It often flops out before you’ve really thought about it. A child asks your puppet, “Do you have a mommy and a daddy?” and before you know it, you’ve said YES and introduced yourself as your puppet’s mother (or father). If you are dealing with toddlers, then there is no immediate cause for concern; they usually don’t ask that one question.
But if you are dealing with kindergartners, or even slightly older children, all it takes is one to ask you “but how can that be…….why did you get a puppet as a child and my mother got my little brother (or me) as a child?” and you literally have the puppets dancing. (Dutch expression)
There are questions you can duck out of and questions where you can’t, and this is one of them. One of those top 5 instinkers, where you have to come up with a good answer. If you don’t, he will continue to haunt you and more and more children will notice that the puppet is fake, and you cannot be his mother.
Another annoying thing about this question is that it is often asked during the introduction of the puppet to the group. So at the very beginning, when you are not yet at all comfortable and confident with the puppet and mainly hope that children will join in nicely and cozily (and especially not make things too difficult for you).
You’re not the only one who got bogged down in this question and got sweaty. It happened to me too, but I have a better answer for you. What that is, I’ll show you in this video.
I’ll see you soon in the next blog.
With love,
