Richard Hearn on the pitfalls of being helpful

Youngest™ loves to help. Let’s say that again. Youngest™ likes to ‘help’. Those inverted commas are deliberate, understood by parents. They are the question mark and the answer all in one. Is it really helping? No.

Two things he likes to help with include: cooking (especially just as you’re opening the oven) and carrying a beaker of liquid across a room, things I don’t necessarily think a three year old’s assistance really improve, and if anything, are more likely to make things go wrong.

It’s very sweet that he does it. He is generous with his assistance. However, it’s a bit like being helped with tightrope walking or air traffic control by an untrained amateur. Sometimes, the ‘help’ leads to ‘hazard.’

“It’s a long list of things I’m not allowed to help with…”

Conversely, whereas Youngest™ likes to help, he doesn’t like to be helped. If I mistakenly try to help him with things, he gets annoyed. I would say out-of-proportion annoyed. It’s a long list of things I’m not allowed to help with: getting his hat or shoes on, getting in the car and into his car seat, adding pepper to his meal, or splitting the atom. Okay, I made up the last one. But sometimes he does over-reach. It’s good he’s independent, but at each stage he’s not quite there, and some tasks seem crucial that you are 100 per cent there. I wouldn’t like to, say, pole vault or lion-tame, for instance, if I was only 50-60 per cent there. Use a set of alligators as stepping stones to get across a river, that’s another one. There are moments when the phrase “he’s got to learn somehow” just doesn’t make much sense.

Obviously, if he does get it wrong, he can revert to his special word: “Oop”. He says it quite often, and I consider it the singular of ‘Oops’, his word for a small mistake.

While writing this column – and I haven’t made this up – he came up and asked “Can you help me?” He was trying to put a lid on some Play-Doh. There was too much Play-Doh in there. It was already compacted to full capacity. It was an impossible job, a poisoned chalice of a job, a job that if I happened to be successful would create an object with such potential energy, it’d be nuclear. To recap: the job he’s asking me to ‘help’ with, will create a weapon. In his words: “Oop”.

Having unwittingly helped Youngest™ make a nuclear bomb, I don’t think the phrase ‘he asked me to help him’ is actually much of a defence. In fact, it wouldn’t be helpful at all.