By BERN MORLEY
They’re great aren’t they? Those special, one off art pieces your child brings home from school, seemingly on a daily basis. Or how about those words they lovingly write in their journals, describing their weekend activities. The ones that often paint a completely different picture to their own reality.
I have found over time that my children are here as much to amuse me as fill my life with joy. I present Exhibit A…
Now this is my son’s interpretation of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’. See what you’ve got to picture right now is Sam, my ten year old son, unfurling this to his captive audience (me) with his beaming little face peaking around the side asking me if I “like it?” Then imagine me nodding enthusiastically at the exact same time as his 6 year old brother wanders into the room and declares loudly that it “looks like a massive doodle”.
Exhibit B.
This is my all-time favourite Christmas picture. And you can’t tell me that the teachers weren’t having a giggle when they photocopied 50 copies of THIS for the children to colour in…
Not so long ago, I came across my daughter’s ‘weekend journal’ from year one. She is now 13.
Every Monday morning they would write about what they had gotten up to on their weekend or their thoughts in general. At first glance it seemed adorable and frankly, hilarious. Hilarious of course until I realised, after reading her somewhat stilted words properly, that she had the teacher convinced that my husband and I were divorced and more than likely teaching her to speak ghetto.
I vaguely remember some odd, concerned and at times, downright questioning looks when picking her up from school, but it never occurred to me she might be painting me as some kind of tainted woman.
These following (in bold) are her exact words…
Yes. To the Bitch for a picknic. (NB: This picture was not drawn by Bern’s daughter)
“This afternnon I am going To ride my bike to the brothel and my mum and I am going to Sizzler” Because I don’t know about you, but a visit to the local brothel makes me particularly hungry for cheese toast.
“Yesterday I went with the Bitch for a piknic” Translation – she went to the beach for picnic. It’s probable I was I was cracking the whip at her for something on that beach picnic and she’d decided I’d pay for it with her brutal ACA styled exposé on me
“today I am gowhang to Mi Dads hows” The Teacher responded with “I hope you have fun at your dad’s house”. Translation – so, your Mum and Dad are divorced, noted. – Except we weren’t and never were.
“On Sunday I am going to Sidny Habr Brig” – Sydney Harbour Bridge. I can safely say, she’s never seen that bridge nor been to Sydney.
“On Monday, I am going to the Zoo bEcause We are going to move housers” Incorrect. And Incorrect. This came alongside a drawing of a moving truck and six different cars. Perhaps we had won the lotto in her imaginary life.
“On Sadurday I am going to my dads house because I messe him vere much” Even though she saw him every day. In her own house. Where he lived.
On a Fathers day card: “Dear Dady, you are speceal because you read me books and like the beatch, Love Maddie xxxooo” I’m pretty sure she was referring to me, she was fairly bitter about that beach picnic and my refusal to take her to Sizzler.
Seriously though, are my children the only ones that pretend to live such different and fantastical lives? I mean, my son once had his teacher aid convinced that he lived with his long-dead Grandfather in Brisbane and caught a train to school every day. Is it because they heard their friends talking about staying with different parents and people and it sounded exotic? Would writing “This weekend we went to Aldi and mum flipped out when she found a stainless steel door stopper for just $4.99” sound too boring? Oooh, actually, yeah, I think I’m starting to understand….
Bern is a Gen X, child of the 80′s. Kept busy being a working mother of 3 children, one with Aspergers, renovating the original money pit and drinking too many coffees in the space of 24 hours. One day she’ll remember to leave the meat out for tea but until then she writes beautiful and amusing posts on her blog which you can find here.
Has your child ever made up stories at school or brought home the odd looking sunflower painting? I’m not alone right?
Comments
67 Comments so far
How funny!
My husband recently noticed on our son’s work hanging in the classroom that it stated his favourite thing to do in the morning is…. watch tv, favourite thing in the afternoon is……watch tv and his all time favourite thing to do is…..watch tv.
Hahaha so not true – he doesn’t watch that much tv!!!
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Children write what they WANT, not what they have or what has happened. I wanted a sister so I told my teacher my mother was pregnant with a girl. They certainly write or speak with their imagination.
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My son told his teacher that I was pregnant…with twins! She congratulated me the next day. I wasn’t even pregnant!!!
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My 5 year old son is very elaborate with the truth. Last year at kinder he was in his element, he had me convinced one night on the drive home that the two rabbits at kinder had been viciously beaten by the ‘naughty boy’ and gone to rabbit heaven. I went to speak to the teacher the next morning as I wanted to know how they handled the episode but just before I got to her I saw the rabbits hop by the window…..
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There was a building site next to the kinder and the teachers frequently took little excursions with groups of the kids to see the builders who were being very good about chatting to the kids and explaining what they were doing. One night at pick up I was told by one of my sons teachers that on a visit to the builders that day my son had announced loudly that ” my mum wears no undies when she is getting dressed”. Way to go picking your audience, yep tell the builders your mum is going commando, which was not true at all
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in prep, early in the year when asked to write what made her happy my daughter, wrote, “being at school, because I am always unhappy at home” ….this was dutifully hung up with all the other kids works in her classroom. Sometime in term 3 when i was in her classroom (i didnt get there often), i happened to look up, saw her name and thought, how lovely, that is my daughters work. Until I read it….. OMG. knowing that every other parent in the class had probably been reading it all year….. … but never did we take her to a brothel. that is a scream. sounds like we got off lightly….
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Oh my God, I was a chronic liar when I was little and I thought I was the only one! I didn’t lie to keep myself out of trouble, just to seem more interesting! My mum has video of me coming home from my first day at school, and she asked what I’d done that day at school and I replied “we got on a bus and they took us on a trip all around town”. A sightseeing trip on my first day of grade one, haha! As I’m the oldest and this was mum’s first experience with kids at school, my mum was a bit confused at first, and she wondered for a second if maybe this HAD happened and if it had, why wasn’t she required to sign a permission slip or something? Haha. Poor mum. The first in a long line of porkies I made up as a child!
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A few years back I was really excited to have completed my first 5k fun run. I’d just done the Couch to 5K program was incredibly proud to have achieved my goal of finishing a fun run.
I had the wind knocked out of my sails when a few days after the run I read the journal of my then 5 year old:
“On the weekend I watchd my mum in a running rase. She came a little bit last.”
(I didn’t!!! I was in the middle of the field … well, the back part of the middle!)
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My 5 year old son had his teacher convinced that my husband and I had split up and he had moved to Bali!! Lol She started a conversation with me saying oh T was upset today so I told him about when I was a kid and how I had two houses and how it was great cause I had two christmas’ then she must of realised by my WTF face that she should stop and I said I don’t know what he’s been saying but my husband is at work in Perth and still lives with us she said oh ok well that’s great I’ll see you in the morning lol
He also makes stuff up in his weekend diary it must be an age thing.
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I once had the whole grade convinced my uncle owned disney land and was a multi billionaire.
….all i knew was that he lived in Connecticut!
Another time we had a school excursion on a boat and I was jealous of all the attention the sea sick kids were getting. I came home and told mum all about how sick I was and how I threw up!
Next day to MY HORROR mum went to thank the teacher for taking such good care of me and for dealing with my sickness. I was MORTIFIED!
Still don’t know whether mum knew all along and wanted to catch me out or whether she had no idea! HA!
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As a massive powderfinger fan, I passed on my love for Bernard Fanning with my son….at the beginning of his year 4 school year he was asked to write about his favourite things…….Tom’s written reply, “I love Burned Fanny”……….gotta love phonetic spelling!
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My son in kinder came home from school and told me his best friends dad had died. I was on friendly terms with this mother and when I saw her the next day went up and hugged her told her how sorry I was about her loss and offered any help she needed. Cue strange look and her husband my sons best friends dad came walking in behind.
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we had a huge month in France and China, full of surprises, Eurodisney, skiing, lots of family, Xmas, etcc..
My daughter’s summary of her holidays? “we went to the supermarket because there was no food in the fridge”.
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I am crying with laughter…. This is sooo flippin hilarious!
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My 4yo told everyone she ever met that her big sister went up in a plane, the door opened and she fell out, but “luckily she was wearing a parachute.” There is no big sister.
She also told her teachers that “a long long long time ago, Daddy had long hair [he did but well before I knew him] and he was a mermaid.” Daddy wasn’t too sure what to make of that.
It *may* run in the family though (the lies, not the mermaid-ness). I remember telling everyone I had a cousin in the US who was an undercover cop trying to find drugs in high schools. All my cousins live in Tassie, and it’s possible I was slightly obsessed with 21 Jump Street at the time.
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When we moved schools (and countries) my then 6yo daughter had to do a little talk about herself to her new class. She told them she lived with her grand-parents for a year…..Never happened, but they did do a lot of baby-sitting while I worked!
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My year 4 daughter started last year with a brand new teacher to the school. In an effort to get to know everyone she asked the children to write down three things to describe themselves to her. My daughter’s first two things were “I am disabled” and “I am a vampire.” She also has a vivid imagination – sums it up really!
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Every Monday was ‘weekend writing’ and it was only in the Christmas holidays that I read some of my daughters entries. The one that made me laugh in horror was “I didnt root my toy, my dog did.”
It doesn’t help that our dog does have a ‘passion’ for an old teddy bear that lives in our back yard with her.
Substitute root for ruin and it all made sense.
Not sure what the teacher could possibly have thought…
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Sometimes though it is the teachers who managed to get things really really wrong. When I was in year 11 or 12 I developed a cyst in my eye lid. My eye swelled up really badly and it looked like someone had punched me. My mother was by this point quite well known for being more than a little……. eccentric. At least two teachers were convinced Mum had caused my black eye and spent the better part of a day questioning me about it (I’m guessing it was supposed to be in a way that I didn’t figure out what they were on about but I was 16 not 6). Despite explaining repeatedly that it was just a cyst they still didn’t believe me. In the end I told them that if it made them happy they could believe that Mum had hit me. Mum and I had a good laugh about it later that day.
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When my brother was in year 2 he wrote a story, as instructed, about our mum: ‘my mum used to smoke dunhill red but now she smokes dunhill blue’… Eek! Proud to report my mum successfully quit smoking more than 15 years ago.
I also wrote a story in year 2 about the new dog we had (true), who we collected because the owner had a heart attack when she saw the dog’s mother get run over by a train (false and false).
I also had one of the kids I babysat for draw a picture of me with the caption ‘when (my name) comes to babysit, she talks on the phone all day while I watch A Bugs Life. Awkward!
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I’m a junior primary teacher and one thing I tell parents early on in the year is that “I won’t believe everything your child says happened at home, if you don’t believe everything your child says happened at school.” I have read so many stories and have seen so many spelling mistakes that change the meaning that it’s the reason why I like marking these stories.
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My daughter is only in Kindy but i am taking notes…. I’m understanding that building a relationship with her teachers will give me a much more objective point of view of what goes on that school
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One year I had a particularly imaginative girl in my class, who came to school on a Monday morning and told me she’d been to Beijing on the weekend to watch the Olympics. Told it for news, had all the kids convinced it was true! Her stories were funny until the morning she woke up with a mozzie bite on her leg that she’d scratched until it bled; her mum told me that when she asked what happened to her leg the little girl said, “Mrs A was kneeling on the floor with a big knife in her hand and when I walked past she cut me with it. But it’s ok mum, it was only and accident.”
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Soooo funny, am so going to get my Mr 6 to do a week in the life of me story, have shared this on my facebook page too, hope we get some funny ones
Julia – The Kids Depot
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I’m glad my Mum hasn’t read this because she’d have a list a mile long of stories I wrote in the journal for school, one I do remember is that we had gone to visit my Uncle Tom, who is African American (I’m Scottish so I’m not sure how this happened) in his log cabin in the woods.
I have grown up to be an honest fairly normal adult with a partner, a job, a mortgage and kids, so when my daughter started filling her journal with similarly wonderful flights of fancy I just smiled and enjoyed the ride.
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How funny! I have imaginative child envy. About the limit of my five year old’s writing creativity would be something like “We made brownies. I liked them.”
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Never fear Anna, it’s only a matter of time
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I am so happy reading these hilarious comments. I always thought my son was bit of a liar in his early years, now I realise maybe he was just a bit normal, haha!!!
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My son told his teacher in year 1 that we had a dog but mummy left it in the car one day when it was really hot and it died.
We never owned a dog and I certainly would not have left it in a hot car if we did. It took a lot of convincing to make sure the teacher did not call the RSPCA on me.
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Oh wow! Way to make you out to be the antichrist! That is so great a story thought xx
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Im sorry Rizzo – I just spat my coffee laughing.
Teacher probably did too
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Oh gosh that made me cackle!!
My daughter during kinder had to tell the teacher what their Mummy’s wore for a Mothers Day poster. I found her poster amongst the others in which those Mummy’s wore “t-shirts and shorts” or “pretty dresses” saying that her Mummy wore “short black dress, long black gloves, black high heels, stockings with little holes in them and red feathers in her hair”. No I don’t charge by the hour, we had just recently been to a 1920′s themed party!!
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BEST!
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From my then 7-y-o, who had to write sentences with “-ite/-ight” words:
“My shite is wite.
My trouses are tight.
I am not a pritty sight.”
Pretty sure he was writing about his SHIRT…
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This reminds me of a friend typo-ing about Shi-ite muslims. Another friend who is a very quick wit wrote ‘I don’t think we should judge the validity of their faith’
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I saw my 7 year old god sons year 1 diary just before Christmas. He was very honest about things that went on and didn’t make any of it up. It was quite sweet, and there were fairly harmless spelling errors until the last few entries. He had written about staying at a friends house and how he’d had coke for the first time. Except he spelt coke “cock”. I felt sorry for the poor teacher who would have had to read it and not burst out laughing.
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I’m a teacher and we often photocopy stuff like this and pin it up in the staff room to give us a laugh. I once had a boy draw a picture of Britney Spears with a speech bubble and inside it said ‘do you want a piss off me? ‘ it was suppose to be ‘piece of’.
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Excellent! I have just read this out to my friend and she is yet to get off the floor
#leaveBritneyalone
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I recently dug out my grade one and two news books. Absolute gold. My family are particularly eccentric and my older brother was in jail and one mentally ill so the translation of weekend events in my news book we without doubt colorful. My favorite parts involved the chicken hatching eggs on top of my wardrobe and account the lovely art work on the walls at the visiting my brother in jail. the descriptions of other patients I hospital head butting walls and stories of all the crazy animals must have provided some entertainment to my teachers.
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My son had to fill out a questionnaire about his family in kindy. Some particular highlights (this was up on display for most of the year):
Mum’s favourite drink: Beer and the green can with the “V” on it. (every other mum seemed to like “coffee” or “tea”.
People in your family: Here, he included a baby sister (who did not exist and who the teacher kept asking me about her whereabouts)
Last year he wrote an entire poem dedicated to my lasagne. His only complaint about it – it ruined summer for him. Summer being his favourite season and mum having told him that “lasagne is a winter food” (this was all explained in the poem.
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At the height of the tamagotchi craze, a new chinese student in my daughters Year 5 class, had convinced all the girls that her father owned a tamagotchi factory back in China!. She must have spent all her pocket money buying tamagotchis to bring to school for her new friends. The truth was revealed several weeks later when the pocket money ran out….
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Weirdly I identify with this little girl. How adorable.
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That is pure gold! Makes me feel so much better because I used to make things up all the time when I was a kid. I remember convincing a teacher I had a younger brother….I had been ashamed of this for soo many years but now I think its a little funny
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All the parents had a giggle over one of my son’s friends journal entry that was hung up in the classroom last year. He’d written “I saw my mum naked in the shower. It was a weird day”! The mum was very embarrassed!
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My 12 year old son came home with his end of the year package (everything they have done all year which sits on the bench for a week until I go through it discreetly and throw out 99% of it) with a picture he drew of his favourite movie.
His favourite movie turned out to be “Ted”.
The picture is a teddy bear smoking a cigarette with a BONG in the background.
After some discussion I asked if the bong was necessary…he replies “My teach said she was impressed with the level of detail”.
His teacher lives next door to us. Her husband is a detective who I work with on occasion as I am a defence lawyer. Thankfully, they both know there is no bong in the house. Sigh.
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LOVE that teacher
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When I was little I had an allergic reaction to something or other that caused a rash on my stomach. I told everybody at school that I had worms because it sounded more interesting – panic stations!
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At my oldest girl’s day care centre, they made up a book of why kids loved their mums on mothers day. Her caused much hilarity.
I love my mum cos she calls me silly billy when I hurt myself.
I love my mum cos she puts on make up when she goes out.
I love my mum cos she wets the garden.
Hmmmm
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My daughter told everyone her grandfather died when he went to the pub and fell down. He did faint while watching a game of bowls, but he didn’t actually pass away for another 12 months from a stroke at home.
It’s nice to know the word on the playground is that my dad was a falling down drunk.
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Oh my goodness, that was hilarious!
I actually found some of my prep work at my parents house and was looking through them with my little girl who just started kinder.
I had drawn a picture of myself and my dad in a bed and written “I had a sleep in daddy’s bed” (yep, indicating my parents had separate beds??? they didn’t!) and I also said that we were moving to another city. I asked my mum about it and she said she remembered when I wrote that and wondered then what the hell I was on about!
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I’m a teacher….. of kindergarteners…. haha the things I’ve been told….
“Mummy had a baby yesterday” shortest pregnancy ever, she wasn’t pregnant when she picked the kid up yesterday afternoon.
And so many others…. but my all time favourite:
“On the weekend I went to the Death Star” really? “Yup!” The kid was seriously convinced he went to the death star! I just love my job for this reason!!!
Oh and P.S. we don’t really believe 99% of their stories!
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For my Mother’s Day poster my 5 year old daughter wrote that I like to make hamburgers, drink beer and my favourite food is fish and chips. Not exactly made up but just looked bad written on the same poster next to the other’s who said their Mums liked to cook vegetables, drink water and eat fruit!
Husband thought it was hilarious until she wrote that on weekends “Dad likes to have a rest” LOL he’s such a lazy Dad!
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My son had to do one for Mother’s Day on ‘what my mum does’. He wrote that I clean the house and eat sweets. Was kind of a wake up call for me.
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I remember telling anyone who would listen that I had a billionaire grandmother who lived in Paris and that every school holiday, she would pick me up in my backyard from her private jet plane and take me to France.
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We are still reeling from when our littlest told her kinder teachers: ‘My daddy likes to watch videos of men kissing!’ (Her heterosexual dad was watching rugby highlights.)
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My daughter once came home from school (aged about 8) telling me she had made her teachers coffee. Totally feasible, she knew how to make it and there was a little kitchen in her classroom.
I mentioned this to one of her teachers and the woman nearly had a heart attack -”. Karly had NEVER been allowed alone in the kitchen, Karly had not been near boiling water, etc”
Took a second to realise that Karly had a great imagination and a second more to realise the teacher was terrified that they were going to be held up for breaches in workplace health and safety.
I often wonder what she told her teachers about her home life if she was telling me about her embellished school life.
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My family was living high in the snowy mountains and my sister convinced the teacher over a period of weeks that we were getting a swimming pool built!
In year 5 we had to write a book about Mum’s for Mother’s Day. I included way too many home truths for my Mum’s liking – that she liked to have a drink after work (drawn picture with large glass of wine), that if we annoy her while she’s on the phone she throws shoes at us, that she hates cooking and housework and gets my older sisters to do it, and that she has a round chubby stomach!!
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In year 2 my son’s class all wrote a comments on a big poster describing what their mums like to do. My son wrote “wear her pyjamas and watch the lifestyle channel”. Thank you son. Did you just not notice my, you know, job, or all the other activities that seem to fill my week??
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My friend had a similar experience at the kinder Mothers Day morning tea. A card from her daughter read, ‘My Mum’s favourite TV show is adult programs.’ My friend screamed, “It’s not porn! I just tell her to stay in bed because I’m watching ‘adult programs’ because I don’t want her seeing a corpse on Silent Witness!”
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My son, who has never had a sibling, told his Kindy teachers that his sister had been bitten by a snake in Africa and died.
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I made up stories a lot like this as a kid! When I was 5 I had my grade 1 teacher convinced I had a 3 year old sister, I even showed her pictures of her at the beach. No idea why I did this, but now that I look back it’s hilarious and kids will always go crazy with their imaginations!!
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That was friggin’ hiliarious! I literally snorted at the Sizzler one. Gold.
When my daughter was three she had to draw a card of what her Dad did at work. She told the teacher ‘my dad drives to work, talks to his friends on the phone, has pancakes for lunch and drives home again.’ – accompanied with a picture of a stick figure man holding a plate of pancakes. Obviously, hubby cooking pancakes (the only time he was ever in the kitchen back then) really made an impact! Hubby still has the card on our bedside table.
Yes, those young writings are real treasures.
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We arrived at our son’s first meet the teachers evening to discover the children had drawn pictures of their family that had then been carefully labelled by the teacher and hung up around the room.
Our family was mostly accurate. Except for the inclusion of an imaginary sister (Sarah) – who was listed before the real life brother.
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I laughed so much at that a little bit of pee came out.
Thanks for making my Sunday morning
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