Children may not be aware that their parents are ill, but they will know how to get away with stuff.
Monday, February 1, 2010
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- Brigid
- 'armpit of nowhere', North Dakota, United States
- I'm Brigid, not my birth-name, but the one I chose for Confirmation. It's a Catholic thing. Want to learn more about how I grew up? Check out my semi-autobiographical webcomic, Mary Quite Contrary. The closest I've come to earning a living as a writer is one summer I worked as a feature columnist for a small-town newspaper. I've been telling and writing stories my whole life, though, and, hey, it's something I enjoy. Whether I manage to make a buck at it isn't that important to me.
10 comments:
Sort of like -- even though they may not understand the intricacies of adult relationships -- a child of no more than three years possesses an uncanny knack for playing both ends against the middle, where doing so will aid in achieving their own ends.
Even more curiously, no one has to school them in this. They seem to be born with the knowledge...
@Dan: I wonder, is it a human thing, or do all animals of sufficient intelligence have that quality?
Or maybe the child spent their entire life observing the intricacies of that adult relationship and have seen how various behaviors influence different adults and thus learned their behaviors rather than having it be instinctive.
Rob H.
@ Brigid: I suppose that's a possibility, but it seems that most species with even a modicum of intelligence (bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and dolphins, etc.) also seem to limit themselves to one child at a time; any additional offspring come along only once the elder sibling has achieved sexual or social independence. Only humans beings seem to willingly inflict multiple children on themselves simultaneously!
@ Robert: That, too...
@Dan: Maybe because it take so darn long for humans to reach sexual maturity. And even longer for them to be safe to inflict on the outside world without supervision.
And even longer for them to be safe to inflict on the outside world without supervision.
I've heard rumors that happens eventually... how long does it take?
@ Brigid: And even longer to achieve social maturity. Sometimes I can't help but shudder to think that we allow some people to vote, let alone drink, drive (one hopes not at the same time!) and/or carry firearms by the time they hit twenty-one years. Just because a person is chronologically legal doesn't mean that they're emotionally capable of living up to the responsibility!
Different people certainly mature at different rates. I suppose some standardization is required, though.
What gets me is that we allow teenagers to take a couple tons, plus, of steel and explosives at speeds most creatures couldn't hope to achieve. And yet they have to wait until their 21 (in the USA, at least) to drink alcohol.
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Brim over I agree but I about the collection should secure more info then it has.
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