Thursday, September 12, 2013

Thinking Cap




I get a strange feeling the moment I realize my kid can think. It's the way I imagine one would feel if a house cat walked up and asked, in plain English, if it could please have a dish of tuna. Strange, and a little awkward because, after all, up until that moment you have been treating it as though it couldn't understand a single thing you said or did.


"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realize…"

"Don't worry. Perfectly understandable. Now, about that tuna…"


This shouldn't be a surprise, of course. Human babies are human beings and naturally they learn to think on their own, but that first moment of realization is still unsettling. For such a long time they seem to do nothing at all. They're just flailing little proto-blobs capable of nothing more than crying, sleeping and eating.


And that is pretty much how I thought of Sam up until the moment, a few mornings ago,  when he crawled up and, with a plaintive expression, held out to me his blue bicycle helmet. I just stood there for a moment and he started to whine, his tone getting increasingly desperate as he extended the helmet up to me. I knelt down and put it on his head.


He stopped whining immediately and I realized at that moment, as he happily patted his helmet, that I wasn't dealing with the same Sammy anymore. He doesn't just have needs, he has preferences. He has goals. He has a desire to communicate. That weird feeling set in.


I should point out that Sammy doesn't speak a single word. He makes vocalizations that could be loosely interpreted as mommy or daddy or apple, but not in any context that makes sense. This non-verbal condition has served handily to mask, from me, the possibility that there may be a thinking being in there; forming impressions, making judgements, struggling to get out.


So now Sammy isn't such a baby anymore. He's a little kid who likes to wear his blue helmet. I'm very happy to oblige him.

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