Childhood

After a year or so in which possibly one or both parents will contemplate, if not commit, suicide, the toddler settles into childhood. The child will quickly learn the three important words with which to maintain selfish control over the environment: ‘mine,’ want,’ and ‘now.’ These three words are all the young child requires for survival, because all parents will capitulate in the end.

The child now begins to work out how the world operates. Demands become more eloquent and an element of self-preservation begins to creep into adventures, though this does not prevent them hurting themselves. They may even, when caught off guard, respond to a parent’s plea.

Differences between boys and girls start to become apparent. Girls want to nurture, boys want to destroy. Parents strive for balance and may give a girl an Action Man™ figure (who will be mothered and put to bed) or a train set (“Look, daddy, the engine is the mom and the carriages are the babies”). Boys may be given a doll and will proceed to throw it down the stairs, use it as a weapon and then see how long it will take to rip its head off.

By the time the child is ready for school the rules have been set. The child has come reluctantly to understand that he or she is not the centre of the universe, mom and dad are not personal servants and that they can’t always have what they want. This is extremely traumatic and incredibly unfair. Now, not only are parents exerting their authority, but teachers arrive on the scene; and they are even more unlikely to take shit from a kid. The child must now adjust to years of subservience.

Most kids will take the line of least resistance and plot revenge for their teenage years, but some will rebel, even at this early age. There will be anti-social behaviour, running away, experimentation with drugs and flirtation with crime. And that’s just the parents. A last resort is to take the child to a child psychologist. This is guaranteed to really screw them up.

Eventually, even the most recalcitrant child will find a spot in the system (school or prison) and parents will breathe a sigh of relief. Learning to read and write, children now have to adjust to serious social problems, like how to make and keep friends. They find that looking after number one involves co-operation with others, so that he or she can survive the minefields of feuds, shifting alliances and fickleness common to the early school years. The more manipulative children will find a way to remain totally selfish and maintain tradition.

At this point, boys and girls formally separate for a few years and whenever one group refers to the other sex, it is usually to the accompaniment of throwing up gestures. Separation of the sexes is now widespread, particularly in co-educational schools.

The next shock to the child’s system is homework. Because of outside school activities like tennis, gym, ballet, football, piano, drama, math coaching and public speaking, playing time has been severely reduced. Now it is gone completely. The only unstructured time remaining for the child is when he or she is asleep, usually within ten minutes of arriving home. And as this activity is accompanied by nightmares, bed wetting and insomnia, these are very trying years.

For the next few years, the child tends to toe the line and maintain the status quo. There is little time between school, activities and chores, so free thinking or intellectual exploration is rarely practised. And holidays are filled with camps to ensure they spend as little time as possible thinking for themselves. The child becomes a small zombie; a condition which lasts until high school.