by Jamie Kenney

TikTok

Kids say the darndest things, and sometimes those things are not rude, but nevertheless, they have the capacity to make you feel bad about yourself.

Kids do this to us all the time — like when my daughter reminded me to make a waxing appointment by observing, “I never noticed you had a mustache before.” (Yes, and you probably will too someday you little so-and-so.) There’s no value judgment in that comment, it’s an observation. But kids also do it to one another and that can be difficult to navigate as a parent.

Layla Shaikley, who posts on TikTok as @laylool related one such experience with her 4-year-old son that ultimately turned into a “parenting win.”

“My 4 year old comes to me and he goes ‘Mom, somebody said that my teeth are small,’” she begins. She notes that her immediate reaction was an “Oh well, everybody is different and that’s OK” approach. But something told her to hold up and take a different approach.

“I was like ‘Huh. That’s such an interesting observation. Why do you think it matters that much to him?’” she said, before continuing, “Different things matter to different people. I wonder why he cares so much about the size of teeth. He must think about his own teeth a lot. But really when it comes to teeth there’s only one thing that matters, and it’s not other people’s opinion. It’s that you’re brushing them and taking care of them. And you brush your teeth, right? … So interesting that matters to him.”

She then asked what was important to him.

“This conversation was asinine,” she concludes. “But when you have a 4-year-old, sometimes you figure out those frameworks that work for weird conversations or things that people say to your kids that aren’t mean but they’re kind of weird and make your kids kind of insecure.”

We are so here for this approach! It’s so simple but so brilliant. Because whether you’re 4 or 44 or 104, very often, someone’s comments about you say more about themselves than the person they’re directed towards and the sooner you learn that the better. (If you haven’t learned that yet, well, now you can think about it: better late than never, right?)

And the element of encouraging kids to think about things that matter to them cannot be overstated, either. Because at the end of the day, it’s important to start thinking about our values. At 4, our answers aren’t likely to be articulate, but it lays the groundwork for them to be more thoughtful with their random observations and comments moving forward.