Its a rather wordy title but accurate in light of events. Maeve and I had a “Star Wars” (Cartoon series) evening whilst her mom was out attending her companies Christmas party. We both like the series – but for different reasons probably – but I was interested to note Maeve emotional state and reactions to one of the cartoons plot lines. Over a couple of episodes the Sith Lord arranges a bounty hunter to steal a list of “force away” children from which the bounty hunter is to select and steal a few babies with which the Sith Lord will use so subjugate the galaxy. When the bounty hunter stole the babies (<2 years old) they reached back to their parents and cried. Soon after Maeve became very with-drawn, clingy and on the edge of tears. "Whats wrong" I said - obviously concerned at my daughters change in mood. "Those babies want to be back with their mommies" Maeve sad; "They should not be taken away - bad Man" she continued and was very down till the end of the next episode when they were saved and taken back to "their mommies".

What startled me was that you could see from her reactions that:

  1. The babies were being taken away from their parents against their will.
  2. That the babies were going to be very sad because of this.
  3. The man who took them away was a “bad man” for doing this.
  4. She said someone should “stop the man” from taking the babies away from their parents.
  5. She understood she did not want that to happen to her – hence the clingy behavior.

It is plain to see that Maeve understood the emotional stresses and strains of what was happening in the scenes and extrapolating the emotional consequences of taking a child from their parent and applying it to herself (and visa versa) – all in all an interesting thing to note in ones 2.75 year old daughter.

That said, we really enjoyed a Father-Daughter evening watching 8 episodes of a series we both enjoy; And the same thing is going to happen this evening.