I forget sometimes that young children believe what they see on TV.

I’m so used to my older kids saying “Yeah, right!” that, well, I suppose I’ve been remiss in covering that base with my youngest little guy.

We were watching an episode of Dora the Explorer one day which had a “good witch” riding a broom. My son’s eyes widened in excitement and he turned to me and asked, “Mom, can I ride the broom?” I could tell by the way he asked the question that he was totally convinced it would fly with him on it; the expression on his face also hinted at “How come I never knew about this?”

“No, honey.” I chuckled. ”The broom doesn’t really fly.” My mind flashed back to when I tried to ride a “magic carpet” as a child because I had seen someone on TV do it.

“Yes it does!” he said, motioning to the witch flying around on the television. I was so tickled by his belief.

And it dawned on me then that, while he, too, may say “Yeah, right!” about stunts or cartoon high jinks, I have taken for granted that he has a firm grip on what is real and what is not.

He dropped it after a minute. Then I forgot about it.

About a week later, he came into the kitchen while I was sweeping and he wanted to help. After we were done, I asked him to put the broom away for me, which he started to do….then he stopped, turned and looked at me, and said, “Can I?” the same way you would ask a friend, “should we?” when you want to try something but you’re uncertain whether you should.

“Go ahead,” I said. He was so excited that he was going to get to ride the broom.

Only it didn’t fly. “It doesn’t work!” he said, surprised.

He didn’t like that reality check, but he got it. It disappointed him that riding a broom wasn’t an option, but that disappointment was surprisingly short-lived. For whatever reason, the unmet expectation was just a new fact that he accepted.

It took me a whole lot longer than that to get over the truth about “magic carpets.”

© Alexa Lopez 2008