"And What Does Blue Say?"

Every parent has had that moment when their innocent child says something completely out of left field.  Aside from "stupid", it began with Hunter's "Sometimes bad things happen, and sometimes the zombies eat everyone."  There were times when he would omit the zombies part and I started to realize that he didn't have anything else to say other than "sometimes bad things happen."

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I was pretty proud of myself when I endeavoured to change that and he now says "sometimes bad things, but sometimes good things happen..." which can be followed by anything his ill-equipped inner monologue can possibly come up with.  This is fairly simple apparently because they're parrots at this age. 

Hunter learned that the traffic lights meant certain things based on their colours.  For green, red and yellow, this comes in handy because he associates the colour with the meaning and it's all good.  I was an art major, but not fine art.  When Hunter asks what blue "says", I stutter.  "Well, it means sad" sometimes.  "It also means relax".  "It can be used to mean boy". "It can mean clean (as in water)".  Do you see the predicament?  And Hunter is three.  He has the attention span of a gnat.

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He's smart because he has three older siblings who have hurried his education along - sometimes to his own detriment (and mine of course).  "Blue" is not an easy colour to describe and being the other kind of art major I was, I can put way too much information into a standard answer.  The point is that since I cannot myself determine what it is exactly that blue means, I have a difficult time telling Hunter.  If I have too many answers, such as in this instance, the question is asked much more frequently - because he's yet to receive information that is useful to him (this is how I understand the problem).

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The most common answer I give to this question is "blue means sad" but it's constantly mocked in everyday life.  Recycling containers are blue.  Blue planet.  Blue sky.  None of these things can be associated with "sad".  It's confusing and though his mind is eager for the knowledge, context is not an easy thing to teach.  I guess the point of today's segment is that as parents, we know too much. 

Settling on one answer is by far the simplest thing to do but that's not always possible.   So until the day that Hunter can comprehend the many different things associated with the colour blue, I assume he will continue to ask the question.  Once he's got that down he's likely going to start asking other questions and I will look back wistfully on the days when all he wanted to know was "what does blue say?"