The Innocence of Children

I have to wonder what goes through kids’ minds at times; they do the funniest things when they think nobody is watching. When I catch my kids doing something silly and they don’t know they’ve been seen, I smile from head to toe simply because it’s just so incredible to witness their private joy.

I’ll sit on the sofa and watch one of them playing in the kitchen, making action figures talk, or stuffed animals interact, and the look on his or her face is priceless. The little dialogue that’s taking place is completely improvised, along with sound effects, and the child is lost in another world, totally oblivious to the fact that I’m only ten feet away. Whatever I’m doing comes to a halt just so I can watch for a few minutes and enjoy whatever fun is taking place.

One night I was getting ready to put the kids to bed and my younger son (the middle child), just out of the blue, broke into a dance he’d seen on a kids’ TV show. It only lasted about five seconds but, for whatever reason, he’d suddenly felt the need to do this little dance without realizing I was standing there. When he was finished, he smiled to himself and continued getting ready for bed.

My daughter, who’s only three, did the same thing the other day. Her brother had been singing a song he’d learned in school and, although she didn’t get the words anywhere close to what they should be, she began singing just one line of the song over and over. Then, as she was singing, she began dancing to it – pumping her little arms back and forth while she walked backwards to the beat of her song. I was sitting right there in the room but she tuned me out completely. As I watched, I wondered what she was thinking but then I didn’t care. As long as she was enjoying herself, who was I to question it?

My oldest son will often start reciting lines to popular kids’ shows or songs when he thinks nobody is around. He’ll recite the spoken lines with perfect accuracy, even placing emphasis where it should be, and he'll do multiple characters from the scene. His singing is that of an eight year old so it’s nowhere near to being perfect, but he tries. Regardless, he’ll be lost in his own little world and I’ll just enjoy the innocence of it.

It’s moments like those that I call to memory when they’re misbehaving or just nagging at me. The memories help me to keep my sanity and not get too grouchy with the kids. They’re also the things I think about before I go to sleep at night when I’ve had a hard day. The innocence of children and the perfect joy they feel in their private moments is enough to make anyone smile, and enough to push anything negative to the side, even for just a little while. Perhaps we adults should take a lesson from our kids and spontaneously break into song every now and again. :)