Your baby's politics.

You probably don't think your baby is old enough yet to develop a political philosophy.  Think again, and consider the cases of Baby A and Baby B.


Baby A, who is an only child, lives in a big house on a big lot on a quiet street on the edge of town.  Aside from the occasional sound of a vacuum cleaner or lawn mower, Baby A hears few sounds not produced either directly or indirectly by Baby A.  That is, in part, because of the white noise machine which drowns out noises.  More importantly, A's parents subscribe to an educational-toy-of-the-month club, so every few weeks, beginning with the cute little Busy Booties® from Month 1, Baby A gets another new toy expertly designed to meet Baby A's needs in a manner most perfectly suited to Baby A's current level of cognitive development.  The first instructional unit has focused on the concept of Cause and Effect, and Baby A has learned that a shake of Baby A's left foot, thanks to the red Busy Booty®, will produce an amusing rattling sound, a shake of Baby A's right foot, thanks to the green Busy Booty® will produce a pleasant ringing bell sound, a squeeze of the purple plush octopus will produce a squeaky sound tuned to one of eight tones of the C major scale, and a tug on the blue ducky will cause music to play and the mobile over Baby A's crib to turn.  When Baby A cries, one of Baby A's parents hears, thanks to the house intercom, and quickly comes and removes Baby A from the crib and solves whatever problem is bothering Baby A.  As Baby A gets older and learns to talk, A's parents will usually give A whatever A asks for.


Then there is Baby B.  Baby B lives in an apartment on a busy street in the middle of the city.  Baby B shares a room with two older siblings.  The neighbors in the apartment above Baby B's room are also noisy people who often play loud music not requested by Baby B.  Because of the liquor store and the two taverns within a block of Baby B's apartment, Baby B's sleep is frequently interrupted by the sound of breaking glass or drunken brawls from outside the window.  Baby B also hears random sirens, gunshots, and barking dogs.  When Baby B cries, Baby B's parents might respond, but they may both be too busy with the other children.  As Baby B gets older and learns to talk,  B will speak out about what B wants, but B's parents will not usually be able to give B what B asks for.


One of these children, barring the parents' deliberate effort to teach otherwise, will probably grow up to be a free market Republican who believes that the world is a fair place and that with enough effort, one can accomplish whatever one wants to in one's life, so people all deserve to be exactly as rich or poor as they are.  


The other child, barring the parents' deliberate effort to teach otherwise, will probably grow up to be a Democrat who believes the world is unfair and stacked against many of us, and that forces beyond our control often deny hardworking people the rewards they deserve, through no fault of their own.  


I invite you to guess which is which.


Both of these children may grow up unable to understand how the other can possibly have a view of the world so different from their own. 

Got the Picture?

One bit of advice I wish I had followed when my children were young was to take more pictures.  It was always such a pain keeping pictures organized in those days, but today, with all the digital technology available, one no longer has any excuse not to take pictures of everything your child does.

And I do mean everything.  Yes, I did get all the sappy shots, getting on the school bus the first day of kindergarten with the adorable little plaid dress, family vacations, holidays, birthday parties, graduations . . . well some of them, at least.  


What I would advise most of all is to get pictures of each child with each friend.  Take one every year at each birthday party.  Send a copy of the birthday party picture along with each thank you note.  Likewise, you should get a picture of your baby in each new baby outfit that came as a gift from a friend or relative and send that along with the thank you note, because no giver of an adorable little baby dress will be able to resist seeing how adorable the recipient looks in the gift she bought.  Ideally, the relative should appear in the picture, holding the baby.  When your child is a senior in high school, he or she may need a baby picture to put in the high school yearbook.  Be sure you have a respectable selection of pictures from which to choose (and not just the one of your child in the bathtub!) so your teen won’t be able to accuse you of never having cared about him or her, and there you .

Then save as many pictures as you can of each friend and relation, and when your child has a bar mitzvah or a Quinceañera or graduation party or a wedding reception, or when he or she retires, you can trot out all these pictures again and make a slide show or video to show as entertainment.  All your guests will love seeing pictures of themselves and each other from ten or twenty or fifty years earlier, and you’ll have a better party, with people being able to laugh at how geeky they looked in second grade or what funny hairstyles people wore twenty years ago, or how young Aunt Jennifer used to look back in those days.

Of Timetables and Flannel Teapots

When random stuff happens to a small child, the child learns to think the world is confusing and out of control.  A set schedule--breakfast at 7:00, story time at 7:30, bath time at 8:00, a walk outside at 9:00, playtime at 10:00, etc.--helps children to develop a sense of security and order, to organize, predict, and to make sense of events happening around them, and eventually to become self-disciplined people with better study skills and a work ethic.  

My children had a structure at the university day care center where I took them as babies.  We only used the center part time, because I took leave from my teaching job when the children were small, but to send them there, we had to commit to sending each child there at least two four-hour blocks on different days of the week.  Otherwise, the children wouldn’t have the opportunity to bond and form relationships with the staff.  In addition to free play time with high quality educational toys, naps, snacks, and walks outside, they had art, music, and story time, and even gym at a prescribed time every day.  Then there was my favorite: flannels.  What they did not have was television watching time. 

I had never heard of flannels, but this turned out to be one of my children’s favorite activities, and my friends’ children’s.  By now, for all I know, they have replaced the flannel board with a computer and projector, but I sincerely hope they have not.  The flannel board helped train the children to face the same direction for five or ten minutes and listen to a group presentation, an important skill they’ll need later in school.  It also helped teach them, through daily repetition and a visual component, some Mother Goose rhymes and songs.     

I didn't always follow a schedule at home; in fact, I thought excessive regimentation would stifle their creativity, so I pretty much followed their cues.  Besides, my own schedule didn't always allow a consistent routine day after, depending on classes, doctor's appointments, the weather, and the progress of the plumber or painters.  I'm sorry now that I didn't try harder to follow a schedule like the day care center's, and if I could do it all over again, I would try to do so.

Even children who don’t attend day care centers can get something out of scheduled activities like flannels.  After we left the center, I decided to continue with my own homemade flannel board.  I covered a cork board with flannel and bought some flannel fabric to cut into teapots, monkeys, beds, spiders, waterspouts, mice, clocks, kittens, mittens, and all the other little visual aides necessary for all my children’s favorite nursery rhymes.  It was a tedious process, and soon I discovered I could cut out pictures of all these objects and make them stay up on the flannel board if I glued old dryer sheets to the back of them.  That was better than tossing all that used fabric softener into the garbage.  Unlike books, they don’t cost a lot of money or take up a lot of space, and you don’t have to take them back to the library.  Best of all, it’s a fun way for children enjoy music and poetry while interacting with the adults who love them, and a better use of time than television.

What’s In a Name?

Babies may be cute, but they’re still just as human as anyone else, and just as deserving of respect.  I like to remember that babies aren’t going to be babies for their entire lives.  We certainly hope they’ll live longer than that.  So give them names they can grow into.  Nicknames are all right for friends and family, and it can be fun to play around with nicknames and make up new ones.  The more the merrier, I say.  But people deserve to have official names on their birth certificates that don't make people laugh at them, or at you, behind their backs.  

I would just remember that when your children are fifty years old and sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, they might wish that instead of Jimmy or Patty or Bubbles or Skip, you had named them James or Patricia, or something else a bit more dignified.  They’ll get more respect, and so will you.    

Read to your child.

Yesterday I told a friend who teaches first grade that I had created this blog and could use her advice on what subject to cover.  Her immediate response was "Tell them to read to their child!  READ TO THAT CHILD!"  I agreed with her that this is crucial advice, but I didn't need to hear it from her.


I could read before I started first grade, and I attribute that to the fact that my parents read to me and encouraged me to learn as soon as I could.  My father had a book by Rudolph Flesch called Why Johnny Can't Read (and What You Can Do about It).  At a time when the "Dick, Jane, and Sally" method was popular in schools, Flesch vigorously advocated a return to phonics.  In the summer between kindergarten and first grade, I taught myself to read from the word lists at the back of his book.  Years later, I learned from my professional colleagues that Theodor Seuss Geisel used Flesch's book and the very same word lists in the back to compose his classic, The Cat in the Hat.  It turns out that Dr. Seuss and I were, literally, on the same page.


However, if you want your child to succeed in school, you can't wait until he's six years old to start reading instruction. Students whose parents rely on teachers to do all the work  will spend the rest of their education catching up with their classmates who had books in the house before starting school.  The advantage doesn't come from anybody's educational kit, and it costs nothing.  All you really need is a library card.  


Education experts agree that parents should sit down with their babies and read aloud to them every day. 


Even before a child is old enough to understand the meaning of the words, the experience of sitting on a parent's lap and listening to language will eventually help the child develop reading skills.  Perhaps more important, it will help develop a love for books and a motivation to learn more, because it helps children make a connection between learning and the love of the adults in their lives.  This is especially true if the adults reading to them are their fathers.  


Ideally, it's best to read a new story a day, although repetition is good.  Fortunately, most public libraries will allow parents to check out lots of books and keep them for over a week.  If you can take out ten books every week and keep the ones your child likes best for two or three weeks, perhaps reading two or three of them aloud every day, then your to your child will benefit tremendously.  


If you start early enough, it doesn't matter what the book is about.  Read them the telephone directory if you want to.  It doesn't even matter whether you can read the words on the page or not, although anyone who can read this can probably read a children's picture book.  Of course a child will probably catch on by the age of three or four, but if a parent can't read, having a newborn baby is a perfect opportunity to learn how.  Whether you believe in phonics or "whole language" instruction, just listening to the sound of the language, while seeing the written word, will help.  Someone (and I'm sorry I don't have a source for this) wrote that a child will learn to read after having heard a thousand stories, about one new book a day for three years.  That's a good goal.  


I decided long before I had my first child that I would read to her, starting on the day she was born.  I even chose the book years in advance, The Wind in the Willows.  I remember sitting up in my hospital bed holding her to my chest, and listening to the poetry of the language.  On finishing the book, I decided I didn't really like its message, but I like to think that she found comfort in the sound of the words in the voice that should have been familiar to her after nine months.  At about six months, she started grabbing at books and trying to put them in her mouth, so we had to rely on cloth, plastic, and cardboard books for a while.  I did supply her with alphabet blocks and a few other educational toys and games, but I got over the educational-toy-buying urge by the time her two younger sisters started school.  She read her first book at age 3 and read more as a child than I did, and her SAT reading score in high school was 800.  The other two are also excellent readers, and I'm going to stop boasting now.  I mention this not to argue that my children are better than anybody else's, but to argue that parents who read to their children from the beginning can give them advantages they won't have if nobody reads to them.        

Both Hands on the Car.

Streets and parking lots can be dangerous places for small children.  Drivers can't see people as short as the average two-year-old, especially not drivers of SUV's and other trucks.  Ideally, you should hold a toddler's hand until he or she is safe in your car.  Unfortunately, that's not possible if your hands are full of the toddler's younger sibling.  Unless your toddler can climb into the car and wait for you to strap the baby safely into a car seat, you need to make sure the toddler is safe and out of harm's way.  You can tell them to stay nearby, but it's not very clear, and they may still want to run off.  If you phrase it in negative terms and tell your two-year-old not to run off, that might be just what it take to plant the idea in that little head of running off, and then you have a conflict on your hands.  It's better to give them clear, positive directions, like "keep one hand on the car," but that's still not the safest distance.  What I taught my toddlers to do was to stand so close to the car that they were touching it with both hands.  That way, they were too busy making sure that neither hand left the car to stray.  Another driver could not hit the child without hitting me and the car itself.