Where Is The Handbook For These Kids?

In the movie Parenthood, there is a part where Jason Robards tells his oldest son Steve Martin that, in parenting, you never get to cross the goal line and spike the ball. (This is after Robards' youngest son Tom Hulce -- you know, the skinny pledge in Animal House who drops the girl off at her house in a grocery cart and also Amadeus -- has to get $26,000 from Robards to pay off bookies who are going to kill him, which will prevent Robards from retiring from his hardware business.) Not to mix metaphors or anything, but these children also do not come with handbooks. Any time you think you have a handle on them, they show you that you don't.

Got a good reminder of that last night. Enthusio, Mermaid and I were upstairs flipping channels and came across Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. Now, in thinking about whether this was OK, I thought "OK, I know that Enthusio likes this movie and he and Mermaid both saw in in the theater, this should be all right."

And, indeed, it was, right up until the scene where Voldemort comes back. At this point, Mermaid got quite upset. It wasn't because Wormtail cuts Harry's hand to make him bleed. It wasn't because Voldemort tells Harry he is going to kill him. No, instead it came earlier. It came when Wormtail dumps the not-yet reinstated Voldemort -- who is naked alien-looking thing at that point -- in the pot in order to perform the reinstatement spell.

For a moment, I couldn't figure out why Mermaid was getting so upset. Wormtail had just killed Cedric Diggory with a spell and she didn't flinch. Voldemort was the bad guy, but he wasn't being scary yet. What, what, what was going on? Then I realized that, to Mermaid -- a very literal child -- it probably looked they were cooking Voldemort. Moreover, at that particular moment, Voldemort looked kind of like a baby. I think Mermaid thought it looked like they were cooking a baby. Not good. Good job, Dad, letting them watch that.

Once I realized what was going on, I was able to talk Mermaid down. It took some work, however. That fell into the category of "troubleshooting," though. It sure would be nice if the child manual didn't come with just the troubleshooting part.