Grandparenting: a two-year-old resolves a quandary

What can be better than watching the formation of sophisticated reasoning in a young mind?

The reasoning in this case involved the challenge of weighing options against each other. For instance, when you’re faced with two desirable but incompatible possibilities. You know, do you go to that concert you’ve been looking forward to so much? Or do you give that up to spend the evening with an old friend, only in town for one night, and who has invited you to an excellent restaurant? 

You’d like to do both, but that’s not on. You balance the pros and cons, you weigh up what you gain against what you miss, you make a choice which you feel mixes the least disappointment with the most satisfaction.

It's like the ‘guns or butter’ dilemma, the classic economics problem faced by national governments. Do they invest in things that deliver benefits to citizens, such as social services or healthcare (butter), or in national security and defence (guns)? Again, they’d like to do both but, as often as not, they have to choose one and neglect the other.

In this particular instance, however, the issue for decision was marginally less significant than a guns or butter debate. Well, less significant in the broader scheme of things, though for a two-year-old coming to grips with delicate moral considerations, with cost-benefit analyses, with the weighing of options against each other, it must have been as acute and challenging as any of the grand questions that puzzle the minds of the adult world.

Let’s call the question he had to address the ‘lead versus shoulder’ quandary.

Young Elliott had heard me say that I was taking the dogs out for a walk.

“And me! And me!” he announced, “Me walk the dogs.”

Elliott hasn’t entirely mastered the handling of relations with dogs. Sometimes he decides they’d really enjoy having a toy thrust in their face or being pushed around with a foot, which does little in the way of inspiring confidence in them, but these moments are becoming increasingly, and mercifully, rare. He’s coming to grips with the notion that stroking their backs or giving them something to eat (“Me! Me! Elliott give them that!”) wins their trust and affection far more effectively than rougher forms of play.

The younger, smaller and more sociable of our two toy poodles, Toffee, is responding well to Elliott’s improved treatment of her. They’re mostly getting on a lot better these days.

Elliott winning Toffee’s heart and mind

So when we took the dogs out, Elliott was holding Toffee’s lead.

That was fine until we got into the woods, when we took them off the lead. At that point, holding on to the lead became a little redundant. Still, Elliott has grasped the notion that possession is nine tenths of the law, so he refused to hand it over when I asked. On the other hand, he fully grasped the notion that, if the dog wasn’t on the other end of the lead, there was no real need for him to do any more actual walking.

“Granddad, me on your shoulders,” he announced. 

I reckon he still says ‘Dad dad’ rather than ‘Granddad’ but I knew he meant me. Then again, it had to be me, as I was the only other person there.

I lifted him up and so our party, of me, Elliott on my shoulders, and the two dogs proceeded on our way.

At one point, with my shoulders aching – grandkids have this horrible way of growing bigger and heavier while you’re not watching – I tried to get him to walk, but that worked about as well as the UK government delivering benefits from Brexit. I decided I’d just have to struggle on until we left the woods and the dogs went back on the leads.

When we reached that happy point, I lifted Elliott off my shoulders and expected him to walk home from there, with Toffee back on her lead. As, at first, it seemed things would go. 

But not for long.

Elliott walking Toffee

“Granddad, me on your shoulders,” he proclaimed a short way down the road.

“Ah, that’s not going to work,” I replied, indulging in a little unmerited and premature satisfaction. “When you’ve got a dog on a lead you can’t go on my shoulders.”

It wasn’t strictly true. It might have been inconvenient to have a grandson trying to control a dog on a lead from my shoulders, but it wouldn’t have been impossible. But, hey, my shoulders were beginning to ache, and I felt they deserved a slight economy with the truth.

And then I saw Elliott plunge into a moment of careful thought. He weighed costs and benefits. He balanced all, brought all to mind, and came to a conclusion.

He held out Toffee’s lead to me.

“Grandad, me on your shoulders”, he explained, in case I hadn’t understood how he’d resolved the quandary.

So I ended the walk with Elliott on my shoulders and two leads in one hand (the other was on Elliott’s leg). And, though my shoulders objected, I felt the price worth paying. After all, I’d just witnessed an important step in Elliott’s development towards mastering moral philosophy.

That’s priceless.