My daughter has been at nursery since she was about 7 months old. I’m not even sure she was crawling when she started in the ‘Baby Room’ and leaving her there for whole days was harder for me than it ever was for her. She had been passed around to all the family since birth so thankfully was never a clingy child and daily separation was a walk in the park.
In time, as other smaller babies arrived, she became one of the older children in her room and as she began to walk she was more able to show her own will and independence. If she wanted to go from where she was sitting to the other side of the room to get whatever book or toy took her fancy she was bloomin’ well going to, so there!
One evening I arrived at the nursery to collect her and got the usual update from one of the girls. She’d eaten everything ‘well’ as they put it, and produced some artistic masterpiece from paint and glitter that I would have to take home and attach to the last remaining part of the fridge to have escaped adornment with her work. But there was also something else to report. One of the smaller babies had been crying in their bouncy chair so my daughter, who was not yet 18 months old herself, had crossed the room, given the crying child a gentle bounce in its chair, kissed its forehead and popped a dummy in its mouth.
Wow. How wonderful I thought this was! My child, not much more than a baby herself, had shown a part of her personality that we’d never known was there. Yes, she’d always been expressive and kept us entertained. She never really gave us any problems, she had always slept well and managed to produce teeth without any drama, but this was the first time any sense of who she was and might turn out to be had been observable. She seemed to possess a soft, caring side which at this age I am happy enough to state had probably not been taught to her by us or could be possible to teach. Of course children learn in many ways, through play and observing the behaviour of those around them. Our household, whilst not without many flaws, is a happy one and her influences would have been solid and cheerful. But it can also be quite manic, noisy and bustling (especially at family gatherings), so calm, collected caring traits were not something I would have expected her to have seen in abundance.
Before she was born I had naively assumed that I would forever have a sense that I had ‘made’ her and therefore ‘owned’ her so to speak. I foresaw arguments between us that would feature me shouting that she must do as I said because her father and I had created her. Nonsense, of course. From the moment she arrived she was a distinctive person and almost a stranger rather than an entity crafted by me and consequently known wholly by me. I had not enjoyed the phenomenon of an instant bond with her which might have been the result of a slightly difficult labour/c-section and subsequent inability to move or do anything for her for the first few days. It might just have been down to my personality too. I will never know for sure.
As it turns out I’m not unhappy about our start in the mother and daughter relationship world as our bond has grown less out of need and more out of pleasure. I agonised at the time that I wasn’t feeling like I had been led to expect I would when she was tiny, but I don’t love her now because I feel I should, but rather because of the fabulous little person she is; her wit, her brains and of course her compassion.
As she continues to grow up (she’s three and a half now) these insights into her personality continue. She can change the words to familiar songs to be funny, she puts on accents, imitates her friends and gives them clever nick-names. She’s also incredibly crafty and turns on the charm to get something she wants, often prefacing requests with ‘You’re sooooo handsome, Daddy!” Only yesterday she adopted what in sales training would be referred to as an 'alternative close' when I refused her request for any more food.
“Mummy, you have a choice. You can choose what I have to eat, a ham sandwich or some crackers.”
Pretty smart stuff.
We’d like another child at some stage and thoughts naturally turn to what he or she would be like. As my husband put it, you assume that your child represents your ‘recipe’ for making children, but how many people do you know who produce a series of identical siblings?
Whatever the result next time I hope my daughter will show the same compassion to her brother or sister as those babies received when they cried. If she doesn’t then I fear we’ll be looking at a distinctly less convivial household in a few years time.
Jec
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