379. Decisions to make

 The dreadful time of the year is upon us again. The fact that it is the last time we are going to have to go through this as parents does not make it easier. In fact it makes it harder because our last one is the most indecisive of our children. She has always been like that. 

When a one-year old baby the nursery nurses would tell me.

'She can stand now, she manages really well to get up and stand. But then she just stands for ages there in the middle of the room! As if she cannot decide whether she should start walking or not.' The ladies were sometimes amused sometimes puzzled but always patient. As parents we just smiled sweetly at our cute baby.

And later at fast-food counters embarrassing queues would form behind us while everyone of us took it in turn to explain and try to guess which burger would take her fancy. Until her father - or mother - would eventually lose it and order anything at all. Then she would sit and eat happily with her siblings. On the next outing we'd say to her thinking we had it nailed.

'Get that! That's the stuff you had last time and you really liked it.'

But Baby would fold her tiny arms and shake her head from side to side.

'Na. Not this.'

And the whole thing would start all over again. Restaurants, cafés, supermarket shelves, extra-curricular activities, ice-cream vans: Baby would just stand, stare and think. 

Then suddenly the skill of making decisions - which her parents had failed to teach her - became a must-have skill. And Baby had not acquired it.

'So which course are you going to pick?'

'Yes, what are you going to study?'

'What do you want to work as?'

Everyone was sending her links and getting her to speak to friends, everyone's friends, and it was like being in the restaurant all over again with Baby staring at the menu, lips tight, frowning and just thinking. 

Except this time the menu was an endless list of schools, colleges and universities and courses. All the menus of all the restaurants and cafés and fastfoods and ice-cream vans she had ever visited.

'Fine. I'll decide for you. Enough of this. Since you are capable of reading the whole booklet of instructions for the new (complicated) washing machine (the one with the blue spot light in it) and to memorise all the programmes and since you are the only one in the family who knows why there is a single sock sometimes on the display screen I think you should do law. You are bilingual so international law. That sounds good, definitely something we could announce to the extended family around the barbecues in Custrac.

Baby is frowning.

'Very funny.'

'Fine. You are good with your hands and good at solving problems. Become an apprentice. An electrician or plumber or wood worker or a car-mechanic or anything.' 

'You love the outdoors and the wild camps with the scouts, join the army!'

'You've tried all the sports from the extra-curricular list at school. Become a sports teacher!'

'Just go backpacking for a year and think about it.'

'A photographer!'

'Circus school!'

'Movie star!'

The whole family is getting quite agitated and everyone is shouting at the same time and as there is no embarrassing queues forming behind us we are all enjoying it. A kind of competition, whose advice is Baby going to follow?

But Baby is just shaking her head and telling us she is just thinking about it.