Bunnygate: an update on the sunbathing rabbit and talking politics with kids

Thank you very much to everyone who replied to my post yesterday about talking to children about death.

I’m sure you all hardly slept last night, anxious to know whether someone would have moved the bunny, or whether we would be forced to confront the realities of death on our way to school. Really? You slept fine you say? Oh.

Anyway…

This morning we set of to school, late as usual, as Belle had been watching a recording of the election debate while she ate her rice crispies. At her request may I add. She is, she tells me, ‘really very interested Mummy’. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how much of it she was going to be able to understand, but she seemed to get to grips with it very well and appeared genuinely interested.

“Mummy,” she asked as they discussed inheritance tax, “David Cameron’s got it wrong. He wants to give the rich people even more money…”

I couldn’t help agree that it didn’t seem terribly fair.

When it was time to go to school, she paused the debate. “Look Mummy! It’s paused on Cameron’s stupid face!”

Her words, not mine, I swear.

So anyway, there we are on our way to school, and we’re walking along the side of the cricket pitch and the bunny has gone! I wonder if she will even remember, but she is definitely looking for it, and notices its absence. “Mummy,” she says, “that bunny isn’t sunbathing anymore.”

“Oh no, you’re right, maybe he had enough and hopped away, ” I reasoned.

Belle gave me a slightly pitying look, as though her new understanding of the tax system had suddenly made her much smarter than me. “Or maybe,” she said, “someone just came and took him away.”

Of course. Silly me.