How to diffuse a situation

Pull out your imagination caps!
You've got a five-year-old girl crying in a corner. How do you convince her to stop? Tell her that Auntie is going to get mad at her for crying. So she attempts to stifle herself but to no avail...
Solution: Tell her to shove her face in her brother's underwear drawer. An upset five-year-old now becomes an uncontrollably silly five-year-old.



A few weeks later when she sees the photo, she makes a keen observation:
"I look like a power ranger!"

TEAMWORK

This summer I worked at a camp on a very hyper-sexualized street in Toronto. My group of campers decided that we should name ourselves TEAMWORK! Everyday, we'd take our kids for many downtown excursions, usually through the Gay Village. This one time, ten-year-old Jason, noticed something that really caught his eye.

"Look everyone! It says TEAMWORK! That sign says our team name!"

He was referring to STEAMWORKS (slightly NSFW), Toronto's premium gay bathhouse.

Brotherly Love

Lex, Grade 2, has quite a few things to say about his brother, Martin, Grade 5. I think he has a major inferiority complex because when Martin's not around, Lex really comes out of his shell. Here are a few examples:
"My brother ate his own poo."
"My brother wets his bed."
"My brother had a hernia..."
I question the truthfulness of these statements, but they're undeniably hilarious, especially since they come out of nowhere.

Lucky New Year!

When I finished tutoring little Max H., I walked into the lobby to meet his mother. Since it was New year, she handed me a Ang Pao, which was expected. We chatted for a bit and I thanked her for her the lucky gesture.
The envelope felt a little thick, but I paid no mind because they are rich. I went to the next room to check how much money I got - it was $20. But wait, there was more!
Inside a found a note, asking me to betray my employer and do some private home tutoring - skipping the middle man. I was quite offended by the note, seeing that it brought such a level of scandal to my Ang Pao. I was afraid that all the luck would be cancelled by this sneaky situation.
What are your thoughts? How should I solve my problem?

On another note, I asked my mom about my loss of luck. She said that it is actually luckier that there's scandal attached to my Ang Pao but only because that scandal will make me more money. But my mom thinks anything with money is lucky...

Age of Forgetfulness

A teeny tiny kindergartener, Lisa, has already hit that unfortunate stage where memory begins to decline. I'm going to bring her some crossword puzzles to improve her cognitive functioning!

Lisa: Where's my backpack? I can't find my backpack!
5-second pause
Lisa: Oh yeah! It's on my back.

Being helpful

Fifth-grader, Benji, decided to share some of his wisdom with his classmates.

Charles: What's the website you're on?
Benji: Lemon Arcade.
Charles: Wait - what?
Benji: Lemon Arcade!
Charles: I can't get it.
Benji: First type lemon, then arcade.
Charles: It's still not working.
Benji: Dot-com.

I exclaim.

Teaching a Grade 6 kid how to engage a reader can be a real challenge. Max W.'s writing is very dull and formulaic. I showed him a few tricks of the trade: start with a joke, ask a question, a vivid anecdote. All he could come up with was:

Max: I liked the book Harry Potter.
Me: That is a very boring sentence.
Max: I liked the book Harry Potter!!

Ahh, the power of the exclamation. Wait, let me rephrase. Ahh, the power of the exclamation!

Richard

A second-grader named Lex is smart.

Lex: Stop being such a dick!
Me: Hey! Appropriate language, please.
Lex: Stop being such a Richard!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year everyone!

To commemorate this glorious holiday, I will share with you a New Year anecdote:
I was tutoring a Grade 2 child, which makes him 7-years-old, named Max H. He is a really great kid - he's outgoing, funny, smart, athletic, musical - pretty much the hard-ass Asian parent's dream-kid. Good thing for his hard-ass Asian mom. Who sends their second-grader to tutoring anyway? Answer is: Max's mom.

So he has a presentation to work on and his topic was Chinese New Year. Max, being the little charmer that he is, is a top quality presenter. He was very good at keeping eye contact and had a lot to say. It was better than a lot of university presentations I had seen. Max was feeling a little nervous, so we decided to practise his presentation several times. We went over it about 8124 times and he even stayed for an extra half hour. At the end of the session, I praised him for doing such a great job with his presentation. Then he offered me this little gem:

"Oh yeah! I have to do my presentation in French."

Inaugural Post - Ode to Alicia

Alright, blogosphere - it's finally time to get this up and running! It's more than your typical Kids Say the Darndest Things stuff. That shit's too PG.

Let me start by explaining the blog nomenclature. Seeing that this blog will be a collection of sayings, doings and happenings-to of kids, I thought it was only appropriate to name it after one of our to-be favourites, Alicia.

So, Alicia's a Grade 5 girl, at this really fancy private school in downtown Toronto. She's got a big mouth and she knows it. Which makes her an easy target for the Grade 1 kids apparently... One day, they decided to steal her DeLux Monkey hat. Alicia, being a lot bigger than the Grade 1 bullies, was able to catch the little ones without a hitch. The thing she didn't see coming was E throwing her really expensive hat into a puddle, while she was restraining him. She proceeded to shove him, let him know that her hat was really expensive and proclaim:

GUYS, LITTLE KIDS ARE ASSHOLES!

So that's where that came from - visit soon!