What makes us "big"

If you were to ask my children (you have to figure out just how to put it to them), they would tell you that there are two classes of children, babies and big boys and girls. I readily admit that we, as parents, assume a great deal of responsibility for this taxonomy, but the children seem to have made a whole worldview from this subtle distinction. To their minds, big kids are trusted, worthy of respect, wise, and, most importantly, privileged. The elite “big kids” may use special (read: fragile) utensils, stay up late, and eat larger portions of sugary food and drink. By contrast, babies cannot be trusted with special utensils, books, or toys; are not entitled to retain personal property; and are free to be dragged around and handled as though they were stuffed animals.

Mind you, my “big kids” are four years old and three years old, respectively. In their advanced age, they are practically ready for retirement.

By what criteria does one graduate from babyhood to bigkidness? Obviously, there are several factors which reflect the child’s status. To list a few, there is where the child sleeps, in a crib or a bed. Then there is whether one is able to eat solids (i.e. as opposed to nursing), and whether that is with hands and bottles, or forks, spoons, and cups. And one of the biggest telltale signs, no doubt, is being toilet-trained. One simply cannot claim bigkidness in diapers. He would be laughed right out of the nursery.

Kids take their statuses very seriously and very personally. My four year-old girl and my three year-old boy have come to a compromise on how exactly he is to be categorized. He is kzat gadol and kzat beinoni, partly big and partly average. Very proud of his rank, several times a day he can be heard telling us or confirming with us that this is indeed accurate. Of course, his sister sees it as her right and civic duty to continually remind him that she is older than he is, even if they are the same physical size. In any case, I have observed that this consciousness is not only in our family. Imagine the rancor and upheaval that resulted when one particularly insolent child taunted other kids (some of them older than he) from the comfort of his bedroom window, “Atem ketantonim! (You are tiny!)”

Naturally, I realized that the obsession would serve me as a great educational weapon, er- tool. The standard criteria notwithstanding, I have begun to suggest to my children that there is an even greater and truer definition of bigkidness. “A big boy/girl,” I assert, “knows how to listen.” Obviously, I don’t have a source for my position other than my own intuition. But it sure makes for a very useful tool in my arsenal of parental guidance; the child’s ‘rank’ becomes a function of his or her ability to cooperate. And although my principle is not necessarily authoritative and objective, it is quite reasonable. Isn’t the ability to “listen” a function of self-discipline and self control? If bigkidness is a function of maturity, emotional maturity seems as fair a scale as physical maturity.

Now, in the irony of familial politics, my “big” status does nothing for my credibility as an interpreter of bigkidness. My children, thus far anyway, seem thoroughly unimpressed with my definition. Indeed, the upshot of my position is that my one-year old (in diapers, mind you), often much more eager to follow instructions than his siblings, is somehow “bigger” than they are.

So I have had to revisit my approach. Do I really believe that the youngest and most dependent of my children is the most mature? Unlikely. Far-fetched. Inconceivable.

The truth is that, obviously, the older children also know how to listen. In fact, their occasional refusal to listen is reflective of their maturity. After learning how to listen, they learned how to assert themselves and how to disobey. In other words, they are big enough to listen, but they are also big enough to ignore.

And still, I am sure that I was right. The one-year old is big because he knows how to listen. The older children are even bigger because they do not. But to achieve even greater bigkidness, they will have to demonstrate more consistently that they choose to listen. To listen when there is no choice is not all that great a feat. But to listen when there is a choice can be quite a difficult task.


It follows from the argument, of course, that the listening is not as critical as the choosing. And if so, I should acknowledge that even the choice not to listen is as great as the choice to listen, so long as it is a choice. Perhaps it is indeed so. But who can tell the difference? When someone isn’t listening, can one really be sure that it’s a choice more than an impulse? When I act with harshness, is it my conscious decision, or is it unchecked rage? When I circumvent the rules, it might be because that’s what I believe to be right. But when I violate my own principles, even over a matter of impatience; anger; selfishness; laziness; or the like, that’s quite something else. And it is certainly not being “big”.