Writing for life

“Dad!” shouts the little one.

“Yes,” I say, taking a sip of coffee without looking up. She grabs my arm, commanding my full attention.

“Y’know this baby,” she waves a small plastic doll in my face. I wonder what’s coming next. “Y’know what her name is?” she continues. I admit that I don’t. “Well, her name is Melina…” she pauses for dramatic effect, “… but for short you can call her Jasmine.” Pleased, she beams at me.

My brain wrestles with the concept for a moment, and then gives up… something it does with remarkable regularity when confronted with the bizarre logic of a four-year-old. The four-year-old mind is a law unto itself… or at least our four-year-old’s mind is.

There’s also a short circuit somewhere in her nervous system that links her brain directly to her vocal chords, bypassing the usual filters and balances. She never shuts up, and says whatever pops into her head as soon as it occurs to her. One minute she’ll come out with something incredibly perceptive and insightful that has you reeling; the next she’ll utter a stream of incomprehensible gibberish… but with all the conviction and authority of a seasoned expert. It’s entertaining and exhausting at the same time; sometimes you just wish she had an off-switch.

The other day she stormed into the room and demanded we change our brand of toothpaste. “You have to get [insert brand name here] Mum, because its stripy and it cleans in between your teeth and everything, and it makes your breath minty fresh too!” So does the toothpaste we use now, my wife explained patiently. She wasn’t having any of it though – the new toothpaste was better, she knew because it had said so on the telly.

It was a reminder of the power advertising has to influence young minds, but only a fleeting one. She soon launched into another completely unrelated tirade, which culminated in an introduction to her “pirate horse”.

When I say pirate horse, I mean that she’d taken a regular hobby horse, and had wrapped a pink, flowery headband over one eye. It was the most un-pirate-like eye-patch you could imaging. “He’s called Jack-mill-Jill,” she said, her expression deadly serious. “That’s a good pirate name isn’t it Dad?” I struggled not to laugh, and agreed that it was indeed very pirate-like.

Maintaining a train of thought for more than a nanosecond seems beyond her. She’s forever flitting from one topic to the next with the huge enthusiasm and boundless energy that only children seem to have. It’s wonderful to see, but trying to keep track of what she’s on about can be incredibly tricky.

As the girls get older lots of things are changing. The twins are reading everything they can get their hands on now. The more they read, the more they want to know, and they’re asking questions all the time, which is of course a very positive thing. Actually that’s nothing new, they’ve always asked lots of questions. It’s just that the more they read, the more difficult and complicated their questions become.

Naturally they still expect Mum and Dad to have all the right answers on tap, but that’s becoming much more challenging than it used to be. Luckily there’s broadband, WiFi, Google, Wikipedia and the like to offer my ageing grey matter a helping hand. Somehow, I think I’ll be needing their help a lot more in the future.