A friend of mine — she’s in her early 30s, no children — was having lunch recently with a friend and that friend’s 3-year-old daughter. At some point during the meal, her friend got up from the table, leaving my friend alone with the child. What followed, she told me later, was something close to a panic attack.

“I just sat there,” she said, “completely frozen. I didn’t know what to say.”

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This is not a particularly anxious or socially awkward person. She’s poised and funny and holds her own in any conversation. She’s simply never had to have a social lunchtime conversation with a child. And so there she sat, staring at a 3-year-old across a restaurant table, both of them apparently waiting for the other to say something.

I’ve been there, I told her. As a childless adult myself, I said, I learned quickly that we have been conditioned to believe that when you talk to a child, you have to perform. You have to be sunny, upbeat, and........

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