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OPINION

We have this friend who always wears a ball cap. The guy must have dozens of them. It doesn’t matter where he is or what he’s doing, he always wears one. Work? Ball cap. Wedding? Ball cap. Swim in the lake? Ball cap. Bike riding? Screw safety, this guy’s wearing his ball cap. Heck, the fella probably sleeps in a ball cap.

These are all things that my one-year-old son does not comprehend. Unlike our friend, my son despises hats. He is constantly pulling them off his head and tossing them away like soiled dish rags.

So when our friend came over one day around Christmas time, my son took one look at him and you can guess what happened.

He sounded the alarm that a pro-hat wearing wingnut was in the house. His face crumpled up and little rivers of baby tears flooded down his cheeks. Oh, it was a scene. Babies really are completely irrational at times.

Our poor friend tried everything to convince my wailing child that he was friend, not foe. He made funny faces. Degraded himself by making fart sounds. Smiled big. Offered toys. It was no good. My son’s mind was made up and the harder our friend tried, the more suspicious the child became.

I tried bringing my son over to see the hat up close, perhaps even touch it.

“See,” I said to my son. “Look, it’s just a —”

Oh, HELL NO. The kid recoiled in horror. From the safety of my arms, he glowered at the man in the hat.

Maybe, we suggested, our friend could try taking his hat off, to show our son that a normal human head was under it.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen our friend without a hat on. We all waited rather anxiously as he contemplated the request.

Graciously, almost solemnly, he plucked the hat off his head and presented it to our son with an outstretched hand. Would our son take the olive branch?

It was so quiet I could hear the clock tick.

My son’s eyes darted from the hat to our friend’s exposed head. He blinked once, twice. His eyes widened as if to take in the gravity of what had just happened.

Taking the hat off was, apparently, worse. Much worse. So terrible in fact that he launched into a whole other, louder, round of crying. It was like the child had just watched someone remove a limb.

I wondered how long the stalemate would continue. It was a strange predicament, having these two very important people in our lives not getting along as swimmingly as we’d thought.

Eventually, in such parenting situations, you realize it’s time to give up. Because, here’s the thing: even though you created this tiny little person, you cannot control them. They have a mind of their own and a wellspring of willpower. 

The kid and the friend came to a mutual understanding where they simply ignored each other. Any time the friend came over, my son would eye him distrustfully.

My husband and I began to joke about it.

“Sweetie, the man in the hat is coming over later,” we’d say, and the kid would shoot us a look of pure disdain.

What the child didn’t realize was he was really missing out. Our friend was super fun — get-down-on-the-floor-and-genuinely-love-playing-with-toys kind of fun. He was basically a big, 6 foot 4” kid.

But the top of his head came off and you just couldn’t trust a guy like that.

And so, the little dance went on for months: our friend trying endlessly to win him over, and our son refusing to make nice.

And then one day something changed. We were out for breakfast with the man in the hat and everyone was having a great time, laughing and storytelling and reminiscing. My son was sitting on my knee, eating cheerios, when suddenly he lunged out of my lap and began crawling across the table towards the man in the hat.

Crawling over a table is not proper restaurant etiquette but these were extenuating circumstances.

The kid clambered up our friend’s arm and in one quick motion, swiped the hat off his head.  He clumsily put the hat on his own head, where it dropped over his eyes. All you could see was his mouth peeking out the bottom, a big toothy grin spread across his face. Now who looked like the crazy one?

In the end, it wasn’t coddling or sucking up or talking in an artificially sweet sing-songy voice that changed my son’s mind. All we had to do was ease off and have a good time. Babies are intuitive that way. They see what we’re doing and they want in on the action.

Now the problem was going to be giving the hat back. The kid hadn’t learned to share yet.

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.

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