Rory Fitzgerald
Monkey see, monkey do. Small children are shaped, more than anything, by example.
As life underwent a metamorphosis with the arrival of children, many old habits and hobbies had to go by the wayside. Playing guitar was of the few things that survived into this chaotic new epoch. I found I could continue to play, even with mewling babies and toddlers milling around. It also had a beneficial calming effect on the mites. As a result, the kids regard it as the most normal thing in the world to play music and sing randomly during the day.
Even our toddler has a ukulele she ‘plays’. She is prone to giving impromptu performances of her own original material, songs written entirely in her own particular language. The older ones sing in choirs and think nothing of giving solo performances in front of a couple of hundred people – something I’d be terrified to do! Had they grown up in a different household, they might think singing was something strange, only done on television or radio.
Kids sense what truly excites us and find themselves carried along by our enthusiasms. I let the kids stay up late the other night to watch the first Falcon heavy rocket launch live. They were in awe as the most powerful rocket in the world flew into space, and delivered its payload, before the side rockets flew back to earth and performed a synchronised landing in Florida. It was like watching science fiction.
Happy hours
The kids have spent many happy hours with me outside in the dark watching meteor showers, glimpsing the planets, or looking at the craters of the moon through my telescope.
I probably got my enthusiasm for space from my own father. One of my earliest memories is watching the first shuttle launch. Enthusiasms can be intergenerational, passed on like genes. The word enthusiasm, interestingly, derives from the Greek entheos, meaning ‘possessed by God, inspired’.
I never much cared for biology as a child, but fortunately the enthusiasm of their doctor mother for the subject means the kids find the human body fascinating. They’ve had kids’ stethoscopes (which really work) from an early age. They’ve taken an interest for nature from both of us. The other day, my eldest daughter and I collected various leaves and plants from the garden to examine under her microscope. I experienced afresh the awe of seeing the intricate hidden patterns of a fern, and the otherworldly sculptural beauty of a flower’s stamen, as revealed by microscope.
The downside of ‘monkey see, monkey do’ is of course that our kids are also around when we’re not at our best: when we are cranky in the morning, or exasperated in traffic – when we’re feeling far from inspired.
The presence of these little sponges means that we parents need to be mindful of our own failings, so that we don’t pass them on. If we are to disagree, we must try to disagree well – or later, when the kids are in bed!
For perhaps the first – and most important – thing kids learn from us is how to treat other people.
Yet it’s not all a one-way street. The kids drag their parents along into their own enthusiasms. Thanks to my son’s fanatical devotion to Liverpool FC, I’ve rekindled an interest that had lapsed in about 1986. Even as we help them grow, they help us regress to feel, at least vicariously, a facsimile of the fresh feelings of youth.