Children are magnets. When you are a father, you realize that people like children and that they like to come and tell them things. There are kind people who say affectionate things to them, there are people with double intention who go to them to say something they want to say to you ("you should already walk, that you weigh on your daddy" - of which we may talk another day) and there are people who try to be funny making jokes to children, sometimes with little fortune and with very little grace, to be honest.
Within this last subgroup are those people who with few scruples and, as I say, with little sense of humor, get to scare children with jokes in bad taste.
One of these jokes, which my son Jon (4 years old) has done more than once is that in which a stranger approaches him and asks, pointing to Aran (his 2-year-old brother): "Is he your little brother? Will I take it home with me?"
The boy obviously is stunned. Every time they have told him he has answered no, in a shy way but showing an obvious nervousness. Once he even hugged me tight and I even saw him look at us as if waiting for our response.
"Calm down Jon, nobody here is going to take Aran anywhere," I had to say on occasion, causing the baffling of the author of the macabre joke, to dismantle the occurrence.
Without bad intention
It is obvious that people do not have bad intentions when they make such jokes, but that does not mean that children have a bad time for three reasons: first because they are unknown people, second that they are telling him that they are going to take away his brother and the children do not understand it as a joke and third that many times the parents simply smile, seeing the child that not only will they steal from their brother, but that their parents think it is good.
Other strategies please
On occasion I have wondered why adults make these jokes to children, because they are certainly very heavy jokes for them and because, in addition, they have no grace (At least he doesn't do it to me, and I don't even tell my son).
If we extrapolated the joke to adulthood it would be something like playing hide something for someone to go crazy looking for it, but not in plan I hide the car keys for a little while, but something more like "I hide the car directly" . If I don't find it too funny that small things hide from me (because I find that there are a thousand funniest jokes), imagine if I hid the car.
Moreover, considering that children do not capture the farce, we could equate this situation with a joke that an adult does not understand: "Is this your wife? Will I take her with me for a little while?" It is likely that the man did not accept and that he even became extremely angry and it is also likely that the same woman did not accept and was equally angry (I would almost be more afraid of the woman than the man).
So, if we don't usually like this kind of jokes, why do we use them to get closer to children? I have fallen to the conclusion (and speaking with other people we have commented the same), which are motivated by a terrible lack of communication tools to approach children. People try to be funny, to gain the acceptance of the child by showing him that he can harm him if he wants to ("I take your brother"), to later show his kindest and closest face, that of "calm, which did not take me to your brother, that's a joke. "
But nevertheless, for a joke to be fun, it must be funny for both people and not only for the one who carries it out, so if you are an adult and want to gain the trust or attention of a child, look for other strategies, please. Telling someone that you are going to kidnap one of your loved ones is never a good start.
