Oh, You will know...

On Thursday I was able to reach out to elected officials and discuss the merits of free trade. On Friday, I dealt with senior executives (in French) about new environmental announcements in Quebec. Saturday, I couldn't convince a three year old to eat.

I sat with Liam (3) and Maia (1) for three hours on Saturday night. Not the most exciting plans in the world, but adventuresome for sure. I had three jobs:

1) Feed them
2) Put them to bed
3) Make sure the house didn't burn down

Before they left, I asked a lot of questions and the answer was "oh, you will know." It didn't seem that comforting at the time, but as the night progressed, it became very clear what they meant.

For example, when I asked how I would know when Maia was done eating and her mother said "oh, you will know" I figured a light would come on or something. Not that she would throw peas and yogurt at me. Similarly, when I asked how I would know that Liam had to go to the bathroom, I figured he would just tell me. I did not count on the song "It is time for me to pee" sung in F. The lyrics were pretty cool.

Imagine a grassroots communications strategy that was that simple. Adults have an uncanny ability to take very simple messages and make them virtually incomprehensible. Even the government with its five priorities have taken very clear messages and nuanced them to the point that they don't actually mean anything.

Adults are also very adept at taking very complicated messages and boiling them down to trite and unrelated thoughts. For example, "Free trade creates high paying jobs in Canada" is a very simple way of expressing that which is described in endless volumes of economic analysis about the virtues of liberalized trade. Except they leave out the part about high paying jobs leaving the jurisdiction for a couple eons to be replaced with different high paying jobs that require new skills that most 50 year old assembly workers don't have.

In other words, why is it that I can always figure out fairly quickly what a child is trying to communicate while adults who allegedly have the power of language can't be so easily comprehended? Maybe it is because kids only need four things: Food, love, sleep and toy trains, apparently.