Children can be astonishingly honest at times. Sometimes it will make you laugh, other times it may seem a little offensive, and sometimes their honesty can even make them seem wise beyond their years.

This afternoon I worked for a family that employs me to babysit and do odd jobs around the house. While I was working on the family’s scrapbooks and photo albums, the youngest child came home from preschool. After a little while, she realized I was sitting in the next room, working. I heard her say haltingly, “Kat-hy?” I looked up, smiled at her, and said hi. She laughed, and told me in her childish way of talking, “Kathy, you look like a boy with your hair in a ponytail!”

Obviously she had not recognized me with my hair up. I laughed and said, “Does it make me look like I have shorter hair when I put it up?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. A little while later, she told me again, “When your hair is in a ponytail, it makes you look like a boy!” (She’s at that age where kids like to repeat something over and over again when it gets a desirable response or seems like an amazing discovery.)

I know she’s three, but a couple times after that exchange I caught my reflection in the mirror and did a double take, checking to see if I looked funny.

Of course, an older child probably wouldn’t have said this. Younger children have not yet learned rules of social conduct, nor have they learned to regulate what they think or say; as a result, thoughts leap out of their mouths at almost the same moment they are produced. However, I find this youthful honesty endearing and admirable. Certainly not everything should be said, but there is something to be said for the unaffected inclination to tell the truth.