Lessons from Elmo

Millie doesn't watch Sesame Street.  She gets bored with it after 15 minutes.  Yesterday, however, we went to a Sesame Street Live show and she LOVED it. The songs, the lights, the talking vegetables.  She laughed and clapped. At bedtime she said, "Mommy! Did you see the talking cheese!" and laughed again until she ran out of breath.  Here I thought that most of these things were targeted to older kids who could remember it. I only bought the tickets because someone else was going with their 3 year old.   Somehow I had bought into the notion that unless the child will remember the event as an adult it isn't worth doing. My earliest memory is at age 4.  Millie is 3 1/2 years old.  The truth is actually that many of these things are most enjoyed by the 3-7 year olds.

We had a child entertainer come to her 3 year old birthday party.  When I booked him, he asked how old the kids would be.  I said, three years old.  He said, "Good.  By  6 years old they're already too sophisticated for my kind of goofy humor."  It was low tech, very silly and he had them in hysterics for 45 minutes straight. Every single kid.

I thought we were bringing Millie to the show to learn about healthy habits in a fun way.  I guess I also learned a lesson too-- Don't wait.  Go have fun with your kids today.  They'll love it now while they are young enough to dance and jump around with giant puppets.  You will have a blast too and maybe, just maybe, you'll both be left with a lifelong wonderful memory.  You never know.