Kids and the Silly Things They Say
This weekend I dropped my youngest off at my cousin’s house to babysit. The girls are cute and lets face it, they crack me up. It’s saturday afternoon, St. Patrick’s Day, my daughter asks the oldest girl, she’s 8, how come she is not wearing any green. 8 year old replies, matter of fact, “I am NOT Irish!”
I chuckled and told her she was, we went back and forth many times and she refused to believe me. She finally asks her dad if it is true. He replies, how do I know. Terri should know. So, I explain to her that her grandma and Becca’s grandma are sisters and if Becca’s grandma is Irish, well then so is her grandma. She says ok and then proceeds to show me the dark green shorts she has on (we were sitting at a breakfast bar in the kitchen). She completely had my cracking up, because no matter what I told her as an adult, she refused to believe me.
Then she tells me she has to do a family tree for homework and it is due Monday. I offer to help her, well because I am the family genealogist and she politely tells me no, she does not need my help. So, I start telling her a few stories. Like, how I have one of our lines back to the Civil War. She asks when that was and I told her way back in the 1800’s. To which she replies, “is that when you were born?”
Excuse me, I laugh and tell her no that I was born in the 1970’s and she of course gasped and thought that was old. Kids are funny and they do not hold back on what they have to say. She made me giggle quite a bit on Saturday.
Oh, and I did get to help with the family tree on Sunday. I order some prints of family pictures and took the tree back to her great-great grandparents on one line. They needed to put together a poster board with either pictures of the family or their names.
I got a big laugh out of the instructions, the teacher had the tree flip-flopped with the woman on the right (the number 2 spot) and men on the left (the number 3 spot). I had her put her post together the correct way. Then I told her dad why I did it that way, he replied that he thought it looked wrong too and that was fine. I told him that if the teacher asks why it is backwards to make sure she knows that a genealogist sat and helped with the homework and made sure it was put together correctly. The 8 year old cousin plans to hang her family tree in her room, once it is graded and returned. She was very thankful for the pictures I brought her and told me thank you many times. She also told me that I know lots about the family tree and that was cool.
Since we are discussing genealogy and teaching kids; if you, your school, scouts troop, home school group or anyone else you know are interested in teaching genealogy to children, please check out the new books that are being released this week by Jennifer Holik. You can find a listing of her books here.
