Kid Fan Mail

Kids express emotion in simple ways. They know “angry”, and they know “happy”. They understand “sad” and even “mean”.

And they certainly know “love”. Kids, up until about grade 5, see emotion in primary colours. After that, of course, it gets complicated….

But I digress.

Any primary school chaplain worth their salt will be flooded with little love notes from their charges (and talking to my primary school colleagues certainly bears this out). When you help a child, or lift their spirits or encourage them emotionally, they will often interpret their feelings as “love”. And they love you for being kind to them, and for helping them, and for making them feel special.

So they will unabashedly tell you that they love you. And they will write it out in pretty colours and draw you pictures, and bring you presents of melted chocolate, or wilted flowers, or a sandwich that they made for you that their brother accidentally took a bite out of not knowing it was a special sandwich for the Chappy; or a favourite toy that they accidentally dropped in the toilet once but now want you to have. They will hug the stuffing out of you. They will tell you that you smell.

The challenge for the Chaplain is to reframe that in its actual context: that it is not you that they love, it’s what you’ve done to help them – or more correctly, what the Lord has done through you to help them. Those love letters are for God.

And so I have a file tucked away at the back of the cabinet into which these love notes go so that a) I am never tempted to believe the hype, and b) I can always find them when the child says “Where’s the picture I drew for you?”

Recently, though, I have been flooded with requests to join an online game called “Club Penguin” – sort of a Disney-owned version of ‘Second Life’… only for kids and with penguins. I’m sort of interested, as I’ve never actually considered a penguin alter-ego until now; but my stepson, Josh, is dead keen.

Last Tuesday, when Josh – a cute and smart 10-year-old with a whip-sharp sense of humour – came to visit for the afternoon, I brought home several of these letters encouraging me to join this online club and chucked them on the kitchen table while I grabbed some dinner. The covers of these letters were decorated with sayings like “Annie you are the best!” and “We love you please join club penguin” and “You are the best Chaplain ever!”

Josh walked into the kitchen and spied these notes on the table. His eyes widened in surprise and he grinned.

“Wow, Annie,” he said. “You got kid fan mail!!”