Innocence..

Had this conversation with Kieran earlier at the supermarket:

K: Why must pay money? (pointing to the groceries)
M: Nothing is free.
K: But I am free!
M: puzzled for a while
K: I am free to play with you!

Such is the innocence of a young child. I sometimes feel bad that I have to show/ tell him what is like in the real world. I often wonder if I say tell him too much that we need money to pay for things, will he end up thinking that money is everything? Where is the balance? I see some children with absolutely no sense of worth (as in the worth of money). I do not wish for my children to grow up that way but yet I also do not want them to think that money is everything. Thus every time conversations that deals with buying things or going on holidays come up, I struggle with finding the balance of showing them that we need to save money for such things and yet not going overboard with stressing the importance of money.

And with the recent Japan disaster, we are also having a hard time stressing to Kieran that the earthquakes are devastating and it is sad that people are losing their homes and their loved ones. Kieran sometimes compares the pictures that we show him from the internet to the movies (like Independence Day) and goes "oohh!". We keep telling him that it is really sad that many children have lost their parents and that the earthquakes are real but I guess he is still too young to understand the severity. I know that he has empathy. I see it when he feels sad when he watches movies. However, I guess he still doesn't understand that disasters really do happen. I can also tell that he is worried about death. He keeps asking why people die. We tell him everyone will die one day. When we grow old we die. And then he'll ask if we are old already. To him, we are "old". I hope we are not frightening him too much. :( We just want to stress to him that he and his brother will have to take care of each other when we are all gone.