Fashion sense in a child.

A few days ago, my wife, Syahidah, presented Tiarnan, our youngest son, six years old, with an array of about 40 photos of women in various clothes. Some of the women wore very sophisticated clothing, including flowery ball gowns, others wore avant garde clothing, some even wore tacky, tasteless clothing. Every kind of appearance was represented in some way.

“Which is your favourite?”, she asked Tiarnan.

He glanced over the panoply of choices and very quickly pointed one out.

It was of a woman wearing a tweed jacket and matching skirt, with a hat on.

Syahidah laughed. “Why did you pick that one? Is it because of the hat?”

“No.”, he answered, most seriously, “It is because she looks mysterious.”

That evoked more laughter. What a wonderful way of looking at people.

I can now imagine what kind of girlfriend Tiarnan will one day present to us: an enigmatic girl with secrets in her eyes and a smile of unclear meaning. It seems as if Tiarnan likes a puzzle in others, a person to be solved, with riddles on their tongues and a Sphinx like stare.

Perhaps this allure in Tiarnan for the mysterious, is an attraction to intelligence. This is a characteristic both my wife and I share – we have ever sought out others whose appeal is centred on their minds and the quality of their thoughts. I suppose, since we both share this characteristic, that it is no surprise our children should turn out as they have done: it was a matter of assortative mating and selection for the very characteristics our kids now show. This selection was both conscious and unconscious in that we were both aware of what we liked in others – but also were naturally drawn, instinctively, to those characteristics, without even thinking about them.

It seems, from Tiarnan’s remark, that he shares that inner view of others, that, if you like, intellectual aesthetic.

I look forward to the day when I get the chance to measure Tiarnan’s girlfriends against that remark he made. I wonder if it shall turn out to be predictive? If so, I shall remind him of what he observed, when he was just six years old (if I am around to do so, of course). If not, this blog shall remind him for me, which makes it worth the writing.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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