Making sense of the world

The three little people in our house are all currently trying to remove their teeth. It is very hard to explain the importance of tooth-brushing to the younger two when their current ambition is for their teeth to fall out like those of their big sister. I have tried to explain that is natural for teeth to fall out at age 7 but certainly not at age 2 or even 4, but they are not convinced – particularly when they see Safiyya tugging away on her teeth in an attempt to speed up the process. The idea of being in some pain, having bleeding gums, and finding it hard to chew food properly afterwards seems strangely to add to everyone’s excitement.

All of them are also desperately on the lookout for poor people. They know that they have to eat their food up as poor people don’t have any; they know they have to give money to the poor; and they know that sometimes the poor people get their toys. But where are these people? Sometimes Safiyya wishes that these poor people would just eat her food up so she doesn’t have to; Asim has volunteered to give all his toys to the poor people explicitly hoping that he would then get some new ones. Sometimes he saves ‘them’ a Smartie, but then eats it after a few minutes as the temptation gets all too much. The other day, his uncle was most impressed that to hear Asim recount how he had given the shirt off his back to the poor people – I had to explain the less dramatic reality: he had recently accompanied me to take a shirt that was too small for him to a local charity shop.

Relationships are a potential minefield for misunderstandings. From age two, our two girls have had a detailed sense of how everyone relates to each other, understanding that the same person whom they call ’mummy’ is also called ‘aunty’ and ‘sister’ and even occasionally has a first name – and bizarrely calls someone else ‘mummy’. Amaani (2) can enact complicated role-plays where we all swap around and have to address each other correctly. I understand this would be far more complicated if we were following Asian traditions of assigning unique names for your mother’s sister compared to your brother’s sister, but I am finding it really quite stretching as it is. Asim on the other hand is highly surprised that his granny and his uncle know each other at all (despite the fact that they are mother and son)!

Life and death can be confusing concepts too. Asim was very excited to find out recently that Muslims believe Jesus (peace be upon him) is alive and will come back to Earth – although both he and Safiyya think he is coming to visit our home town – and more specifically, our home, probably at tea-time. I subsequently was rather stunned to be told by the staff at his nursery that they had had an interesting conversation with Asim about life after death. Asim had told them he would become a fish when he died. The teacher told me this in an understanding way - after all we live in an era of tolerance where all our beliefs must be respected. I was perplexed, since he has not been around too many people who believe in reincarnation. Fortunately Safiyya was with me and she pointed out that he had been with her when she had been thinking out loud about what Paradise might be like, and she had imagined that Paradise for her would involve mermaids. So Asim of course must have concluded that he would be a fish. Of course.

One day, they may well take all these matters for granted. But that will be another phase in their lives – and mine – and in the meantime, I am gathering lots of fresh perspectives on relationships, reincarnation and tooth removal.

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