At What Age Do You Start to Teach about . . .

The other day I went to see a cringe movie, Knocked Up. I'll explain why I cringed so much when I post the 3rd Carnival of All Substances in mid-July. It wasn't the gratuitous bad sex, strangely enough.

Anyway, I was doing pretty well. But at the end of the movie the camera pans an air shot of the Pacific Palisades . This is where I take my grandkids when I visit them in California. So it broke me up that there I was, figuratively speaking at the Palisades, but not with the kids.

Could've threatened to make the evening un-salvageable, not that every evening can be salvageable. And I didn't behave. I started ranting about missing them, which made me feel worse.

You see, expressing emotion does not necessarily make a person feel better.

No one could make me feel better, really. There was nothing to say.

Got home and called the kids knowing they were already in bed. But I love talking to Empath Daught, and in truth, of her crew, I miss her the most.

Empath Daught answered, juggling her second shift, cooking Friday night dinner. We talked awhile, then A., the 2.75 year old got out of bed. I could hear him through the speaker phone. "Hi Mommy. " He's not a great sleeper. There's so much to do.

"Let me talk to him," I said.

She put him on the phone and he talked non-stop for 20 minutes. It was amazing. He talked about his little cousin, HH, and he talked about his older brother's grateraton from nursery school (or is it pre-nursery, what is it at 4 almost 5?). He talked about Michelley, the girl in his class who doesn't share her chips, and about Shadow, the dog everyone loves to hate, and about his Daddy and his mother's neck.

"And I tried to kiss Michelley but she didn't like it."

"A," I said, "You always have to ask permission before you kiss a girl, you have to ask her, Is it okay if I kiss you?"

Pause. Long pause. I could see the wheels in his head turning.

"Oh. I will do that next time," he said. "I will try to remember to do that."

Ya' gotta' start 'em young.

Copyright 2007, therapydoc