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The true test of parenting?

This week our son Lucas said, "I don't understand why someone would get arrested for being with someone they liked". He had been watching a cartoon where the King and Queen sent the gardner to jail because he ran off with the Princess - they loved each other.

Since he was looking at me for an explanation, I did what any good parent would do - I stalled. "When Papa comes home, we'll explain." Papa, of course, looked at me when he came home and asked me, "What do we say?"

Indeed, what to say? Lucas never asked many questions about where babies came from when his baby brother was on the way, and in some..make that ALL respects, that would have been a much simpler conversation. This was something else. In the end, we muddled through by explaining that maybe they really didn't know the gardner very well and had they gotten to know him, they would have liked him. Or maybe he was different to what they were accustomed to, and they didn't know what to make of him. (We may have also said other things that I care not to remember right now.)

We toyed (very) briefly with the idea of using ourselves as an example of a situation where someone may not "approve" of us being together. My husband is caucasian and I am not, so we look different. We thought better of it, after all, there will be time enough for him to know the complexities of living in this world. Let him shore up his confidence and idealism until that time comes.

I wonder if the true test of parenting is navigating the difficult questions that may be lurking behind the next cartoon.

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