Mundane Turbulence

More about babies.

I had a lovely lunch yesterday with my dear friend and former roomie, Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee…I know, I know — those crazy celts!), who has actually been making a living for the past good while as a babysitter. She’s going to be sitting regularly for baby twins soon, which of course got my thinking again…about the babes.

Specifically, about what kind of father I think I might become. I’m often reminded of a scene from The Royal Tenenbaums, in which Royal, referring to children, asserts that “you gotta brew some recklessness into them.” I couldn’t agree more.

I have three young siblings: one from my mother’s second marriage — my brother Sterling — who is 11; and two from my father’s second marriage — my brother Liam and sister Kiera — who both just turned 8. As often as is appropriate, I do my best to encourage all of them to bend the rules (or find creative ways to follow them), to take interest in things outside of the mainstream, and to challenge their own default notions on various topics. Basically, I’ve been doing my best to foster in them at least a bit of mischievousness.

And I think that this is essential…I think that children should be taught to question everything! Clearly the authority of a parent should be absolute (assuming that the parent is generally rational and entirely loving), but within that framework there should be leeway for varying routes toward obeying that authority. I would love, for instance, to tell my hypothetical child to get the dishes done, rather than to do the dishes, and find that my kid had bartered to get someone else to do them, or figured out that using less dishes in general decreases the amount of time it takes to wash them, and thus increases his or her free time availability. Basically, I’d want to emphasize that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Naturally, I’d have various suggestions for how to subvert the chore system, and hopefully this type of thought would then translate into adult life, turning the kid into a creative and curious thinker. I’m of course over-simplifying, but the point is this: I’m thinking that recklessness, subversion, and creativity are somehow linked. And beyond that, I think that these traits, at healthy levels (not that I really know what that means), are among the qualities of good people. And I want to make great people.