He’s barely two, but my grandson is already smarter than Elon Musk

My youngest grandson, Sweetpea, is lying in an old-fashioned cot. He is being doted upon by two children: a six-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother. They have him tucked in with a bunny rug and are pretending Sweetpea is their own baby brother.

The two siblings have glorious, proud smiles. Their thinking, I imagine, goes like this: “Other kids have to make do with a doll, some ghastly plastic thing, but we happen to have a real baby.” And, they think, if you are going to play “looking after baby”, only a real one will do.

The scene is captured in a photo, sent to me by my daughter-in-law. It’s a happy picture, the only problem being that Sweetpea isn’t really a baby any more. He’s a toddler. He toddles from place to place and even has words with which to express himself.

In particular, he has the word “more”, which he says whenever anyone suggests a premature end to the activity that is currently underway. Games, books, cuddles, food, water fights, and even weeding the garden. Try to call time on any of them and Sweetpea will say “more, more, more”, like the assertive toddler he is.

In fact, Sweetpea is so thoroughly a toddler that he can hardly fit the cot into which the older children have placed him. His head presses against the top and his shoulders jam uncomfortably against the sides.

The photo is full of fun and love, but my favourite thing is the look on my grandson’s face. The look is, “I’m humouring them.”

Much of life is role-play, but what a surprise that it starts so early. The neighbourhood kids need Sweetpea to play the role of baby, at least for the next 10 minutes. They are lovely kids, and they make Sweetpea’s life better by bringing him treats, carrying him around and playing games, and so he thinks, “Why not? You two want me to be a baby, then I’ll be a baby.”

Role-play is the gap between who we are and who the world wants us to be. In truth, most of us play roles all the time. The person we are at work is different to the person we are at home. The person we are with one friend is a little different to the role we play with another.

It’s the human desire to fit in, the effort to be part of the tribe.

There’s sometimes criticism of such role-play. Authenticity, people say, is the main thing. Fitting in with the desires of others, they argue, is always a mistake. It’s an act of self-sabotage. Or, that most vivid image, it involves turning yourself into a doormat upon which others will trample.

Even empathy, that age-old human urge to walk in the shoes of others, is now under explicit attack. In her column last weekend, Julia Baird detailed the new hostility to empathy expressed by Elon Musk and various others, mostly conservatives from the religious right.

These people think empathy is a mistake – an excuse to treat the downtrodden with excessive sympathy. When I read Baird’s column, I thought about little Sweetpea and how he’s already smarter than Elon Musk, the richest man in the world.

Sweetpea, midway between his first and second birthday, understands that one of the main joys of being human is to help others towards happiness. People give and then find that, in turn, they receive. We make concessions to another person, then receive concessions in return.

We do unto others...

As Sweetpea would say, “You want me to sit in this cot and pretend to be a baby? You know what? That’s OK. You’ll somehow return the favour.”

Of course, take this too far and you do get the “doormat” problem. Low self-esteem and a desire to please can be weaponised by others. For some people, there was sometimes wisdom in all those assertiveness courses: check your own interests are being served, maybe not in this moment, but over time.

Most people, though, are occasional shape-shifters, and with good reason. I confess to a habit of changing my accent depending on my conversational partner: quite posh when chatting on the radio to a UK opera conductor, then – minutes later – drawling my way through an interview with an Aussie rugby league star.

“Hypocrisy,” some would say (actually, did say). “Fake as,” others would say (actually, did say).

Perhaps it did sound ridiculous on air, but I’m not giving up on the human desire to please, to fit in, to make others feel they are among friends.

We’re social animals. It’s in our nature to help and be helped. Most of us are not as Musk would have us: swimming in a sea of self-interest.

How long should Sweetpea endure his role as “baby”? Perhaps 20 minutes is too much, but maybe 10 minutes will be OK.

In the photo, he doesn’t look unhappy. If those gorgeous neighbourhood children try to hoist him from the cot before the game is over, he may very well object.

I think his word will be “more”.

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