Small children sometimes behave in stunningly unfair and shocking ways: they scream at the person who is looking after them, angrily push away a bowl of animal pasta, throw away something you have just fetched for them. But we rarely feel personally agitated or wounded by their behaviour, because we don’t assign a negative motive or mean intention to a small person. We reach for the most benevolent interpretations. We don’t think they are doing it in order to upset us. We probably think that they are a bit tired, or that their gums are sore or they are upset by the arrival of a younger sibling. We have a large repertoire of alternative explanations ready in our heads, and none of these lead us to panic or become terribly agitated. This is the reverse of what tends to happen around adults in general, and our lovers in particular. Here we imagine that others deliberately have us in their sights. If our partner is late for our mother’s birthday because of ‘work’, we may assume it’s an excuse. If they promised to buy us some extra toothpaste but then ‘forgot’, we’ll imagine a deliberate slight. They probably relish the thought of causing us a little distress. But if we employed the infant model of interpretation, our first assumption would be quite different: maybe they didn’t sleep well last night and are too exhausted to think straight; maybe they have a sore knee; maybe they are doing the equivalent of testing the boundaries of parental tolerance. Seen from such a point of view, adult behaviour doesn’t magically become nice or acceptable. But the level of agitation is kept safely low. It is very touching that we live in a world where we have learnt to be so kind to children; it would be even nicer if we learnt to be a little more generous towards the childlike parts of one another. Adulthood simply isn’t a complete state; what we call childhood lasts (in a submerged but significant way) all our lives. Therefore, some of the moves we execute with relative ease around children must forever continue to be relevant when we’re dealing with another grown-up. The accurate, corrective reimagining of the inner lives of others is a piece of empathetic reflection we constantly need to perform with those around us. We need to imagine the turmoil, disappointment, worry and sheer confusion in people who may outwardly appear merely aggressive or mean. We do our fellow adults the greatest possible favour when we are able to regard at least some of their bad behaviour as we would that of an infant. We are so alive to the idea that it’s patronising to be thought of as younger than we are; we forget that it is also, at times, the greatest privilege for someone to look beyond our adult self in order to engage with – and forgive – the disappointed, furious, inarticulate or wounded child within.