Dear IF readers,

This is our month of youth. I have wanted to share some of my observations about youth for awhile now, about five years exactly. What I am observing in my children and reflecting back on my own childhood is that - youth is primal. What I mean is, my children are young and innocent and naive but they are primal which can make them challenging and even scary. When I first brought Jax home from the hospital, like most babies, he cried and cried and cried. Objectively and intellectually I could understand that 9 months inside of me and the first few days out in civilization was a monumental change and a crisis for my first born son. But his cries versus a well versed dialogue together on his needs, was disturbing. I say that and it sounds funny, but it is the truth. And now he is five, and no he doesn’t cry all day like he did when he was first born, and he is more civilized and more developed, but now is a five year old primal. He is greedy and selfish and there is never anything that is enough. And he is a tremendously charming, loving, empathetic, smart, engaged, enjoyable, conversationalist, humanitarian, lawyer, vet, and orator. But he is five and primal nonetheless.

I am on my family vacation in Disney. My two sons, Brody and Jax are in heaven. And I am enjoying this very much, and smiling and warmed by their delight. But I am also amazed by how little gratitude, and how greedy and whiny they are in the midst of paradise. They are three and five, and primal. This is the best they can be at their age and although they will continue to develop and mature and civilize, these primal tendencies can be so challenging. We want to rationalize to our children but at 3 and five these are brief moments of success. The greatest victory is to hear my five year old Jax, giving the same rationalizations to Brody, my three year old. Aaaahhhh! Maybe something has gotten through. But to say primal is to say that they are human at the most base level, which resembles something more like nature than something civilized and rational. Thank goodness Disney afforded me a wide panoramic view of dozens of other families visiting Disney from many of the seven continents and all of them in many different languages were grappling with the same conundrum. At what point does my intelligent human child resemble something different than a newborn puppy? Cute, cuddling and with no social boundaries whatsoever. Primal.

And that was my day at Disney.

Happy child-rearing to all, thank goodness they were made so adorable and smell so good, Cat Wayland

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