Séamas O’reilly

Sharing a joke is one thing, but for my son it’s a fine line between a good laugh and an incredible sulk

I can’t fit myself under the bed. Well, I can, but only by lying in profile, as it doesn’t have enough clearance for my nose. My large beak is a genetic trait my son has not yet inherited and it’s something which he finds unaccountably hilarious.

We need a laugh, because he’s under the bed again. Sometimes we see the fuse snap in person. Other times, we only realise he’s gone when we hear the upstairs thumping of short, angry legs and the tell-tale sweep of a slowly closing bedroom door. He’d prefer to slam it, of course, but it’s a little too flush with the carpet.

Very nearly five, my son is now less likely to throw the tantrums that typified his twos and threes. These, you might recall, were thrilling, primal things, great big explosions in primary colours, alarming in their fierceness and sincerity. He’d stamp his feet and clench his fists and say things like, ‘I feel like an Incredible Hulk.’ Except he couldn’t quite pronounce ‘hulk’ properly, and thus was reduced to saying, ‘I feel like an incredible hug.’

These days such outbursts are rare and we’ve watched with amazement as he’s grown to share and even compromise with a maturity that’s startling to see, especially in someone who still thinks all cats are girls and all dogs are boys. This makes his recent strops all the more difficult to watch, since they’re not so much tantrums as grand sulks.

The triggers are common; sharing, having a toy taken off him by a friend, or detecting that someone is treating him unkindly. Laughter, too, has become a touchy subject, and to mistime any laughter in his direction is like buying him a one-way ticket to the underside of Bedsville.

My in-laws were here when he came home from school with a Union Jack he’d made for the coronation. From an artistic standpoint, my wife was delighted at his handiwork – say what you want about the British flag, it is difficult to draw – but thought her parents would get a kick out of seeing their English grandson waving it in their faces. She was right, but phrased this poorly.

‘Go out to the garden and show them, they’ll laugh,’ she said. ‘Why?’ he asked, his nose already crinkling. ‘Why would they laugh at meeeeeeee?’ An ascending scale of vowels trailed all the way up to his sulking place, which is where I find him minutes later.

I reach in to console him, hoping to hold his hand as I speak, but finding only his leg, so I hold that instead.

I tell him no one was laughing at him and that it’s hard to feel like people don’t take you, or your art, seriously.

I tell him it looks nice and cosy under there, but I can’t fit. ‘I’m not coming out,’ he says, with the slightest hint of a chuckle at his ungainly father. ‘All right then,’ I say, grunting like a washed pig as I slide myself in beside him. I can’t move my head, but it’s pointed straight at him as he begins to laugh. ‘Don’t move,’ he says, as the hysterics take over, ‘you’ll hurt that great big nose.’

@shockproofbeats