The grand gnome isn’t the only baby in my daughter’s life. No, she’s only given birth to one (that I know of), but she happens to be an aunt to three of her sister-in-law’s slobbering little diaper-fillers.

As such, Justin (our own little grand urchin) spends lots of time with this trio doing what all kids naturally do – exchanging all kinds of abhorrent Third World-type infections to bring home to the family.

But kids gathered together share more than deadly airborne viruses (viri?), they learn to mimic, emulate and even implement the behavior of their peers into their own easily-impressionable worlds.

On one of her most recent visits, my daughter, Jackie – or Warden “The Captain” Mama as she’s known to my grandson (what we have here is a failure to potty train) – stopped drinking all of our beer just long enough to discuss a problem with the grand gnome’s recent behavior.

Not the out-of-control heathen displays most often associated with toddlers 2.5, but with his actions after returning from one of the aforementioned gatherings with the cousins.

The boy had apparently picked up the manners of his younger relatives and was now using the ‘point and grunt’ method to call attention to an object of his desire.

“It really gets on my nerves,” Jackie shared with us, reminding me that patience was never really in the top five of her virtues. And in light of her making me a grandfather, I’m guessing chastity wasn’t high on that list either.

Anyway, the nerve jostling my daughter was experiencing stemmed from Justin’s reluctance to verbally request an item, opting to instead thrust his index finger at the entity and utter, ‘Uhhh.’

Having personally applied this method to supplement the level of 12-year-old Cragganmore Scotch in my glass; snag additional helpings of mashed potatoes; and to garner a little lovin’ from the wife, I couldn’t find fault with my grandson’s newly-found cave-mannish-ness.

But apparently, Emily Post has moved into my daughter’s home.

“I keep telling him to stop that and talk,” she continued, “It’s like the boy never learned any manners. But as long as those other kids are doing it, he’ll keep doing it too.”

Doing what ‘they’ do. Fitting in with the crowd. Influenced by the behavior of others. Hmmm… I think I’ve heard that before. Oh yeah, I believe it was every day of every year that our kids lived under our roof.

Man did that bring back my daughter’s childhood in a flash. Now keep in mind that the oldest of our beloved female offspring – along with her three other ingrate siblings - grew up through the ‘80s and ‘90s, so if my references seem antiquated that’s why.

In the early days she couldn’t possibly be seen in school without a Rainbow Brite lunchbox and simply had to cut her long hair into the short bob that Katie Couric (and 50 million other American females) was sporting in those days. Why? Everyone else was doing it.

By the time she hit the ‘tweens’ an appearance in public without a Charlotte Hornets Starter jacket (not from allegiance, but the colors and bee logo were deemed cool) would have led to certain social death.

And entertaining at home was out of the question unless she had Tupac and Biggie posters on her walls and a Sony Discman that not only ruined her hearing, but also sent me into bankruptcy owing the Energizer Bunny a quarter-million dollars on battery purchases.

Why you ask again? Because everyone else had pictures of scary thug rappers in their rooms and she couldn’t possibly live another day in a bedroom with non-threatening pastel walls.

Fortunately, she had a job throughout most of high school and was self-sustaining in supplying her own trendy garb and gadgetry.

If ‘point and grunt’ is giving her high blood pressure now, she’ll be prime stroke material by the time the gnome hits the ninth grade.

Wait until elementary school when he comes home singing the four-letter words he learned on the playground. And then there are the middle school realities of smoking (tobacco and marijuana), drinking, experimenting with sex and the temptation of delinquency. Then they whine about Iphones and Ipods and wonder why they can’t have new BMWs when they get their driver’s license.

And I’m just scratching the surface.

Mimicking the behavior of his cohorts? Yeah, it’s called peer pressure, baby, and you ain’t seen nothing yet.

By J. Doug Gill