I’ve come to realise that raising a fae child is a lot like living with a particularly sassy genie: she will do exactly what you say, and absolutely nothing that you meant.
I’m not sure if this is a kid thing, a fae thing, or a kid fae thing, but teaching my daughter verbal cues is a fruitless battle that usually ends in exasperation—or laughter. And we only laugh because the alternative would cost too much in therapy.
She does not do verbal cues. To be fair, I’m not great at picking up on them myself, and my husband still kicks himself over some he missed as a teenager. But our daughter simply doesn’t process the implication of a statement. She takes everything at face value and will make assumptions that no one else on earth would.
For example: she wanted a toy from the sideboard. As all children do, she approached this goal in the most direct way possible—by turfing off everything that was either on or between her and the toy. Cue chaos.
I told her, “You’ve made a mess,” with the implied expectation that she would clear it up. She looked at me sweetly and replied, “I don’t mind,” before happily carrying on.
My bad. I wasn’t clear. Expecting her to stop and clean up was what I wanted her to do, but it’s not what I said. I stated a fact: there was a mess. She responded with her opinion: she was fine with it. As far as she was concerned, conversation over.
If I wanted her to a) not make the mess, b) stop and clear it, or c) maybe, just maybe, not pile toys in precarious towers to begin with—then that is exactly what I needed to say. The statement “You’ve made a mess” conveys nothing to her about what I expect her to do about it.
And that’s where verbal cues trip us all up.
Most of the time when we get frustrated or snap, it’s not because our kids are defying us—it’s because we haven’t been clear about what we actually want. We think we have (I know my husband did; he was doubled over laughing at her response), but adults have years of experience to draw on. What’s obvious to us isn’t necessarily obvious to them.
It reminds me of a rhyme I once heard about programming:
I hate this computer,
I really wish they’d sell it,
It doesn’t do what I want—
Only what I tell it.
Talking to my fae child is very similar to programming a computer. Except my computer doesn’t argue with me about bedtime, eat peanut butter with a spoon, or ask if we can have ice cream for dinner.
At least when the computer crashes it doesn’t demand snacks and paw patrol.
Raising the Modern Fae 