Psych 101, Revisited

I didn't usually claim my three-year-old from his twice-weekly preschool sessions, but my wife had chipped a tooth, and both this week and next, I was to pick up our boy while she sat white-knuckled in the dentist's peculiarly angled chair. A warm spell, early March, and the first curious shoots of lilies and daffodils had poked their green nubs into winter-brown flower beds. I'd snuck in a short, up-tempo run after work, and when I spotted the children on the school's fenced-in playground, I was relieved I wouldn't have to wait in the narrow hallway outside his classroom and subject the other parents to my stink.

The play area sat atop a tiny hill. A number of parents had already arrived, and as was custom, one of the aides guarded the exit, calling for the children one at a time, the gate squeaking open and shut as she bid each child goodbye. Behind her, a boy emerged from a plastic-tube tunnel, his hair puffed in a staticy display. Two girls peeked out the windows of a princess's castle. And in the nearest corner, I spotted my son's yellow and blue coat. I smiled at the sight of him, the unruly mop of his fine blond hair, the jacket he insisted on unzipping the moment it was put on, but as I neared, an unwelcome scene came into focus—my boy roughly yanking a classmate from a little plastic car. The other boy cried, but his shrieks were muffled by the twisted coat my son had pulled over his head. With a final huff, my son extracted him, and the other boy's rear end landed with a soft thud on the playground's woodchip surface.

My first inclination was to reach over the fence and snag my own fistful of coat, but his teacher was standing nearby, gently addressing both boys, so I swallowed my mortification while trying to avoid the gazes of the other parents. Kneeling to his level, the teacher offered my son another car. She swung the door open, and my boy took the bait, pushing off and abandoning the scene of his transgression, his victim still sobbing, his coat and hair dotted with woodchips. I smiled apologetically as the aide handed him out to his mother.

Ever since being exposed to the nature versus nurture debate in freshman psych, I'd been a regular Henry Higgins, an ardent believer in the tabula rosa, that personality is merely human clay shaped by experiences and environment. Yet here was my child—a boy whose TV viewing had been carefully monitored, who'd fallen asleep to classical music every night since coming home from the hospital, who'd only heard my tweaked Goldilocks story, one that ended with the three bears exchanging hugs with the poor lost girl they'd helped out of the woods—assuming the role of playground bully.

Only two children remained in the fenced-in area when my turn came at the gate. I asked my boy's teacher about his day's behavior. They've all been a bit rambunctious, she said, offering an exhausted sigh. It's probably the weather. On the ride home, I twisted the rearview and delivered my familiar speech about pushing and grabbing and sharing, and in his most distant voice, my son echoed the answers we'd trained him to give—sharing is good, grabbing and pushing are bad. I offered a new twist, the trying to imagine what it would be like to be the boy pulled roughly out of a car, but my son just stared blankly out at the window's sun-flickering scene.

* * *

Before becoming a father, I'd envisioned a child's milestones differently. I thought of birthdays, heights notched on a kitchen doorway. I pictured first steps, first words . . . and true, such events are noteworthy, but they're also expected, and what's touched me most have been the surprises, the unexpected gems that have arisen organically from the chaos of his days.

The frustrated artist in...