This story originally appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on June 8, 2006.
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word/ Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird/ And if that mockingbird doesn’t sing/Mommy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring…”
–From a nursery rhyme
I have 10 nephews and nieces, the oldest of whom is only eight years old. So, when they all get together (and they get together all the time), it’s a riot.
Before I had my own child, I was a couch potato, the tambay of the family. Which meant that I was frequently left with the responsibility of looking after my siblings’ little children if not babysitting them. So I have been a witness to and a victim of the mischief of children for some time now.
I have an assortment of anecdotes to tell about my nephews and nieces. They are so many, in fact, that telling about only one of them would be enough to fill a whole “how-to” book on dealing with little rascals, and more.
When one of my nephews was three years old, he had Doc (one of Snowhite’s seven dwarfs) for a stuffed toy. He would always be heard playing with (murdering, actually) his doll and calling it “Doc-leng, Doc-leng, Doc-leng…!”
Finally, to shut him up, I corrected him. “Tutoy, hindi Doc-leng ang pangalan nyan, Doc lang, (Tutoy, the doll’s name is not Doc-leng, it’s Doc only ),” I instructed him.
Moments later, he was running around the house with the poor doll and introducing it as “Doc-lang, Doc-lang, Doc-lang…!
The lesson here is that a kid’s vocabulary is limited, so you have to explain clearly to him what you mean.
When this same kid was around four, he came up to me to ask a question—or more precisely, to test me, as kids sometimes do with adults to show off what they have just learned (and believe adults don’t know yet. “Tito, anong huling kinain ni Jesus? (Uncle, what was Jesus’ final meal?),” he asked.
“What?” I told him in response, because I myself wasn’t sure of the answer.
“Grasshopper,” he told me.
It took me a while to understand that he meant the Last Supper. It turned out that his father had told him the story of the Last Supper, but somewhere the poor kid got confused about some words. Anyway, what my nephew said made sense if you try to go down to the level of kids. Some of them would put any object that fits into in their mouths, so it shouldn’t surprise you if one of them would think Jesus Christ ate a grasshopper.
Lesson No. 2: Since a kid’s word power is limited, you have to be careful with words that rhyme.
One time, the whole family was gathered in the living room, when a precocious nephew announced, “Kinagat ng aso ang Mommy ko! (The dog bit my Mommy!)”
His parents were not around, so naturally everyone started worrying and asking about the details. “Sinasabi ko na nga ba ’yang asong yan. Ang mommy mo kasi! (I warned them about it, but your mommy wouldn’t hear of it),” my Mommy said.
That remark made the poor kid shut up in apprehension. But when everyone was all ready to go and see how his mom was faring, he spoke out to clarify things: “E, sa panaginip lang naman! (But it was all in a dream)!” He went on to explain that he had overheard his mother telling his father that she dreamed about being bitten by the neighbor’s dog.
Lesson No. 3: Let kids finish their story before jumping to conclusions.
But beyond the cuteness, the sweet silliness of kids, I have also been witness to the most touching episodes, the events that my sister calls “Salinger moments” (after J.D. Salinger, the author of “The Catcher in The Rye”). For example, whenever one of my nephew’s parents worked late nights and he would look for them, I would tell him, “Working si Daddy at Mommy.” I could see that the kid was feeling lonely at those times and longing for his parents, a sight that would break the heart of any parent who leaves their children for work. So to comfort the kid, we would wait for his parents by the window and look at the moon. But then one night as we were waiting for them to come home, the moon didn’t appear. My nephew looked bothered and then he turned to me and asked, “Working din ba ang moon?”
Who would have guessed what the kid was thinking? He thought everyone or everything that leaves and disappears is working. Imagine the loneliness of being left behind by the last and only thing that comforts him at night.
Lesson No. 4: Be there for your kids.
This nephew of mine is almost seven years old now and has started going to school. One day last year, I ran into his teacher who told me he was shy and quiet. That came as a big surprise to me because he is one of the most outspoken of my nephews and nieces. Is this what school has done to him? I wondered. Is he growing up?
There is a lesson in this incident, too, and it is that we should not worry too much that our kids would grow up with their habits. They do outgrow them. We should let kids be kids, and not try to tame them, otherwise we might be clipping their spirits. They’ve got the whole world outside waiting to do the taming.
I thought having 10 nephews and nieces would prepare me for the arrival of my own little angel. But now that I have a 7-month-old daughter, I still am not prepared for the moments when I have to leave the house and entrust her to anyone. It’s tough. Especially when I think of what I will miss: those cute moments, those touching moments. Then I wish I could just stay home and watch her grow.
But of course, we can’t. We all have to leave some time.
