Neil loves himself. He is a Narcissist. Ever since he was 3 or 4 months old, he was fascinated by his image in the mirror. Very early he figured out that he can see himself in the mirror and we too exist in the mirror. One of our standard pastime was that I would take him close to the edge of a mirror – just close enough so he won’t be able to see his reflection. Then he would lean back till he could see himself. I would take him away and continue. We would do this for a long time, and every time he saw himself he would laugh. Even at the age of about 10 months, he hasn’t lost interest in this game. Of course now he does a lot more at the mirror, like waving his hand and uttering syllables like “ba ba ba” or simply “ooooo”.
There is another aspect of his self admiration. He loves watching his photos and video clips. In fact if I open my laptop in front of him, he would come literally running (well, crawling very quickly) and demand that I show him the pictures. The way I know he is demanding is because the moment I start the Picasa software, and he sees the photo libraries, he relaxes, and smiles as if in anticipation. I have a lot of pictures of his and more importantly quite a few video clips of about one minute long. So the next 45 minutes or so he is extremely happy. His reaction is that of pure joy. The video clip watching is worth video taping (I am going to do this sometimes). It is amazing. When he sees himself on a swing, or swimming in the tub or us playing with him and himself laughing he is all eyes. He gets excited at the parts where Neil in the video is having fun. Also, close up pictures of himself are his favorite too.
I am really happy that he loves to see himself a happy person. Because in my opinion, the best development for him is to learn to have an extremely positive self image. Of course any extreme is bad, but both of us would like him to go on the positive side to begin with.
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