A DAD'S LIFE:A quiet child can be both shy and self-contained, writes ADAM BROPHY
I’M MARVELING at a friend’s telly. It’s got to be 600 inches wide – it’s broader than Screen One in the Savoy. Normally I don’t do telly envy, but that might just be because I don’t see many decent tellys. This thing is so big and bright and shiny it’s bringing a tear to my eye.
“What are you watching?” I ask the throng of kids gathered in front of its magnificence.
" Oliver Twist," says the most precocious one. Not one of mine.
“Ah poor Oliver,” I say. “Getting thrown from pillar to post, being forced to do things against his will and having to speak in that ridiculous accent.”
"No, that's a different Oliver," pipes up the young fella. "You're thinking of the musical Oliver. This is the movie Oliver Twistfrom the book Oliver Twistby Charles Dickens. He wrote all the Olivers."
I am seriously impressed. The kid's parents tell me he is Oliver-obsessed at the moment, looking up Dickens on Wikipedia, reading the book and learning off lines from the movies.
I think about my own younger one who’s a year older than this fella and still making me read her picture books at night by beating me on the head with them. I joke that they’ll have to work hard to pay the fees for the special schools he’ll need, but inside I am wondering should I cut my losses with my own and put her to work.
I’m being hard on her. I believe she caresses my head with her books rather than beating it. I believe she’s keeping her light hid well under a bushel, so when the time comes she will dazzle the world with her brightness. Maybe.
She may yet join a religious order such is the vow of silence she implements around anyone outside the immediate family. She’ll happily go to her school friends’ houses, but once there refuses to speak to anyone bar the friend. If food or drink is required she will make requests through the friend, but would require thumbscrews to be attached before addressing anyone else. It’s the same with shopkeepers and waiters and ticket collectors and random strangers making small talk with her. Not a dickie bird.
Everyone assumes she’s shy. She even claims it herself, possibly just to distract attention. It can be a worry at times. People address her and she stares back tight-lipped. We coax her and encourage her and occasionally get wound up because it just looks like she’s being rude. She doesn’t mean to be rude.
She will go home and make cards for people who have done nice things for her, but she will ask us to deliver them. With a glass to the wall you can hear her playing with her friends and she is far from quiet. Alone with her family she is rampant.
So, why the public reticence? I’ve spoken to her school principal about it and she wonders at the need to keep a wall of self-sufficiency around her as if she must insist that she can manage, she needs nothing from you. But everybody needs support.
Kids stress you out. The Oliverkid's parents; I met them briefly and have no idea what their situation is like but I bet they lie in bed occasionally fretting that their little Oliver fan will be okay.
I might be jealous that he’s consuming Tolstoy while mine is refusing to look up from her Gruffalo and interact with anybody, but his folks will be worried about something. They’re our kids, therefore we stress. Sometimes a little, other times a lot.
When my little one stares at the floor as a shopkeeper asks her how school was, I feel sorry for her. I don’t get embarrassed that she may appear surly to the adult, but I do wish it was easier for her to reply, simply because life then would be so much easier for her. She would never have to worry about people addressing her and her parents urging her to respond.
I shift that worry to the side for a moment and admire her strength and resilience. No matter how much pressure is put on this kid to perform she dances to her own little drum.
It may not be to the same rhythm as everyone else’s, but it is hers and she is loyal to it. Whatever she does, whatever she turns her hand to, she will bring that fierce determination.
This is the kind of kid I would like to have beside me in the trenches. This non-pandering, determined, sweet, unique individual is just the type of kid I am delighted to have as my friend.