Growing up can be a confusing time

When young Astrid gets stuck on a chair, our Dad Matters columnist is given reason to question his view of psychological development.

Drama tends to follow an arc. Its trajectory can often be mapped in one of two ways. In tragedy the character soars to a high point and plunges back down again. In comedy the character tumbles to a low point and claws his or her way back up again. These tenets are ancient and well worn. Tragedy's arc is a humped-back bridge, a whale's back, a grassy knoll. It also happens to trace the downturned mouth-ends of a sad face, mirroring the emotions it elicits. Comedy's arc is the opposite. It is a bump in the road, a dip, a hollow. It also happens to trace the smile of a happy face. Of course, these are generalisations rather than cast-iron edicts, but it is surprising how often drama - on television or in the theatre - conforms to these generic patterns.

Life lacks these definite paths. It has peaks and troughs, but it is muddy and messy. It bumbles along without clear resolutions. It never really ends satisfactorily. Or at least when it does you are not in a position to look back and see it. People have tried to portray life's shambolic randomness dramatically and ended up producing odd but interesting work. Beckett, Ionesco and other playwrights sought to buck the formulaic trend, forging different dramatic moulds. Their work, lumped together as theatre of the absurd, is often an uncomfortable, confusing and bewildering experience. One of the reasons for these reactions is that we need patterns to help us make sense of things, even if they tend not to map reality accurately.

Childhood development is one realm where I thought the trajectory was clear-cut. We are born; we develop faculties and abilities; as we grow up, we are able to do more and more because our bodies and brains develop and we learn how to use these flourishing faculties. For the first few years at least, I figured the only way is up. Then Astrid got stuck on a chair. She climbed on to a white plastic chair and sat there for a few minutes as she often does. But when she wanted to come down, she couldn't. She started yelling, so I helped her to the floor. Since then, I have regularly found her stuck on the chair. Oddly enough she used to be able to climb down. When she was shorter and less agile - only a few weeks ago - she could make it unaided from the chair to the ground.

Her abilities have not declined, but something has changed. Perhaps fear has developed. Perhaps she fell off the chair at some point and now has an awareness of what can go wrong. Who knows. Physical and mental development go along certain paths where psychological and emotional development do not necessarily follow. No wonder growing up can be so confusing. No wonder so often we don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Looking back, you could say it was bound to happen. From the moment Astrid brought scalding tea raining down on herself, the frayed threads of events and moods get knitted together to create a fabric which makes sense, a rug of predestination woven to justify bad happenings. Sure, I was pretty tired that morning and Astrid was pretty exuberant. That's not much different to any other morning. And she's never knocked tea over herself before.

Sometimes bad things just happen. Fortunately, in this case, the tea was not boiling hot and it only came into contact with a small part of her arm. I ran it under cold water for five minutes, wondering just how careless I had been, relieved that it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.