I'm All Growed Up
05-02-2021
The other day I was gazing idly out of my front window when a young family walked by - mum, dad and a little girl of around two. She was holding onto her mother’s hand and happily chattering away to her as they walked down the street. It hit me suddenly and strongly: this little girl has a total disregard for the fact that she’s a child.
I mean sure, she understands at a deep and empirical level that in adult society her status is lower and, obviously, her size smaller. But not in the way she conducts herself, in how she expects her opinions to be not only heard but listened to. It was easy to observe her seeing herself as of equal importance to anyone else within the family.
This charming sense of self-importance is naive, but acknowledging it is essential to comprehending how little ones think of themselves in the wider world. It can be amusing to us as we watch our children behave as if they are grown-ups. We laugh as they make mistakes trying to present themselves as on a par with our level of experience and conversational mores. But for them, it’s deadly serious.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be entertained by their efforts, or that we should always bend to their desires, I do however think we can be sensitive to how much young children want to be a part of our world - and on an equal footing.
Whilst we appreciate the reality of the situation more firmly than they are able, we can still allow them to hang onto some pride and also their dreams.
It may seem that this is an obvious point, and I realise that in the great scheme of things, it’s something we’re all aware of, but in familiarity we can get used to laughing off such behaviour and forget the import of our reactions on the vulnerable psyches of our children. So when you can, take a breath before you laugh aloud. As W.B. Yeats says, “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
Being The Bigger Man
07-01-2021
Not everyone has been disappointed about being unable to have the family over for Xmas. As part of a get together on Zoom over the festive season, where I knew only a few of the attendees, one woman was sounding-off about how thrilled she was to be able to avoid her in-laws this year.
Growing Humans
30-11-2020
We all have our pet fears, but whatever the specifics, the root is usually the fear of having to experience certain feelings. This often has its origins in childhood. We all want to avoid the feelings that were overwhelming to us as children.
You Can't Be It If You Don't Know It Exists
05-11-2020
I was recently reminded of ‘The Liver Birds’ the 1970s sitcom starting Nerys Hughes and Polly James (check) as a couple of flat sharing girls carving out their own lives in Liverpool. I was around six when it first came out. I remember sitting at the top of our stairs with a pal from school ‘playing’ the girls. It was my life’s ambition to move to a city and share a place with a girlfriend. It’s commonplace now, but at the time such an arrangement was anything but. The Liver Birds were so different from any other portrayal of women on television at the time. They were my heroines, showing me that I didn’t necessarily need to marry a man to get out of the familial home and on with my life. I loved them.
The Sense of Possibility
02-07-2020
We can’t achieve anything that we can’t imagine ourselves doing. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget how potent this truism is when it comes to our children. How our children think about themselves, how they imagine they are is the most powerful influence on how they think about their own future.
