Sometimes it's hard being a parent. And I'm not referring to navigating through all those tricky emotional and behavioral issues that come along with raising children-- that stuff's a piece of cake. What's hard is explaining the meaning of words and phrases to your children-- ya know? Like, has your child ever asked you what "gregarious" or "cursory" or "insidious" mean (just to name a few)? They are not easy words to explain in layman's terms!
Well, today Ruby asked me what an "idiom" was. And my mom, who happened to be over at the time, thought the best route was to give her an example instead of a definition. Brilliant!
"Okay," I said, "have you ever heard the phrase 'never look a gift horse in the mouth'?"
"Never look at a gifted horse's mouth?" Ruby repeated.
"Uh, no...." I then gave her my example again.
"Never lick a gifted horse in the mouth?" Ruby tried a second time.
"NO!" I repeated my original idiom yet again. This was going nowhere! Meanwhile my mother was giggling her head off and offering her own feeble attempts at clarifying for Ruby, but to no avail. Finally, Ruby at least got the phrase correct, even if she didn't exactly understand it....
"What in the heck does that mean?" she asked, more confused than ever.
"Well, it means that if someone gives you something, you should accept it graciously."
At this point, we'd lost all hope of defining "idiom" in favor of simply getting her to understand the idiom itself. I'm still not sure how successful we were.
See what I mean? I'm not a dictionary, people! Hey...that just gave me an idea. (Pardon me-- I have a dictionary to hunt down and provide for Ruby Jane.)
Parenting issue solved! Should be smooth sailing from here on out.
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