I am of the firm belief that I am raising a cartoon child. If you are unsure if you have a cartoon child there are things you can look out for that will tell you for certain.
- Has your child ever ‘reached offscreen’? Think Wylie Coyote reaching for an Acme product in Road Runner. My daughter does this fairly often. The most memorable occasion was in a big blue supermarket, where we were standing in the toy aisle, discussing what we needed and my husband said ‘chocolate’. She promptly reached onto the shelf between the playdoh and Paw Patrol figures and handed him a bag of Smarties. We to this day have no idea how she did it.
- Does your child take comic timing to a whole new level? Last night, she was being a baby giraffe in the bath (don’t ask me, I just live here) when we needed her to get out. She was reluctant. My husband (I’m sensing a common factor here) urged her out with ‘Quick, before you turn into a baby elephant again!’ There was a gasp of ‘oh no’ and she literally sprang out the water like a penguin onto an ice floe. I have no idea what happened.
- Are they easily distracted? My husband (again I’m sensing I know what is the cause of my cartoon child) managed to distract my fae out of a tantrum with a cry of ‘look, a distraction!’ She immediately stopped crying and perked her head up like a meerkat on guard duty and shouted ‘where?’.
- If looking for something, do they have all the sense of a concussed duckling when looking for it? My daughter lost me at a local gym we frequent. She went looking for me on the ceiling.
If you answer “yes” to all these questions, then you too may have found yourself living in the surreal world of raising a cartoon in the real world. The good news is that, like their on-screen counterparts, your child is highly robust. The bad news is, like their on-screen counterparts, you are now living in a sitcom, there are no rules, and your child will not notice when they are actually injured (my fae tried to shake off a broken arm) but will act as though you have immersed them in lava if you try to cut their nails.
Next up, signs you have a cartoon spouse…..
Raising the Modern Fae 