Alvin's Terrorizing Small Children

Recently when out on a walk with Stevie and Alvin, we spotted a neighborhood boy who is two or three-years-old.  I heard him yelp with excitement and tell his grandma that he wanted to see the doggies.  We made our way over to him and I saw Alvin's reaction when first spotting the little boy.  He zeroed in and started to try to run towards him.  As mentioned before, Alvin is fascinated with children.  He visually locked on to the boy and we made a bee line towards him.  When we approached him, the little guy was initially very excited but then he took a better look at Alvin and began to recoil while whining.  I saw another child have a fearful reaction to Alvin and the problem is that Alvin stares down children and can't get close enough to them.  It doesn't matter what is going on around him, he continues his odd stare down and it looks very much like a dog stares right before they snap or bite.  There is no chance that Alvin is going to be aggressive but his stare is so intent that it is scary to very young children.  To make matters worse, when the child tries to step away, Alvin continues to stare and tries to get closer.  I finally led Alvin away so that the child didn't become traumatized.  From watching Alvin's reaction to children, I had previously suspected that he once lived with a child, but then watching his reaction a few minutes later to the same child, I now suspect that he has had no previous exposure to children, and because of their small stature, he is utterly fascinated.  What led me to that conclusion was that after we walked away, the little boy started running around the grass area we were on.  It's a large area and the boy wasn't near Alvin but the running and jumping, so typical of children, scared Alvin and he alternated between planting his butt on the ground and refusing to move to then running towards me as though he needed me to save him from the running, jumping, odd little person.  In the end, they managed to scare each other and I think both were happy to keep their distance. 

What I have come to realize is that anything new to Alvin is nearly hypnotically mesmerizing to him.  It is one of the reasons that I have not tried to video more of his antics because once he sees the camcorder, he stops whatever he is doing and stares at it.  He wants to repeatedly tap it with his nose and there doesn't seem to be enough nose taps to get it out of his system.  When looking at pictures of Alvin, he is almost always looking directly into the camera and many of the pictures are inches from his face.  Although this makes him very photogenic, what the viewer isn't seeing is that he tends to stop whatever he is doing and becomes preoccupied with the camera.  I am going to try to video some of his interactions with my mom to see what is more mesmerizing, the camera or her.  It may just cause a meltdown as he is torn in two, mesmerizing directions but it will be fun trying.