Melville Cooke

This is the third day of the fifth month of the year, optimistically designated Child Month, and also the second day after the third anniversary of George Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

It is ironic that he has just had to use his presidential veto power for only the second time, striking down a bill that would link further troop funding to a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. That would be to set a date for failure, he said. So by his logic, you (literally) can be a bloody failure, but as long as you do not admit it it is business as usual. Talk about head in the desert sand.

But we are not talking about that son of a Bush today, but our sons and daughters. Our, not in the sense of having produced them from much heaving and sweating at the beginning and end of the pregnancy process (the start is much more exciting, I understand), but our collective children who, like little moon walkers, hunker under hampers and sling kits as they head to and from school.

Being kind to children

I have always marvelled, though, at how kind we try to be to children generally; (there are some seriously wicked adults out there) yet how uncaring or even outright unkind we are towards adults. It would seem to me that if we care for a child we should care for the adult they become or the child that they once were.

So while we have a month for children, which is a wonderful thing, I wonder how many human beings who are shown special kindness in May 2007 will receive any special care in 2017. For a five-year-old boy who will get a pat or two on the head, a rub of the chin and encouragement over the next 28 days or so might be the target of a random police search in 2017 (when Portia Simpson Miller might just be coming to the end of her second term in office).

And in 2017 a girl who is seven years old now may just be in a massage parlour providing services to a man who, 10 years earlier could have been complimenting her on her schoolwork from an adult perspective. He may have been smiling and telling her to 'keep it up' the decade before. She may be smiling and encouraging them to 'keep it up'.

Changing lifestyle

Just where is the line between a child and adult drawn? Where do we stop giving that love and special encouragement to a child and substitute it with dire warnings and predictions of doom? Is it when a boy starts to 'buss beard' (I still remember my first chin hair and the glorious, optimistic stroking it got) and is warned that "me no waan no wutless man inna me yard?" Is it when a girl starts to 'buss blood' and the hints of "me naa madda no granpickney" are dropped very loudly?

A hair and the menses do not mean adulthood. Our children need our special love and care long after they have to employ a razor every morning and are hopefully staying free of pain for five days every month. It must be traumatic when the line between encouragement and expectations iscrossed; I can't exactly remember mine, what with my nose stuck in novels, but I am aware that it exists.

And when those for whom the special considerations have been removed see the attention being lavished on those a bit younger, it must cause some resentment.

So as we celebrate another Child Month, let us remember that the children who need our love are not only the eager or sad faces that are turned upwards towards us. Many of them can look us directly in the eye; some even look down at us. Heck, some of them have grey hairs.

It is their month too.