Hiding from the Eye of Doom

In any number of science fiction or action films, there will be a fraught sequence in which the hero is confronted by the preternaturally alert, ever-swivelling gaze of an enemy sentry or surveillance camera. He must duck, hide and think up distractions, since alarm klaxons and certain doom will follow if the "enemy eye" catches the merest glimpse of him.

It sometimes seems to us that we are living out this drama on a daily basis. Sonny may have wriggled and crawled his way into his ninth month of babydom, but he's certainly not showing any signs of becoming more able to function on his own. On the contrary: He now seems to insist on the conspicuous attention of at least one adult at all times. If left to sift through his generous sprinkling of toys, he'll almost certainly ignore them all in favour of loud wailing. The chance of this happening increases to 100 per cent should he spot either his mother or his father in the immediate vicinity, doing anything other than paying court upon him.

What this situation has brought about is a chilling cat-and-mouse game. As we wheel him about on Mac the stroller, for instance, we make sure we keep out of Sonny's line of vision, even if he were to suddenly look about with his feral acuteness. If at home in our bedroom, with Sonny peeking about in his cot at the foot of our bed, we scrunch up our bodies so that he won't spot us when his gaze burns its way in our direction. When we are trying to gobble down some food, we try to position the little fella in his rocker so that a convenient settee blocks us from view.

The reader may feel there is something rather odd about parents trying to conceal themselves from their offspring (chances are said reader isn't a parent himself, but that's quite all right, quite all right, you'll get your... that is, you're entitled to your opinion). We should clarify that we are normally quite willing to expose ourselves to his attentions, and have been known to spend many minutes drawing his chuckles and keeping him more or less clean. But if you think about it, there's a broader case to be made for absenting ourselves on occasion.

For instance, we wouldn't want Sonny to become totally bored with us, as might happen if we were to be perpetually hovering at the edge of vision. At the same time, we want to ensure that he is able to interact cheerfully with as many adults and children as possible, which might be tricky if we were to monopolise his time. It may even be helpful to the cultivation of good child discipline to have him undergo short bouts of stress and deprivation, so that he is better disposed to respond to our orders and instructions over time.

Plus, perhaps he actually takes Spot-your-Parent to be a splendid game that is a highlight of his days. Might as well make a virtue out of necessity, wouldn't you say?

Why do we care how we look?

"Hullo, it's me again, Sonny.

"The other day, my grandmother trimmed my hair so I would look more "presentable". It was all bound up in a concept that is hard for me to understand: That how I appear is terribly important.

"If you ask me (and nobody ever does), if I were concerned about somebody's well-being, then it is that person's health, good humour, contentment and all that sort of thing that would engage my attention. I would inspect him carefully the way the nurse gives me the once-over at the polyclinic, but in this case I'd try to see if he's laughing freely, moving without discomfort and not expressing any deep worries or frustrations. Would I be worried that he didn't look as natty as a TV presenter or as well turned-out as a model? I don't think so.

"The thing is, adults would probably tell me about what they call "societal expectations". This seems to mean that because Person A, Person B and so on expect Person Z to behave in a certain way or dress in a certain manner (or cut his hair in a certain style), Person Z is more or less obligated to do so. If he does not, he is somehow deviant or 'not quite there'. There does not seem to be any need for further reasons to be given for why such attire, conduct or hairstyle is independently a good idea at all.

"I have to say (but nobody much cares what I say), such a state of affairs is pretty potty. I can tell that my parents have already begun their campaign to keep me looking the way "I should look" - all combed and outfitted and patted-down. Then, in a few years, they will probably expect me to maintain that sort of appearance on my own - simply because that is the way I would have been "brought up". If what adults call "science" proceeded in this circular manner, we'd surely never have gotten past inventing the wheel.

"Of course, you might point out to me that fashion and hairstyles do change with the seasons. But that's neither here nor there. Really, it makes the whole business even more frightening: First, a certain critical mass of people think that a certain look is "in", so loads of other people follow suit... then, the first lot of people change their minds - for no good reason, mind you - so the followers migrate their appearances accordingly.

"What's going on? Why should it matter that my appearance is "different", if my intentions and my conduct is above reproach? You would probably tell me that I "will understand when I grow up".

"The thought that I might come to accept this sort of mind control leaves me almost in tears!"

Learning to laugh

We've mentioned before that Sonny can be a cheery fellow, dispensing smiles liberally when the mood is upon him (and as long as nobody is trying to take a photograph; click here for more on his adversarial relationship with cameras).

Recently, however, he's progressed to the next level of humourdom: He's begun to giggle. Not only that, he's even learned to giggle in response to someone giggling. Just the other day, he and Pa had a few good minutes mutually sparking chuckles. Of course, it quickly became a pretty empty exercise: There wasn't really anything funny for us to be giggling at. Still, it was a pretty good simulation of a great leap on the part of the little fella: The ability to first apprehend a specific situation, then discern in it something specifically amusing about it.

Anyway, the mildly puzzling episode set us thinking about whether Sonny could actually have been practising to laugh. Now, we haven't boned up on any deep sociological studies regarding this, but the whole concept seems odd, somehow: One can practise to stand or walk (the little fella is hard at work on the former), even to talk. But if this is a case of a baby simply mimicking what his parents or other adults are doing, then his giggling sounds are of no more consequence than his shaking a rattle because of the odd sound it makes or licking a piano pedal on account of the cool sensation on the tongue.

Suppose, however, there's something about laughing that is hard-wired into the human psyche, so that - once we stumble upon some of the specific neurological and thought-muscle subroutines that trigger a chuckle - it makes us feel good. We want to laugh some more, and so we start off simply making the relevant sounds, but pretty quickly adapt to the thoughts and activities that best spark them.

We're not trying to overthink all this. After all, spontaneity is a key ingredient to a really good chuckle. But it's nice to know that Sonny could be acquiring another of the truly human traits that make us who we are... even if at the moment, he hasn't a clue about what he's actually doing.

High chair, high jinks

Mum and Pa clambered all over the floor, aligning bits of wood and laboriously inserting screws and dials.

No, we weren't building some sort of escape-from-the-child raft; they're stuck with Sonny, for all his infuriating quirks. Rather, they were setting up for another one of those 'conventional milestones' that pepper these ramblings (see, inter alia, 'Milestones, not millstones' and 'The great eruption'). In this case, it was Sonny's First Time in A High Chair. Said seat (a discounted number from a department store, with assembly instructions squeezed into one sheet of double-sided paper) took the little fella's parents half a day to put together.

So, naturally, when we popped Sonny in, he nearly slid right out, like - to sanitise a famous comment by World War II general George Patton - 'food through a goose'. He was a tad too small to safely occupy the space. But that wasn't going to stop the party. No sirree.

Mum hauled up a cloth mat provided by Sonny's aunt and slid it in to pad things up. The gap was reduced, and then it was once more into the breach for Sonny. This time, he stayed put - for all the good it did us. After a few minutes, he began to subtly hint at his disapproval (though the neighbours might have suspected extensive chicken-slaughtering activities). When Mum tried to feed Sonny with the little fella ensconced in his new seat - since it was the idea of anchoring these feeding sessions that had sparked our assembly of the chair - he stoutly refused to play along.

We're still trying. But perhaps we were just a little too quick off the mark, and that Sonny simply needs a few more weeks to reach an optimal height or size for high-chair dining. Parents are apt to hope that their children reach their "targets", whatever these might be, with all possible speed when, sometimes, they just aren't ready. Apply too much pressure and a backlash could develop, and we're talking here not of anything as innocuous as feeding patterns as of educational achievements and the like.

In any case, it's not as though we're ever going to run out of new targets emerging even as the original ones are satisfied. We need to remind ourselves to just relax, lean back - in any sort of chair - and enjoy the parental ride.

False alarm as first-word drama begins

The grand occasion dawned dramatically - and then clouded over double-quick over its actual significance. One minute, Sonny was playing happily with his parents and grandmother. Just another day at the office. Then, suddenly, he began babbling, 'Papa, papa'.

Was this Sonny's first word? As absolutely nobody will remember, this blog had kicked off with a post in which the question of what the little fella's initial recognisable utterance might be received some prominence (click here to read). Now there he was, more than a week short of clearing eight full months, making a sound that seemed to settle the matter. But Mum, none too pleased that Sonny hadn't burbled, 'Mama, mama' - and convinced that some cosmic injustice was being perpetrated (given that she has spent far more time tending to our sprightly shoot) - quickly yanked out the referee's handbook. Well, she sort of made it up as she went along, but never mind that.

"He doesn't know what he's saying," she announced, after Sonny started 'Papa'-ing enthusiastically while feasting on a soft toy. "Everything is 'Papa' to him, so it doesn't count". True enough, Sonny has since been observed 'Papa'-ing into thin air. He's also still firing off long strings of nonsense-sounds, in the midst of which the occasional 'Papa' might be discerned: This suggests that his tongue and jaw just naturally form the ejaculation with no attaching of sense to it.

Ultimately, of course, it isn't really important what the little fella's first word is, or when it is that he utters it, so long as he goes on to acquire a decent vocabulary and the means to deploy it (merely parroting strings of real words would be utterly worthless). One swallow does not a summer make, and one word is but a peeping-through, rather a striding through, of the door to comprehension and communication. But we humans place a significant premium on 'first's, whether it's the winner of an athletic contest (and forget the second-place finisher even if he's only half-a-nose behind) or official discoverer of an unknown species of bird. You might even say it's programmed into us by society.

Still, the probable false alarm has given Mum and Pa added incentive to attend more closely to the little fella's brook-like flow of sounds. Since it could be months and months before an irrefutable 'First Word' instance finally emerges, a serious case of parental weariness can be confidently be predicted.

Wonder who will be the first to howl in frustration?