The jujube lollipop

Everyone is busy drawing on a Sunday morning.

Peanut says "look mama, guess what I am making!"

I glance over and see that it's a blue square. I guess " a house?"

"No!" She exclaims. "It's a Lollipop!"

Before I can stop myself I say "a square Lollipop?"

She considers this and says "ok. It's a house!"

I immediately feel bad and say "no no, wait, a lollipop can be any shape". 

"Nope" she says "I don't want to make a wrong thing."

Every type of parenting guilt comes crashing down on me. I have just crushed her imagination. I have boxed her in. I have limited her creativity. I have...

(Inspiration hits me) "but wait- what about those special jujube lollipops we get sometimes?"

My child thinks about this and then lights up "oh yeah! That right..."

She proceeds to go ahead and create a long, multiple-layered, colourful jujube lollipop with squares, semi-circles and triangles.

I breathe a sigh of relief. 

Another parenting disaster averted. 

You can't blink, with this stuff. 

(Vijay teaching them tracing. " oh wow papad... That's a great circle... So round... Wait... Perfect! Wait, uh, that's the one I made.... Yours is okay too...")