I Don't Want to Leave You!

This is another look at how serious and worried Elina can be sometimes. She just worries about the future way too much for a 5 year old.

We were talking about the Toy Story series and she was asking what each one was about. At this point, she had only watched part 2 and I was trying to convince her to watch part 1.

Elina: So what is part 1 about?

Me: Andy has a birthday and he gets Buzz as a new toy. This makes Woody jealous because Andy wants to play with the new toy more than with him.

Elina: Who's the bad guy?

Me: There's this boy named Sid. He does mean things to toys. He likes to break them on purpose.

Elina: Ok. And part 2 is about Jesse and the horse.

Me: Yeah.

Elina: So what is part 3 about?

Me: Well, Andy is 18 years old and he's going to leave his Mommy and Daddy to go off to school. So he needs to do something with his toys.

Elina: What do you mean he's going off to school? Why would he leave his Mommy and Daddy?

Me: When you are about 18 years old, you will go off to a bigger school and leave us. But you'll want to leave us then. But you'll always come home to visit us for holidays and stuff like that.

Elina: [with tears in her eyes] But I don't want to leave you and Daddy.

Me: [under my breath] Trust me, when you are 18, you are going to want to leave us. [then more loudly so Elina can hear] You'll make lots of great friends when you go away. And you'll come back to see us for holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Elina: [looking a bit more hopeful] And Valentine's Day and Easter? Those are my favorite holidays.

Me: Ummmmm, I don't think you'll come home for Valentine's Day....

Elina: But I LOVE Valentine's Day!

So you see, she's sad about leaving me and B, but she's also very upset about missing our holiday celebrations together. She loves Valentine's Day because we leave her something (clues to treats) every day in her Valentine's mailbox starting on February 1st. She loves Easter because we constantly have egg hunts. I didn't tell her that by the time she's 18 she's not really going to be into those things anymore. B said I need to stop telling Elina about real things like this because it just makes her sad and she can't fully grasp the concepts yet. He's right...but I just didn't really think it through because our original topic was the movie Toy Story. Oh well. Now I know better. B also said that I need to videotape Elina saying that she never wants to leave us and then show it to her when she's a teenager demanding her freedom. That would be classic. Now where's my camera at?