Risk Assessment Comes Naturally

We have a bed that is as high as Veer's height when he was one year old. I was having dinner and Veer was sleeping on the bed. Suddenly, he got up and saw me. As a natural reaction, he moved swiftly towards me. I was worried when he came close to the edge of the bed. I was about to get up to hold him with the fear of him falling down from the bed, when my wife stopped me calmly. I said, "Veer will fall down." She patiently said, "You have your dinner. He will watch from there; won't move." She was right. Veer didn't move from there. He just looked at me with hope in his eyes. As soon as I was done with my dinner, I attended him. From a small distance, he hopped at me. It may be too early to say Risk Assessment comes naturally to Veer. His approach to similar situations in the following months made my understanding more firm.

Veer's First Word

Veer was about eight months old and yet to utter any meaningful word. He was sleeping in the hall when I was getting ready for office. I kept looking at him in regular intervals. Both his mother and I were waiting eagerly for Veer to talk to us. "What would be his first word?", whenever my wife asked, I would reply, "They say, the child's first word is 'ma'." Anyway, I always thought I would not be able to experience it when he utters his first word as I might be in office. I got ready and was about to open the door, when I heard "Papa". Almost into tears, I looked back at Veer. In that span of second, I went through one thousand emotions. Veer repeated, "Papa" when my eyes fell on him. However, he was not looking at me but at his mother in the kitchen. I smiled and left for office.

I think, Veer got confused whom to address first. He couldn't decide how to get rid of this dilemma. However, eventually, he managed to satisfy the ego of both his parents. When my wife looked at him, I cleverly said, "See, Veer is addressing you as papa."

The Ice Cream Seller

Today, midnight of November 12, 2018, Veer was out to execute his plan of selling ice-creams. Being a Sunday night, there were only a couple of men outside in the society. Veer would take out imaginary ice-creams from his toy truck after asking the men what flavor they would prefer. This exercise went on for an hour or so. As it was time to go to bed, I tried to convince him to come back home, but all my efforts were in vain.

Veer wouldn't agree so easily. His mother also failed to convince him. Hence, I tried to get creative. I said, "Veer, all your ice-creams are melting. Let's go home and keep them in the refrigerator." Veer looked at the empty toy truck and said, "no, they haven't melt completely yet." When I tried to insist more, he pointed at an empty space somewhere around and said, "oh, there is a refrigerator here. Let's keep the ice-creams here."

I was disappointed but he was right. Imaginary ice-creams must find an imaginary refrigerator for them. All my experience fell flat against the innocence of my baby.