Kissing: the return

I think I might have mentioned earlier that Anya is sweetly obsessed with kissing. She kisses her favourite toys, random objects like the staircase, and of course her friends and relatives.

We went shoe shopping with her while we were down in Melbourne and she sort of took this to the next level. There was a big mirror for the kids to look at themselves with their new shoes, and she went up to it and started basically acting out a scene from a moralistic painting about the dangers of vanity.

She spread her arms wide on the glass, smiled and looked deep into the eyes of her reflection, and gave it a little kiss. Then she gave it another. Then she closed her eyes. Another, this time longer, more lingering. She stood back, looked at herself, smiled again. Then the eyes closed and she went in for another. At this point my mum comes up and says, "She's having a snog!" And she was.

I found the whole thing hilarious, but I can't deny that there was a little facet of my being that was internally shouting: "I don't know where she gets that from!" Of course, I do know where she gets it from: she's watched Kate and me kissing enough times, and she imitates everything she sees at the moment. But I guess I got an early twinge of that vague shock parents tend to get when their kids are about three, and start developing a rudimentary sense of sexuality.

This is an interesting dilemma for my views on child-rearing. I really don't want Anya to have an overdeveloped sense of appropriate or inappropriate behaviour, or to be ashamed or embarrassed about doing things she shouldn't be embarrassed by. But it would likely be embarrassing for me and Kate if she spends her childhood pashing and humping everything that moves.

That's where developing a sense of the public and private comes from, I guess. Of her own accord, she'll quickly work out that there's a difference between how people behave in the public and private spheres, and even between different arenas within their public and private lives.

But it's still an interesting shift. We change babies' nappies, bathe them, wipe their noses and kiss their bellies in front of anyone and everyone. As they grow, we create a private space for them, in which they can develop their sense of self in isolation from the wider world. Where we draw that boundary between public and private is important, but I'd be lying if I said I had any idea how to do it.