The wise words of a 6-year-old

‘OUT of the mouths of babes … ’ they say, and many of us will know that children can utter little gems of truth, even ones we don’t want to hear.

But I was delighted when my daughter sent me a picture of my six-year-old granddaugter Chloe’s school exercise, called The Human Life Cycle. With illustrations, it filled the page like this (spelling corrected, by the way!):

When I was a baby, I slept a

lot and cried. As a toddler, I crawled and

talked. As a child, I dressed and

walked. When I become a teenager, I will stay up a lot and have fun. As an adult, I will marry a

man and have a baby. When I become elderly, I will

laugh a lot and play.

Now I rather prefer this to Shakespeare because the end is better! In As You Like It the melancholy Jaques delivers his speech: All the World’s a stage.

He gives us the ‘mewling . . . puking’ infant, the ‘whining schoolboy,’ the lover, the soldier, the judge (‘justice’), the skinny old man, and at last: ‘Is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’

Those who know very old people will recognise truth in that, but let’s forget the sadness for a moment. For aren’t Chloe’s six ages more appealing?

I love that confident prediction: ‘I will marry a man and have a baby.’ Mercifully, nobody has got to her about gender stereotypes, though tedious busybody think-tanks suggest children are taught about them at the age of two.

Oh, let the children be children, for heaven’s sake! Preserve them from ideology and let them play.

It’s also marvellous that she gives the idea of ‘having fun’ to just two of the periods in the lifecycle: teenage and what I choose to call the Golden Age.

Thanks, darling granddaughter — and let the teens and the oldies stay up late, party and laugh while there’s life left. Preferably together.