When is young old enough?

For everything in life, there are always at least two schools of thought. Sometimes more than two, but nevertheless.

When people express delight with someone else's success - 'I am so, so happy for you, believe me!' - which of the thin lines are they straddling: hypocrisy or jealousy? Neither, perhaps. My grandmother, I'd like to believe, was always genuinely thrilled with each little career hill or hillock I was able to scale. She bragged to her sisters, my grandaunts, about it and they, for their part, couldn't match her because they didn't have grandchildren as yet. But one of them at least was a bit of a 'free thinker' given that period when children were banished immediately when the adults gathered. The free-thinking grandaunt was all in favour of opening the door a crack and allowing a child to peer into the nature of a grown-up world. Success, however, was not to be hers. In this way, as a youngster, I was shut out not only from the banter but also from the ailments that plagued some of the elders. Everybody closest to me bore their influenzas, their diabetes, their cancers with stoicism. I saw no sign of hypodermic syringe or insulin bottle. The medicine chest was under constant lock and key - which, perhaps is understandable even in today's world, given that the inherent curiosity in children hasn't changed and there's always likely to be an accident.

My situation, my upbringing, was not unique, however. Put it down to the kind of thinking that prevailed at the time. Shield the young. Protect the fragile mind. You can see the rationale was well-intended. This, I'd like to think, was one form of love.

But 'situationally', I am convinced, it was a move that prepared us for nothing, in fact left us short-changed. I am forced to compare my own childhood with that of young Jamie, merely five, just another boy growing up in a Sydney suburb.

One sunny morning, Jamie is to be seen playing on the carpet, guiding a brilliant red toy car around an imaginary race circuit. His mother is at work. His father, though, is a work-at-home dad and, while he sits at the computer not more than a metre away and deals with his e-mail, he is able, out of the corner of his eye, to keep a watch on Jamie. That's the general arrangement, usually: scatter a lot of toys on the carpet in the study and, while Jamie is absorbed, catch up on some correspondence. Father babysitting son.

However, when father suddenly feels a sharp paralytic pain shooting through his left arm and immediately breaks out in sweat, he veers in his swivel chair and tries to get Jamie's attention. But speech is cut off with the swiftness some strokes bring. He slumps forward, seemingly helpless. But help is really, literally, at hand. Jamie, who spots his father's discomfort, abandons his car race, goes to the telephone phones 000 and informs the ambulance operator that his dad is having a heart attack. He gives his home address and with a knowledge I would never have possessed at that age tells the operator that, yes, his dad has a history of heart trouble, so could they hurry please!

In the evening interview on television, Jamie's mum pays tribute to her hero son and says she's always glad they decided to take him into their confidence. So when is one old enough? And when is one too young? I guess Jamie's given the 'jury' a thing or three to ponder.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney.