The Head-Butter

My son Eli is 10 months old now, and he’s finally proved that he’s my kid. It wasn’t spitting out puréed peas or laughing so hard he fell over (although that’s certainly indicative of his classy pedigree). It was something far more specific to my younger self than these: headbutting.

See, when I was four years old or so I adopted the worldview of a mountain goat: ram or be rammed. There wasn’t much to it, I would simply pick out anything at head level and then charge into it (or them) with my oversized head. My memory of this is a little fuzzy, but that makes perfect sense. However, relying on elderly familial sources, I was quite the little butt-er.

I challenged and charged many a person and object: Dad’s chair, Grandma’s dog, the wall, Grandpa’s knees. Even members of our church. Everyone was fair game even when I didn’t play fair (when you’re three feet tall and you run at people from behind you always hit your mark).

Now my son has taken up the family charge. It started when I was lying on the ground trying to get him to go to sleep. He crawled over to me, carefully put his forehead against mine, and pushed. Now if I’m on the floor he’ll come over full speed, bounce his little head off mine and laugh.

I don’t know if the headbutting will continue as he grows up. But it makes me wonder what other traits (quirks?) I’ve passed on to Eli. Will he be musically inclined? Will he like baseball?  It’s so easy to read too much into behavior when your child is still a baby. For instance, it’s probably not fair for me to take credit for his crawling skills while blaming his proclivity for farting on his mother. Clearly he will be inheriting some top-notch charm.

This is what dads do though. We look for the attributes we want to see in our kids (particularly our sons) and we make sure we find them. But if we step back for a minute, mute our egos, and take off those proud papa blinders, it’s apparent there are two sides to that hereditary coin. As young as my son is, it’s already clear he got traits from me that I wish he hadn’t. Impatience, selfishness, and a lack of gratitude for his parents are just the highlights. It doesn’t matter if I want to see them or not, they’re there.

You can’t control what traits you pass on to your kids of course, but being able to identify those less flattering ones can be helpful. In the same way that looking for good traits in our kids can help encourage their development, recognizing negative ones can help break them. After all it takes one to know one. And if that’s the case I’ll be able to spot an impatient kid from a mile away. And a headbutter.