Open Writing

When I was a little girl parents used to say ‘ask your father’ or ‘ask your mother’ when they didn’t know the answer to a question. Perhaps they still say it. The hope back then was that the other parent might know or at least take the brunt of a child’s disappointment if they didn’t. When it was my turn to be the authority on all things children I realised that if my parents had only got together and decided on a plan of action it would have been much easier on them when I reached my teens.

Because children are used to being told when to sleep, what to eat and how to behave, their logical conclusion is that the adults in their life know everything there is to know. It’s hard to give that up, especially if you’ve heard your child tell a friend that mummy is clever. And the questions are quite easy at first: ‘where do babies come from, why is the sky blue, what happens if I mix blue and red’? It’s tempting to glow in the admiring light of your children eyes as you snap out the answers. But don’t do it, because when they are old enough to realise that we have fooled them, it’s too late for us to change tack. We have to wear their scorn and as the saying goes, or should go, there’s nothing a parent dreads more than a teenager who scorns. Quicker than you can say rampaging hormones, their peers have taken our place and we have become hopelessly dated and uninformed.

When my granddaughters, Dezzy and Rachel want to know something that I don’t have the answer to, I admit it. I say that I will try and find out, and I do. It’s much better for both of us that they get to see me as a fallible adult. My hope is to ease them into the human condition and hope that when they hit their teens they will be kind to their old gran.

Dezzy and Rachel’s dad deals with logistics and maths, and I help out with English and English related issues. Each adult in my granddaughters’ lives has a specialty the children can tap into. Anything in between gets the standard answer, ‘I don’t know, but I will find out for you.’ You do have to share some of the glory with teachers but that’s okay because teachers come and go, whereas parents and grandparents are a constant in their child’s life. That’s why it’s their job to get it right.

My grown up children still occasionally ask me what a word means. They once believed that I could spell any word and that I knew what each one meant. I suspect that they still do, which makes it awkward when I am questioned without notice. I found their confidence in me touching and for a while, I admit it, couldn’t help going along with it, but when I saw where it was all heading I taught my boys how to use the dictionary and a thesaurus.

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