Recently my son has become slightly more agreeable during the time he is awake and not eating. Mornings seem to be the best time to sit down and have a conversation with him. I can prop him up on a pillow and we can push our faces close to one another and have a nice little chat. He’s even smiled once or twice during our recent chats but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know that he’s doing it yet. I’m enjoying these quiet times with my son so much that it made me reevaluate the times when he was crying his head of and desperately flailing his little arms and legs so he could get to his mother to eat.
My son can’t lie. It was a revelation to me. He is incapable of lying. He can’t speak yet and hasn’t really figured out how to produce sound other than to cry. Crying means he is uncomfortable in some way (numerous though they may be) and not crying means that he is either comfortable, or confused, or curious (or a combination of the three). This made me appreciate his crying. This is not to say that I enjoy hearing him cry, but more that the cry is his only communicative tool and that he uses it only to tell the truth. WAAAA! (“Something is wrong!”) WAAAA! (“I’m lonely!”) WAAAA! (“I’m cold!”). While these aren’t terribly descriptive cries he never cries just to cry. The cry means that something is wrong.
Remember that story about the boy who cried wolf? There is something pure and innocent and truthful about my son. He is honest. He cannot lie. All of this changes, of course, when he learns language and manipulation from society (his parents included). But for now he cannot tell a lie, and there is something admirable about that.