Of chatterboxes, petulant teenagers and prince charming
Sometimes I can't help it. Then I let out a very aunt-like sigh of delight when I see my sisters' even younger children: «Oh, they're so cute when they're so little!» On her way through the garden, the niece had just stopped at our coffee table and spurted out a stream of unsorted information.
It was about the animal life in the vegetable patches, I think, and the rabbits in the garden, but I didn't really want to know as I watched her hop on to the plum tree. «Hm, yes,» said my sister. And after glancing over her shoulder to see if her daughter was out of earshot, she added: «But sometimes the chatter is really annoying.»
It's an eternal dilemma with children: There is either too much or too little communication.
When it's your own children: «Radio son» is what I used to call my son's unfiltered speech when he was explaining details from YouTube films or games to me and I could barely follow because I was cooking or writing or doing something else. For situations like this, I trained myself to make a facial expression of supposed attention, garnished with interspersed «Mhm!» and «Aha!» sounds that were supposed to signal active listening. In my head, I remained unmoved by the thing I was working on.
It's an eternal dilemma with children: There is either too much or too little communication. It starts with the baby's bawling, which communicates its dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, the means of communication available to a baby are, firstly, difficult to decipher and, secondly, quite annoying. This continues later with phenomena such as «Radio son», which would be very welcome in certain situations, such as when you would like to know something about the child's life at the lunch table. But questions such as «So, how was school?» are often answered with little more than «Good!», followed by silence, in which all the things you would like to know more about but haven't been told come out very clearly.
The situation is exacerbated by adolescence. This is the time when your own children are constantly communicating with their peers via social media, but the best they can do is articulate their mood to their parents by grunting, snorting or rolling their eyes and otherwise humming to themselves behind closed bedroom doors.
Until one day they walk out of the room and lo and behold: no more Scylla and Charybdis between diarrhoea and speech impediment. An adult strolls into the kitchen, puts the marching orders for the military on the table and asks if he should set them. And you stay at the table for a long time after dinner and discuss: What's in favour of RS and what's in favour of civilian service. Why maths is the universal language of nature and love is the greatest supra-individual experience. And I look at this person who is my son, but is now also a man and a fully-fledged adult. And at some point he gets up and says: I still have to tidy my room. And I can just hold back a sigh of delight. But inwardly I'm jubilant with joy.
