Have you ever been completely shocked and/or horrified by something that a child said?

Pardon the long story, but I promise that it’s worth reading.

The other day, I was watching the six-year-old son of a very religious and conservative family. Completely out of the blue, he asked me if I liked President Obama. This alone surprised me, because I wouldn’t think a child that young would really know much about politics; the only thing I knew about politics at that age was that I didn’t want Al Gore to win the election because his last name sounded “gory.” (Ironic, considering how liberal I turned out to be.) Anyway, knowing what I do about his parents, I carefully responded that “Many people like him, and many people don’t. It’s a matter of opinion. My opinion happens to be that he is a good president, but everybody has their own opinion.” Before I could even finish, he said to me, “I’ll kill you because Obama hates babies and wants to kill them.”

Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. He found that statement to be hilarious and I know he really didn’t understand what any of it meant, so I just responded that he does not hate babies because he has children of his own, and that I didn’t believe that Obama wants to kill babes, but that it was something that his parents would have to talk to him about (though they obviously already had). It was surprising to me that he knew about abortion at all, but that part that disturbed me the most was that his parents had told him that Obama hates babies. Though I don’t personally agree with it, I can understand being conservative and teaching your children that abortion is wrong. But for a parent to tell a very impressionable young child such a blatant and awful lie as the leader of our country hating children is just terrible. To be clear, this ultimately has nothing to do with my political opinion. For example, I certainly wouldn’t want a liberal person to tell their children that Mitt Romney hates poor people and wants to let them all die, either. I just couldn’t believe that something so disturbing came out of that six-year-old’s mouth.

Have you ever heard something from a child that just completely shocked or horrified you?