Magic.. to a 6 Year Old?

It seems as though Casey has a strong belief in magic. He perceives things just happen for no apparent reason and concludes that it has to be magic. He tries to convince us of these magical happenings as an excuse for things he either neglected or forgot to do. For example, this morning, there were no socks folded and put away in his sock drawer. So he chose to wear his shoes without socks. I told him there were clean socks in the laundry basket and to put on socks. He said, “but mom, I put socks on this morning and now they are just gone!” with an impish look on his face. Perhaps he intended to put on socks, and thought he already did. Perhaps he just forgot to put them on. So I explained that such things simply cannot happen and if he had put socks on, he must have taken them off. Or, he never put socks on to begin with. With reluctance he got socks out of the basket and put them on.

It’s hard to explain to a 6 year old that magic doesn’t happen in the way he thinks it does. And it doesn’t help when something like this occurs:

The other day he came home from school, carrying his Spiderman lunch bag and very excitedly showed me a package of strawberry gummybears. He said, “Mom! Look! My ice pack melted into these gummybears!” (His ice pack is round and looks like a basketball, orange with black stripes, that you put into the freezer, and it goes into his lunch bag every morning to keep his lunch cold.) I took his lunch bag and looked inside to see the ice pack missing. Kevin was nearby and whispered to me: “I bet he traded his basketball ice pack to another kid for those gummybears…” That seemed a logical explanation so I asked Casey if this was true.

Now Casey was thoroughly and 100% convinced that his ice pack melted and turned into gummybears. There was no convincing him otherwise. He was adament that he did not trade it and that it just magically happened. His eyes were huge and he was almost in tears when I wouldn’t believe him.

Then I noticed that the lunch bag looked different. I realized his name wasn’t printed on the inside and Kevin noticed the handle had a tear. Casey’s lunch bag is brand new. Ah ha! Casey brought home the wrong lunch bag. *giggle*

So I explained this to Casey… he was perplexed and not really convinced at first. I showed him the lack of his name on the inside and the fact that the bottom compartment was missing the tupperware container that fits inside. He says, “well, I really thought it melted because there are orange and black stains inside”. And sure enough, there was. I can totally see how he’d think this magic happened!

I called his teacher and she had his lunch bag in the class so we made arrangements for Casey to trade them back. And I told her the story, which she loved. She explained it was partially her fault because she had forgotten to tell the kids to grab their lunch bags/boxes from their storage area till the last minute so Casey just grabbed the first one that looked like his.

He got his own bag back the next day and now has his name written on the outside as well to help him identify it.

The “socks magic” this morning reminded me of the “lunch bag magic” that happened the other day so I thought I’d share.