Monday was on track to be a perfect grandmother-grandson day. PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie at the theater, a four-year-old excitedly looking out the window while in his car seat, and a ringing phone with a local 910 number. As a Broker in Charge in Fayetteville real estate, I can't ignore unknown calls — that number could be a buyer, a seller, or a homeowner with a question. So I answered.
It was spam.
After I hung up with a grumble about annoying telemarketers, Scotty's voice shot back from the back seat:
Yeah. Jesus, save us! Just (Unalive) them all!"
I laughed. Then I caught my breath. As funny as it was, his prayer revealed something uncomfortable about how quickly our worst impulses become our children's theology.
I quickly explained that we really shouldn't ask Jesus to kill the spam callers. Jesus loves them too, even when they interrupt Meema on the movie run. Scotty was not convinced — and his Old Testament approach to telemarketing justice made me think about what we're actually passing down.
Like Father Like Son
Years ago, when my son Joshua was about the same age as Scotty, we were living in Goose Creek, South Carolina. Our friend Cody, a summer missionary, came to dinner. It was the first time they'd met. Cody wore an earring.
Joshua studied him for a moment and then asked, quite seriously, "Are you a gypsy?"
Cody didn't flinch. He explained that the earring had a special meaning — the biblical practice where a servant who had been given his freedom could choose to remain with a master he loved. As a sign of that choice, his ear would be pierced. Cody told Joshua that his earring represented his desire to be a servant of Christ — that even if given the choice, he would never want to leave his Master.
It was heartfelt. Biblical. Eloquent.
Little Joshua listened intently to the entire explanation. Then he looked at Cody and asked:
"So... are you a pirate?"
All that theology. Straight to pirate.
But as funny as it was, Scotty's prayer also made me wonder: Why did his mind go straight to judgment rather than mercy? Because that's what I'd modeled — a moment of frustration, amplified. A critic might say I'm over-reading a four-year-old's silly prayer. Kids say weird things, and that's all this is. But the consistency across two generations suggests otherwise. The same literal-minded re-narrating happened with Joshua a decade earlier, and it happens whenever we fail to frame our own reactions carefully.
What Deuteronomy 6:7 teaches us about car-seat theology
I remember thinking then what I thought again on Monday: little minds are constantly trying to make sense of big truths. They hear our words. They watch our reactions. They absorb our faith. And then, every once in a while, they repeat it back to us in a way we never saw coming.
Scripture tells us to teach God's truths diligently to our children, talking about them when we sit at home, walk along the road, lie down, and get up (Deuteronomy 6:7). Faith isn't only taught in church or during a carefully planned devotional. Sometimes theology happens in the car on the way to the movies after Meema gets aggravated with a spam caller.
The verse maps a child's ordinary routine — home life, travel, evening, morning — and commands parents to turn everyday moments into theological touchpoints. Ancient Israel had no separate Sunday-school structure; family discipleship was daily, decentralized, and integrated with life's rhythms (Deuteronomy 6:7).
I've watched my own reactions land on those little radar screens a thousand times over twenty years of parenting and grandparenting. My kids didn't always remember every word I said, but they remembered whether I sighed, whether I rolled my eyes, whether my patience ran thin. Scotty didn't invent his theology out of nowhere — he caught it from me in the two seconds I gave in to frustration. That's the humbling part.
What I'm learning as a Meema
Scotty's prayer for divine judgment on telemarketers and Joshua's pirate conclusion both reveal something true: they are processing, not rejecting. They're taking the fragments of faith they see in us and trying to build something coherent — even when the result sounds like a biblical epic strapped to a pirate ship.
So next time you catch yourself grumbling in front of little ears — in the car, on the phone, at the dinner table — remember they're filing every word away. They're building a theology out of what they see, and sometimes what they build looks a lot like our worst moment dressed up in Sunday school language. The solution isn't to pretend we never get frustrated. It's to let them see us catch ourselves — to let them hear the apology, the re-frame, the grace that follows the grumble.
That's the theology worth passing down. Not a God who smites telemarketers, but one who loves even the ones who interrupt Meema on the way to PAW Patrol.
From the mouths of babes>