Single Parenthood & I: What Can I Learn From Them?

Step into the thoughts of a nine-year-old, and you can end up finding out a lot about both yourself and the world around you.

Older Child is a good kid. Forgetful, but good. When he doesn’t tidy his bedroom, it is because he’s forgotten. If I ask him to pick up the scattering of plates and glasses that litter his bedroom—and setting aside the small point that they shouldn’t be in there anyway—he usually exclaims, “Oh yeah!”, and takes them straight down.

But he doesn’t always think that he is good himself. Towards the latter stages of last year, he took to sitting glumly at the kitchen table for what I initially thought was no particular reason, but which actually turned out, upon a little further digging, to be for a very particular reason indeed.

This particular evening, I sat down with him and asked him what’s up. “Hmph”, was his proto-teenager grunt of a reply. A couple more “hmphs” later, I finally got it out of him. “I’m worried”, he said, his eyes starting to fill with tears, “that I’m not a good enough brother”.

“What do you mean by that?”, I asked. His answer didn’t make much sense, but seemed to be largely focused on not giving Younger Child as many of his toys away as he felt he ought to.

My eyebrow raised. “I know a way to settle this. “YOUNGER CHILD!”, I shouted out, using his actual name rather than a description of him. I heard the familiar sound of a bowling ball being pushed down the stairs, and he appeared breathless in the kitchen.

“Yes?”, he said.

“I have a couple of questions, Younger Child, it won’t take a second. Who is your absolute favourite person in the world, me and your mum excluded?”, I said.

“Older Child!”, he quickly exclaimed, with excitement.

“Okay, and which person in the world is the kindest to you, me and your mum excluded?”

“Older Child!”, he exclaimed again, this time with even greater excitement.

“Thank you Younger Child, you can go back to whatever YouTube slop you were watching again," I said. He left, doing a little dance as he went.

“You see, Older Child”, I said, “you’re a kind kid. Not only the kindest I know, but possibly the kindest I’ve ever known. Now, I don’t believe that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people. There are only people who make good and bad decisions. But when you consistently make kind decisions, people will say that you’re a kind person, and that’s who I know you’re shooting to be.”

“And the thing is, Older Child, I know you’re not a bad kid because you’re asking the question in the first place. The bad kid wouldn’t think about the rights or wrongs of what they’re doing. They’d just get on with doing those bad things.”

His face lit up. “Oh yeah!”

The thing is, I hadn’t given any of this any thought. But our walks to school are always punctuated by, “Daddy, I have a question”, and what comes next could be literally anything:

“What’s the most famous colour?”

“How come windows are made of glass rather than see-through plastic?”

“What’s the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to you?”

“If a nuclear bomb dropped now, what would happen?”

“If you had three boxes and you could only save one, and we were in one of them, mum was in one, and [then-partner] was in the third, which would you save?” (One of Younger Kid’s questions, that.)

I often solicit these questions, and for two main reasons. Firstly, they’re coming anyway and I might need the whole walk to school to answer them. And secondly, I like to answer them in a way that makes them think. For example, in response to the above questions I said, “Well, hang on a minute, isn’t there a way that I could save all three boxes? Let’s investigate how I could do that.”

So, rather than having to make a decision over whether both my ex-wife and then-partner should both die, we took a moment to think about how we could do better, how we could make a decision that was better for more people, although considering the extent to which they loved these people, they were surprisingly insistent that I choose between them.

The kids don’t need to know that I’d rather save them. They already know that. Far better to take them away from that subject altogether and onto one which allows all three of us to make a better choice. They get to think laterally about the world around them and find better solutions, no matter how daft the prompts to do so might be in the first place.

Recently, I was reminded of these exchanges when we came to be discussing the difference between shame and guilt. Another seat at the kitchen table. Another “hmph”, though this time I know well enough to sit straight down and say, “Okay, we’ve done this pas de deux several times before. So let’s skip the hmphing and why don’t you just tell me what’s getting at you?”

I already knew what it was. Someone had done him wrong, and he hadn’t been able to get over it. They’d had upset him, and he didn’t feel as though it was fair. Fairness and unfairness are very important to kids, at least they are when they’re on the wrong end of them. The conversation meandered a bit, but we eventually arrived at a point at which we were discussing shame, guilt and remorse.

“You see, there’s a difference between shame and guilt. Shame is an entirely destructive emotion. Shame tells you that you’re a bad person. It’s literally hopeless, because in telling you that this is simply who you are, it removes your ability to change as a person”.

“But”, I continued, “guilt is different. Guilt allows you to believe that ‘I am a good person, but I did a bad thing’. Guilt allows you room to grow as a person—no Older Child, I don’t mean literally get taller, I mean ‘grow’ in terms of who you are and what you believe in—and to learn from your mistakes. And remorse goes further than that. Remorse is about the way you’ve treated others. It needs to make amends, whether that’s saying sorry or even to make reparations or atone for the things that you’ve done before.”

I’d never even really thought about this that much before. I mean, when or why would any of us? We shame people all the time, even though it removes their agency to do better. We say sorry when we don’t mean it all the time. And in this cynical world in which we live, in which no-one trusts anyone else and we all spend our entire lives talking past each other and sociopathically centring ourselves, perhaps forgiveness and understanding, like kindness, are radical acts.

“Oh yeah!”, he exclaimed. “If it’s not their fault, then I forgive them”.

“You’re a kid whose heart is full of kindness”, I replied.

He smiled, his work done for the time being, and got up to go and play on the PlayStation. He’ll be back at this table, but hopefully he’s scratched another itch. I sit there on my own for a few minutes, pondering how healthy it is to hear the clarity of thought that this kid applies, and how a few gentle nudges are usually enough to get him happy and back on something like an even keel, for now. If only it was always that simple for adults.

Accompanying image by James Chan from Pixabay.