Through the eyes of babes

It’s amazing how a short experience can suddenly change the way you feel about something. I’ve never been a maternal person, just ask any of my friends, I normally cringe and want to run in the other direction at the mere mention of children. How I ever worked in a nursery school I will never know!

Yet spending a few days with my two-year-old niece has been an eye opening experience. To see the world through the eyes of a child is in itself quite liberating, as you wonder at what point did we become aware of all the bad in the world, becoming cynics and sceptics and not looking at our surroundings with awe and fascination.

For a little girl of two D is quite the chatterbox and she’s at that stage where ‘Why?’ is asked about everything. It’s quite amusing the tall tales you have to come up with to answer the ‘Why’s?’ until you get to the point where ‘Because it just is’ or ‘I said so’ are obligatory answers because you have none yourself. She made me us all laugh at dinner – she pretty much will eat anything – when she decided that she didn’t like green beans, and we told her ‘But they’re good for you!’ and her reply was simple ‘No, they’re NOT good for ME!’ Now for someone so young to have such an articulate grasp of language is pretty astounding.

I am of course Aunty Em, - flash backs from the Wizard of Oz aplenty J Aunty Em this, Aunty Em that, why, why, why. Her favourite thing is swimming over to me in the pool with her little arm bands on and then clinging to me whilst she makes me swim lengths, great exercise, but not necessarily when you’re being latched onto around the neck! She loves swimming and jumping around on the trampoline with her mum and dad.

The one thing that you have to be careful of at this age, when a child is learning the bulk of their vocabulary, is what you say in front of them. They’re like parrots and will pick up and mimic anything you say. D’s dad, my brother, seems to be the worst culprit, when the little one dropped something on the floor she came out with, ‘What a bummer!’ – oh dear! And of course the more you ask her not to say it, the more she does ‘What a bummer, what a bummer!’. She takes great pleasure in calling my brother a ‘Butt-weed!’ – I really don’t want to know the context that came out in.

It really is a pleasure to watch this little person discover the world around her, although there are some things that I’d really rather not get involved in, such as when she said ‘Aunty Em take me to the toilet?’ – everyone fell about laughing at the look of sheer terror on my face!

But watching children grow is the most amazing thing, it’s just a shame that they don’t all stay sweet and innocent. However, it must be the most incredible experience and I can only hope that we should all be so lucky.