The Capricorn baby

In the first year

Saturn takes its time, and it gives a Capricorn baby something that looks a great deal like patience. People call them old souls, and they are right.

Capricorn babies often have a still, watchful, faintly unimpressed quality in the early months. They smile a little later than average in many cases, and the smile means more when it comes. They tend not to be charmed by strangers doing voices at them, and they are frequently described as looking older than they are.

They are often good with structure from early on. A predictable day suits them, and many of them settle into routines with less negotiation than their parents were braced for. They can also be slow starters physically, apparently doing nothing for a while and then doing the whole thing competently, having evidently been working on it privately.

Their crying is often less frantic and more indignant, and they can be surprisingly hard to jolly out of a mood by silliness.

The toddler years

The standards arrive early, and they are self-imposed, which is the part that catches people out.

A Capricorn toddler who cannot get the shoe on correctly may become far more upset than the situation warrants, and will often refuse help, and will then refuse the shoe. Underneath it is not stubbornness in the Taurus sense. It is a small person who has an idea of how this should go and is failing to meet it.

This is also the age where the dry humour first appears, which is genuinely startling in someone who is three. Capricorn children make jokes with a straight face and wait. They are frequently funniest when they are not trying to be.

They take instructions seriously and can be rule bound to a degree that makes them anxious at playgroup, where the rules are informal and keep changing.

Starting school

School often suits Capricorn children, and the risk is that it suits them too well.

They are usually organised, reliable and quietly determined. They like knowing what is expected and delivering it. Teachers describe them as mature, and other children sometimes find them a bit serious, though they tend to gather a small group who appreciate that they always know what the homework is.

Two things to watch. The first is the fear of visible failure, which can narrow what they are willing to attempt: a Capricorn child who suspects they will be bad at football may simply decline to play football, permanently, and call it not liking it. The second is that they will absorb responsibility that was never assigned to them, for a younger sibling, for a worried parent, for the general running of things.

Praise for achievement lands well and reinforces the trap. Praise for having a good time lands oddly and is the more useful of the two.

If you are their parent

Your main job, oddly, is to make the childhood roomier.

This sign does not usually need to be pushed. It needs the opposite: an adult who takes the weight back, who notices when a seven year old is behaving like a small manager, and who says clearly that this is not their job. Capricorn children rarely complain about carrying things, which is exactly why somebody has to check.

Be reliable. This child is quietly assessing whether the structure around them holds, and a parent who says what will happen and then does it is worth more to them than a parent who is fun. Fun can come afterwards, and it will be better received once the ground is firm.

And laugh at their jokes. The humour is the door into this sign, it is drier and stranger than you would expect from someone that age, and it is the surest sign that a Capricorn child is comfortable with you.

The two levers

Most evenings with a Capricorn child come down to these. One list is what brings them back to you, the other is what sends them off.

What settles them

• Knowing the plan, in order, with the end of it stated.
• Being trusted with something real, and then left to do it without supervision.
• An adult who is unmistakably in charge, so they do not have to be.

What sets them off

• Being made to attempt something new in front of an audience.
• Being laughed at for trying, especially by an older child.
• A plan that collapses without a replacement plan being offered.

Three small things to try this week

1. Let the first attempt be private

   The bike, the swimming, the reading out loud. This sign will practise in secret and perform once competent, and hurrying that sequence usually ends the attempt entirely. Give them a version nobody is watching, and the public version tends to arrive on its own, apparently out of nowhere.

2. Give real responsibility, and mean it

   Not a token job invented for their benefit, which they will see through, but something that genuinely matters and would be noticed if it were not done. Capricorn children are steadied by being useful. It is also the surest route to their affection, which is not a sentimental sign.

3. Say out loud that they are allowed to be a child

   This one matters. Tell them, in words, that the grown ups are handling it, that they do not have to be sensible today, that nobody is keeping score. Capricorn children take on more than they were given, often silently, and the permission has to be explicit because they will not ask for it.