"You're not my real dad..."

You do kind of wonder when your five-year-old opens up with: "You're not my real dad, you know."

"Oh?" (Imagine raised eyebrows.)

"God is my real father. You're just the babysitter."

Demoted! The perils of family catechesis....

Speaking of which, Mouse found out about children dying from hunger yesterday -- Jaybird was refusing to eat her supper but asking for something she liked better and I made a (frustrated) offhand comment about the 24,000 children who die of hunger every day. Mouse really picked up on that and started asking all sorts of questions -- including, why don't people just feed them? (Good question.) So we headed to the computer to do some research and discovered that, actually, 41,000 children die of hunger-related causes every day. We also found a number of good resources on the World Food Program website. Mouse was fascinated to know that she could fill a WFP red cup with food for just a quarter; she calculated that she could feed a child for a month with her savings of $9.

Later, in bed, she looked up at me and said: "Those kids are just like me. They want a lot of things. But I want what I don't need, like a princess tiara that costs $7.99. They want just what they need to live."

We'll see how this develops. It's poignant, because it's hard to introduce kids to such harsh realities; on the other hand, it's good for her to be able to put things in a wider perspective, and it is good that she is so compassionate.