It's the Little Mistakes

Mrs Pseudo-Polymath and I were (somewhat in jest) ruefully remarking on a child-rearing "mistake" which has been coming back to haunt us. Years ago, when my little girls were really little girls (age 2 and 4), I hit upon a less than clever idea (in retrospect) to stop my kids from "singing" at the dinner table. I invented a short "No singing at the table" song. As the years went on, the irony of singing "no singing at the table" has sunk in (quite gleefully). Now at the age of 8 and 10, this irony is fully appreciated by exuberant girls occasionally alas at equally exuberant decibel levels. Great fun, but at the end of a long day, not what the doctor ordered.

Musing about the future generations of my little clan, it occurred to me, this is how bad ideas get propagated. For almost certainly, my little girls will teach this silly pun to our grandchildren, and then discover it might not be so funny the 400th time.

I'm just hoping to have a different appreciation of this song as a grandparent.