A Parent's Worth

My kids persist in writing skits and stories where the parents are dead. The stories begin with the child suffering in an orphanage, living with a grandparent, or maybe even stuck with some mean people they aren't even related to.

Is this because they fear that this might happen to them, so they work it out through the main character, who acts brave and cunning to solve her problems?

Or is it because so many fairy tales, books and movies start out in a similar way?

Or do they want us dead?

One daughter began a story with her main character excited at having been awarded $1000 for figuring out who poisoned her parents. That was just background information; the story actually began with the main character dreaming up how to spend that money and her jealous friends that she had such a large sum. No one felt sorry that her two parents were dead--poisoned, at that! After she read a portion of the first chapter, I suggested that at least she should get a little more money for solving such a big case and finding out the criminal who poisoned her parents.

"Maybe I could change the 1 to a 5 and make it 5,000?" she proposed.

"Well," I said, "solving such a dramatic case might be worth even more, don't you think? I mean, it was her own parents! So maybe even $10,000."

Her eyes widened. "Wow, ten thousand dollars! I think I can squeeze a zero after the one."

I should think so.