Reality Bites

This morning, the kids were watching 'Little Einsteins' before school when it was interrupted by an Amber Alert. Immediately, all 3 freaked out, screaming and whining that something was wrong and that mommy needed to fix it and that they wanted their show back. I explained to Aidan that this was an emergency message alert because a little kid was stolen from their parents and needed to be found. This message was very important, because it let grown-ups know that they needed to watch out for this bad person who took the kid and if we see the kid, we need to call the police. He thought about it for awhile, and then came the barrage of questions: why would someone steal a kid? what makes people bad? what do we say when we call the police? do you call 9-1-1? what was this little kid doing? was he being naughty - is that why? ....and so on.

Later on, after school, Aidan was playing in the playroom with his pirate ship and Little People pirates. I was cleaning up lunch in the kitchen and overheard him acting out his own scene where a child (a parrot) was taken by a pirate and the other pirate was calling 9-1-1 to get the police to come and take away the 'bad guy' pirate. Wow. It gave me an icky feeling that he had to learn that so young :(