I have a
cousin. Her name is
Ashley. She's getting into her early
tens now, I think around 11. And a few weeks ago, I realized that she was a
person.
I realize that sounds kinda
demeaning, kinda
cold, the kinda thing that makes people's
hackles rise, to deny someone's
personhood, but its really the only way I can think to
phrase it. Up until a
certain point, we all treat children a
certain way. We
coddle them, we
humor them, we tell them "maybe
tomorrow" and the like. We don't treat them like real people yet, for whatever reason.
So when do they become
people? When do we realize that we can no longer treat them the same way we always have? For me, it was at
Easter dinner, and I found myself sitting with her, having a rather
intelligent discussion about the social
atmosphere in
junior high school. I was
pleased to note that she'd already picked up on the fact that most of it is
bullshit, and then I realized "Wow, she's a person now." In exactly those words.
Perhaps we realize that the old tricks won't work. We're forced to treat them like
people.
Perhaps we start to care about their
opinion. We treat them like people because we want them to like us.
Personally, I think they
TAKE their personhood. They become their own
person through their own will, when they become an
independent entity, no longer looking to mommy and daddy for all the
answers. That's what I saw in her, when she was talking about
shallow sixth grade girls, obsessed with makeup and their
breast sizes. When a
child looks around and starts making their own decisions about the way of things, that's when they become a person.
Nowadays, when my cousin asks me a question, I answer it they way I answer everyone else. Bluntly. Honestly. Because she's not a child anymore.