My Child is an Explorer.

If my hunch is correct, and I think it just might be, then I need to get comfortable with the idea of raising an extroverted child. I remember realising I was an introvert and feeling like ‘oh yeah, that’s it, that’s me’. I think it’s only natural to assume you’re going to have a kid that’s just like you. I mean, who else do you know as well as yourself?

Haha, how wrong can you be.

This child is an adventurer. He is bold and fearless. A born explorer. He lights up around people; smiling at strangers on the street, chatting with the man in the chemist or the woman in the bank or the little girl in the doctors waiting room. He loves nothing more than being outside, unrestrained and wildly free. He’s only 11 months young and I am already in awe of the ways he pushes himself, determined to a fault, perhaps.

No doubt I will find the endless chatter hard. It already is and he can’t form actual words or pose impossible existential questions yet. The need to turn every possible item into a drum and drumstick, creating deafening but hearty ‘music’, seems to be an early and easily mastered skill to him. I might run ragged chasing him up the stairs, or lose the plot trying to change the nappy of a never-not-moving baby but I hope that I can find the patience to understand that we are different and that’s ok. I hope he learns the same.

Of course, things change as they are wont to do. Perhaps he will become a shy five year old or a timid eight year old, or a borderline hermit in his middle age. I doubt it but, you know, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.