Tag: Children

  • On the Topic of Age and Perspectives

    When looking through old photographs of my daughter,  I have trouble reconciling that she was that person. I do remember how small her hands were when she was born and how helpless she was at first.

    On the Topic of Age and Perspectives is also available on Medium.

    However,  one look at my child as she rides her scooter through the house takes me out of such nostalgia-filled moments. In see her as-is,  the talkative, bright-eyed and sassy girl that she is today.

    In many ways, this mirrors my own experiences in life. We were all children once and remember key times in our youth. However I tend to view it through my eyes, filtered through a veil of adult experience.

    This might explain why children in novels sometimes seem disconnected from reality.  Unless you have a three-year old wreaking havoc in the house, you may not realise the unrealistic wisdom in their words or their excellent grasp of grammar.

    Not that children that age are incapable of that sort of thing.  There have been some golden nuggets of wisdom that my daughter said that threw me for a loop. Still that is a couple of instances over time, not a consistent affair.

    The same applies when writing the world through a child’s eyes.  When I was roughly my child’s age, I remember spending hours picking hazelnuts from the trees. My parents had a big advantage over me.  However, I could find hazelnuts lower in the tree than they could for the same reasons they could not and that was size.

    I was reminded of that fact when she asked me for my phone. My daughter wanted to take pictures of the squirrels running about and instead opted for a video.

    It astonished me to see how close she was to the ground, how near her feet were and how much bigger the world seemed.  Sure it’s all obvious when one thinks about it and I cannot help but wonder how much harder it gets once our own children have flown the nest.

    One of my memories as a child was going to my grandparents. I remember a huge hill upon which they built a church and the trek that had to be made to ascend this great peak. When I returned decades later for a funeral, the hill was nowhere to be seen!

    Now the church and the house had not moved. What had changed was my height and perspectives in life.  In that one moment I was forced to reconcile memories of youth with current perspectives, but such opportunities can be rare.

    So let your kids be kids, take plenty of pictures and never pass up the opportunity to see the world through their eyes!  Doing so will certainly create more believable children in literature.


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  • The Mind of a Child

    A couple of weeks ago, I was cooking on the balcony when my daughter came out.  Despite the rainy weather, she asked me the jump her, which involves picking her up then launching her into the air several times.

    I told her it was dangerous, considering how the wet cement and we were three stories up.  My child said I was right, though not for  reasons I thought.

    According to her, she would likely fall onto a tree branch located just off the balcony. I would then have difficulty in catching her once she dropped from a branch to get down.  Not once did she consider falling to the ground and get hurt or worse.

    Sometimes we forget the innocence which exists in the mind of a child.

    Parents have life experiences to draw from either be it direct or anecdotal.  News sources often describe scenarios that makes parents cringe and help us form a bias.

    Children on the other hand, rarely have any such background when formulating risk.  This is compounded by the fact parents tend to shield them from certain aspects of reality.

    Hence as a writer, it is important to remember what children say.  Use this as guidance when formulating characters of that age.  Our own memories are likely biased and in some cases distant.

    So when you write about a young character into a situation.  Do not assume they would make the same decisions as us. Chances are they will find a way to surprise you!


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