There is a huge difference between being childlike and childish.  As we grow our parents and society teach us to leave childishness behind.  In adulthood we continue our quest, no adult wants to be seen as childish.  Unfortunately, along the way we lose something very valuable – childlikeness.  Late in life circumstances change, life gets short, and suddenly we remember the joy of being childlike.

Our patient mentioned to her nurse that she wanted to watch her 22 month old grandson hunt Easter eggs before she died.  Our nurse suggested she get plastic eggs, fill them, and hide them in her apartment.  She loved the idea so our nurse went to the local grocery store and bought plastic eggs and candy to fill them with.  With the Easter egg hunt four days away the patient remained excited about the upcoming event and talked about it often.

On the day of the Easter egg hunt her grandson, all of two years old, needed to be instructed as to what an Easter egg hunt is and how you go about one.  He had a great deal of fun finding the plastic eggs and discovering the treasure inside.  It was so much fun for all that the eggs were retrieved from his basket, hidden again, and another hunt ensued.

Our nurse noted, “It was a little thing, but very important to the patient.”

English author Aldus Huxley wrote, “Childishness and Childlikeness. Could you find two words closer in spelling and farther apart in meaning? And yet people seem to confuse them all the time. Dangerous. The one you hope to grow out of; the other, never.   A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle aged habit and convention."