms. Kate protested that that couldn't be Edith, it must be Sarah; the other kids looked completely baffled; and Edith screamed at everyone for giving up her hiding spot.

April Fool's Day may be a holiday to grow into.

***

She saw nothing funny in it, but when Edith's grandpa asked her what she would like for her birthday while we were in North Carolina, she stopped running around for a moment to consider the question.

"A gown..." she said, pausing to think some more. "Jewels...Gold..."

Her list complete, she shrugged and ran off to play again.

***

The joke's on us: We recently figured out that Alice likes to be put to bed in the evening. After four years of parenting a child who has fought sleep most of the way, I confess this hadn't occurred to us. We noted that she was getting fussy around 7:30 or 8pm and figured it was a milder version of the colic we knew from Edith. But in fact, it seems she was trying to tell us it was time for bed. Now I feed her, we put her into her crib at 7:30 or 8, and she's soon out for the night. Wow. So this is what the parents of kids who "just drop off" talk about, what others may have experienced when suggesting that we stop putting so much time and effort into Edith's bedtime and just insist on her going to sleep. Fingers and toes crossed that Alice's relationship with sleep may always be so easy.

Edith, on the other hand, continues to lie awake, resistant and fearful for up to two hours every night, calling to us, crying, popping out of bed, asking the questions that race through her mind. It doesn't necessarily make it easier to deal with, but it does help to think that some of it is personality and not something that we necessarily should be able to solve. I'm not sure we're ever going to be able to disenchant the dark for her or smooth the transition to unconsciousness; she may have to figure those things out on her own. (The other night she argued that the two stuffed crocodiles on her bed are insufficient to ward off the monsters; she needed at least 100 scary stuffed animals to feel safe. We countered by trying to explain the flawed psychology of weapons proliferation...Yes, we really did.) Meanwhile, Mor-mor and Grandpa might want to think about inviting Alice to be the granddaughter who sleeps in the room adjoining theirs the next time we're in town...