Louise, my five-year-old daughter, was looking out of the bus window when a man sat down opposite us. She studied him for a few seconds with the intense concentration children have when they have just noticed something.
Then she asked, loudly enough to be heard over the engine:
The man definitely heard. So did I, unfortunately.
I felt my face grow hot and answered too quickly: “Louise, shush. You can’t say that.”
She looked at me, genuinely puzzled. “But why?”
When a child comments on other people’s bodies, the little snag often appears right there. In a few seconds, you want to protect the person, answer your child’s curiosity and quietly disappear at the next stop.
When a child comments on other people’s bodies
At five, Louise was not putting everything into her question that an adult might hear in it. She had noticed a difference and wanted to understand it. For her, the word “big” did not necessarily carry the judgement I was already giving it.
But her curiosity did not make the moment comfortable for the man sitting opposite us. His body had suddenly become a public topic of conversation without his agreement.
I did not want to pretend she had said nothing, or give her a long explanation in front of him. And simply telling her “that’s unkind” risked teaching her something else: that certain bodies are embarrassing, or that some questions are shameful.
Perhaps there was a third possibility: acknowledge the question without dealing with it there and then.
A short answer now, a proper conversation later
In the moment, I simply said “I’m sorry” to the man. Then I leaned towards Louise.
“Bodies are all different. We can talk about it later, not in front of the person.”
“You can keep your question. You can ask me again when we’re on our own.”
Once we were off the bus, Louise asked again. I told her I did not know, and that it was not ours to guess. Bodies can be tall, short, large, small, scarred or work differently, for many reasons.
What we mostly talked about was the difference between noticing something and commenting on it in front of the person. She could still ask me her questions. Some of them simply needed to wait for a more private place.
I had not found the perfect sentence on the bus. I had simply gained enough time to answer without turning the man’s body into a shameful secret, or Louise’s curiosity into a fault.
The question had not disappeared. It had waited for the next stop.
