IT'S A DAD'S LIFE:Making assumptions about our children is fraught with dangers
A FIFTH BIRTHDAY is approaching. I know it’s approaching because the countdown began at around minus 60 days. It’s been relentless since October, as if a moment hasn’t passed without thoughts of the big day crossing the child’s mind. No pressure so. This is her first big one, the first where there’s a class to invite. Fortunately, the class is small, so we can invite the lot without getting involved in personal bank loans.
I get my kids wrong all the time. I make assumptions about their personalities, their likes and dislikes, what freaks them and what they’re into, and I’m normally way off the mark. Take the younger one. She’s very quiet. Quiet like a stealth bomber. Her older sister is noisy. I make the assumption then, having lived with both for a protracted period, that the younger must be less confident than the elder. Taking a quick snapshot from the outside looking in, this is the impression you would get. It’s just not so, and yet I get caught out by appearances all the time.
The younger’s teacher approached me to check on her actual birth date. Has she been talking about it? I inquire. Apparently she has. Each morning I drop her to the door and have to usher her inside, silent, head down.
When we meet kids from her class on the street, she is assaulted with enthusiasm, but she more often than not refuses to reciprocate. I get stressed and anxious, wondering if she is destined for the hermit life.
Not at all. It appears the mute button on this child is me. Once I’m out of the way, the dams don’t quite burst but there is an outward flow. Enough at least for her to have made a couple of decent buddies and an impression on her múinteoir. Enough to have eased a number of my worries if she had felt inclined to tell me.
Poker beckons because she plays everything close to her chest. We have some concerns as to why she doesn’t want to share everything with us – her parents – immediately, but we are coming to terms with her methods. She is highly concerned about being made to look foolish and can become quite irate if misunderstood. She also, having been misunderstood and patronised regularly, has us pegged as uncomprehending buffoons. As a result, when she now offers up any information we go to great lengths to make sure we’ve got it right.
But it’s a new game we play with her, sitting back, waiting for her to come to us and then responding. We can’t shut the other one up, never could, so a waiting game is alien. I get impatient and try to elicit information ahead of time. The barriers come up, back to square one.
Yet watching how she has prepared for this birthday I am struck by the sheer force of personality contained in this little blonde frame. She would never run around screaming, “Woohoo, my big day is coming.” She wouldn’t do that in a fit, but everybody knows the time is on us. Everybody knows what she would like to get, what entertainment is planned and who else will be there. This week she isn’t quite running into school, but there is a hurry to her stride. She is excited and happy and, most of all, confident. In her own way.
Kids never respond exactly the way we expect them to, primarily because we keep expecting them to respond the way we would have. No matter how obvious it is that an independent personality is growing under our roof, we still often make the mistake of presuming that they will address particular landmarks in the same way we did. Or the way we remember addressing them (heroically) in our own revised personal history. One of the beauties of watching your child grow is in becoming aware just how different they are to you.
At the start of the school year I would have had concerns about this party. I would have been worried about her worrying who she should invite, how many should come, how she should behave inviting a crowd of schoolfriends into the house for the first time. These are all echoes of my concerns around socialising. She has her own – some variations on my themes, some quite different.
What I’m looking forward to now is witnessing her deal with this. Enjoying her understated enthusiasm and ability to appreciate being princess for a day. No bells, no whistles, but everything exactly as she planned it.
- abrophy@irishtimes.com