"I want it!" My 2½-year-old son wailed again and again. He had worked himself up into a tantrum, and was unable to stop.
His mum and I had just returned from two weeks overseas, and this was his third "I want it" explosion in less than 24 hours. I was not impressed with this new behavioural trait. This particular episode was triggered by an ice cream vendor who, with a strategy that would make Sun Tzu proud, parked his van where every family must pass on their way to buy lunch. As soon as my son saw the vendor, he started.
"I want it!" My perfectly reasonable suggestion that we wait until after lunch was rebuffed. Communication deteriorated to those three words, with the occasional variation such as "I want ice cream!"
While I waited for him to wind down to the point where a distraction might be effective, I stared out over a nearly deserted Stanley Bay. I had plenty of time (not quiet time, mind you) to wonder where had this come from.
The answer was obvious. His grandparents, who looked after him for two weeks, did things differently. But much more disturbing questions entered my head, the first being: "Is my son being raised the way I think he should be?" We all have ideas about how we want our children raised. Values we would like instilled, skills we'd like them to acquire, ways we want them to act, things we want them to do, to learn, and say (or more accurately, not say).
That others may not share the same ideas can cause problems. One of the most amazing things, to me, about children is their ability to learn. They learn from everything around them. Everything we see, hear, and feel makes a much bigger impression on my son than, sadly, it does on me these days.
Everyone he encounters in his life makes an impression on him to some extent. His parents, grandparents, our helper, our relatives, our friends, his friends, his teachers, the shopkeeper, the taxi driver, and the woman in the street who just has to stop and talk to him. He learns things from them all, some of which I'm not happy about.