My Sister bought my one year old nephew round to the house this afternoon. This was the first time I'd seen him since Christmas. I couldn’t help but notice how quickly he's developing a personality beyond the three default settings of benign sleepiness, simplistic joy and blart-face. He is now starting to get a foothold on some basic interactional skills.
Even at this primitive stage 12 month stage, there seems to be a willful independence forming, highlighted through his staunch indifference to adult affections. He also seemed to have developed interactional skills, if you can count blowing a big raspberry as an interactional skill. As he indulged this new pastime, he seemed to be taking great amusement from the wet fountain of spittle which accompanied his actions. Not to be outdone (after all, I was the person nearest to his age in the room and so am his most natural competitor) I took up the challenge of engaged him in a full-on raspberry blowing contest. I was able to show more self-control than my competitor and mine were of the dry variety, but even so, having had 30 years more practice I was able to make them a lot louder than his feeble-tongued effort. Nevertheless this only inspired the infant to try blowing one back even harder, but the tiny fool was no match for me. I responded with another raspberry, just to rub salt into his wounded willful pride. His raspberries became progressively fiercer, but no matter how much he tried, he simply couldn’t compete. And as I watched his little struggle, through his usually angelic face, he shot me a sudden aggressive, chilling glance. For that one fleeting moment it felt like I had been privy to a peek into his little heart of darkness. This will no doubt be the same look he’ll appropriate in fifteen years time when he stabs some member of a rival gang to death in cold blood on the rough streets of Willenhall. You know what kids are like nowadays, spending all their leisure time engaged in knife-related hi-jinx.
Seriously though, as he plodded round the room, half stumbling towards his next potential domestic disaster (trying to squeeze the cat’s tail, pushing at the telly in an attempt to flip it over, messing with the washing machine, trying to devour a coaster – you know - the normal kind of stuff) I felt truly exhausted by worry just from watching him. And he was only in my company for an hour or so. God knows what it must be like to have this kind of responsibility twenty four seven. I might be a victorious achiever when it comes to raspberry-blowing battles with infants, but I’m certainly not sure how adept I’d be when it comes to child-rearing. I imagine I’d be so continually tormented by the next possible disaster that could befall the little creature; I’d literally drive myself into some sort of morbid breakdown. I’d be so over-protective, my life would become a hellish existence where I lived as little more than constant surveillance camera.
At one point in the afternoon, there was a heart-stopping moment when the child stumbled, nearly colliding face first into a small coffee table. Luckily, no harm was done, but despite not even being his parent, I was instantly struck by a sudden sense of guilt and responsibility for this near-miss; merely on the basis that I happened to be the one sitting nearest to him at the time (and if I’m honest, it was my oafish foot he had tripped over in the first place).
I don’t think I’ll ever be up to having kids. I’m just not made of the right stuff. You may think there is little harm in being a bit overly-concerned for a child’s welfare. But youngsters probably need to be allowed to take tumbles and get hurt, or take ill-judged risks every now and again. Otherwise, how are they to learn behavioral boundaries? The difference between right and wrong? The difference between danger and safety? If Liam were mine, at what point would I be able to set him free, to learn these necessary lessons for himself? It’d take least sixteen years, I reckon.
I suppose eventually he’ll just have learn via the judicial system, after going down for stabbing that bloke to death.
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