I like a lot that theory that says that one grows up only to become what he was in the beginning. Maybe that’s why I am so interested in children (and generally get on well with them): to me they reveal the whole range of possibilities of human being before centuries of aberration do their work of stain and disorientation.
I also believe that every human being, whether he likes it or not, is a father, due to the way in which children learn. Children just grab anything that’s around: they perceive much more than an adult does, even if many times they do not quite know what to do with all that information.
I recently had a one of these “fatherhood” moments. Learning has usually two sides, and it got me thinking; the funny thing is that this time I’m not really sure about what the teaching was about.
It happened during a video conference with some relatives. It wasn’t a face-to-face, but a family-to-family video conference, with plenty of members from the Madrid and Barcelona units all speaking at the same time. In the middle of that kind of jolly chaos that only a Spanish family is capable to generate (an Italian one too, maybe), my seven-year old nephew came in from a lateral in a serious mood, carrying an album of monsters with him. “Hey Nacho”, he said, “you look like this one”.
He pointed to a sort of magenta alien with three shark fins on its back, and it was easy to see that for him it had been a tough, long meditated decision.
O.K., I said, so I looked liked the magenta alien. Under such circumstances, it seemed only natural to get more information about the creature. So I asked my nephew: “does it belong to the good guys or the evil ones?”
Surprise. My nephew did not answer. He got pale instead. He had no words. Silently, thoughtfully, he left the visual area as chaos rose again (the little one’s declarations always receive more attention).
The conversation went on for some minutes, and the remarkable thing is that then my nephew came back, with that same album and that same air of fatal determination, and he announced: “hey Nacho, you look like this one”. He was pointing to a different monster!
To tell the truth, I don’t remember which creature he chose this time (being a magenta alien was alright with me). But I ‘d give anything to know the astonishing thought processes that ran between the first and the second choice. What did my nephew find so shocking about my question? An insight into the world of abstract concepts? A useful instrument of measurement (good/evil)? The rudimentary acknowledgement of a thing called ethics?
It is just too bad that we’ll never know. But the moment reinforced my belief in spontaneous fatherhood. And, furthermore, something that other animal species know very well: games are essential for learning. What would have been the experience for my nephew if I had refused to play, if I had limited myself to say “oh yeah, very nice, now let me discuss my important adult issues”?
Play with your children, goddamit… They’ll get a lot from it. Not to mention you.
Any experience of the kind? What did you learn? Am I the only one here fascinated by the working of children’s mind?
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