For weeks it seems I’ve been getting around to penning this post and as the days, weeks and months go by there’s always something better to do. So despite being kept up in the middle of the night by a very distressed little girl and not really thinking straight (guess that’s just part of the job – no, not the not thinking straight bit... that’s just me :)... the tending to screaming child for a whole hour in the middle of the night bit) and as there’s never going to be a better time, I figured I’d just have to get writing.
OK, firstly it needs to be said (though probably just for me) that Daddy Day Care was never a conscious decision on our parts. To borrow an aphorism from a favourite (and similarly unintelligible) investment thinker of mine, Nassim Taleb; “nothing’s as permanent as things that are temporary” and whilst I continue to actively (though somewhat too passively at times) pursue work I’m yet to get back into my career properly – and after a couple of false starts I find myself on the job hunt again. The hope of course is that this situation rights itself sometime soon but for the moment Nic, being the trooper that she is, has gone back to work a couple of days a week and we find ourselves surviving, rather than living as we’re meant to be.
Having gotten that off my chest, the bright side of this of course is that we’re both home with Zara most days (with Nic only physically at work on Mondays and Thursdays) and are pretty much taking an equal share in looking after her – even though mine’s a little more equal than Nic’s :) ... and I really do feel like I’m forever cleaning up after the both of them. That said, it’s interesting to note how her preference for either one of us changes from week to week depending on her mood – and perhaps on how much energy we’ve had for her in the most recent past – and how sad it is that most daddies, generally being off at work, don’t get to have the level of interaction with their babies that I’ve gotten so used to. As we’re finding out with so many things of course, everything that one does with their baby has consequences, so we wonder how showering Zara with entirely too much love and attention is likely to affect her later in life... positively we hope? But this does lead one to consider whether anything is really likely to affect the person that she already is? And whether 1; we’re actually likely to curtail our natural predisposition to hyper-parenting (this is clearly evident already – though I’ll go into this later) and 2; if this isn’t already part of the program anyway? (But perhaps I should spare you my metaphysical ramblings for another time).
With regard to hyper-parenting, we were watching a great documentary by the name of “Lost Adventures of Childhood” (highly recommend it) when we first came across the term and I reckon you really do have to ask yourself whether too much love isn’t potentially harmful to your child. I mean, is it possible (or indeed likely) that carrying Zara around everywhere for the first few months could have resulted in her being late to roll over? Was it why she hadn’t been weight bearing until recently? Is the fact that she’s not yet crawling in any way related to the fact that we wouldn’t just leave her alone on the floor for long enough periods? Is it healthy at all that we (though particularly Nic, if truth be told) would be so obsessed with over-researching and over-analysing every aspect of our child’s behaviour and ongoing development? And is all of this just a natural propensity for us to want the best for our children or have we somehow become conditioned to just wanting to out-do the proverbial Joneses?
I have a knack perhaps for relating everything back to Finance and Investment but as I ponder the above questions I keep thinking “stop acting like deluded Central Bankers arrogantly tinkering with a complex system” as you’re sure to fark thinks up – and God knows they’ve been doing a good job of it. (With regard to Central Bankers I could query the unintended consequences of QE2, soft commodity price speculation, food price inflation and social revolt in the Middle East – think the “butterfly effect” of Chaos Theory – but that could be even less intelligible than a metaphysics rant... and would no doubt simplify a very complicated state of affairs). The point is of course, that just as hyper-parenting is being found to have a multitude of unintended consequences – some as profound as loss of creativity, diminished social ability, etc – and as the development of a human being is hugely complex, perhaps we have a responsibility as parents to not over-do it, for fear getting it frightfully wrong. And maybe the natural way is the best way? This is not to say of course that we as parents we shouldn’t be aware of the way in which our little bundles of joy are developing (and being informed, taking steps to address developmental hurdles and the like are all part of the responsibility of parenting) but one should not obsess with regard to these things as they’re likely beyond our control anyway.
That being said, I’ve noted already that we have a natural predisposition to hyper-parenting and it’s perhaps for this reason that I’ve just spent 3 paragraphs cautioning myself against doing the inevitable :) – we’ll see.
With reference to the picture above, she had just gone 4 months when we first gave her a whole strawberry to play with to see what would happen... and lo and behold she did exactly what she does with most things; she picked it up and started chewing on it. And although we held off starting solids for another month or so (as her digestive tract was likely still too immature), we’ve since been subscribing to the theory that “babies watch you eat and will naturally start to taste and eat what you do, as and when they’re ready” (or Baby Led Weaning as it’s also known).
While it’s a little more complicated than that, and as you can see from the above there’s generally a lot of cleaning up to do for Daddy afterwards, we question why it is that we would all mindlessly follow the path of force feeding our children the same, ubiquitously pear flavoured, pre-packaged, inedible slop? Is it simply a case of convenience (read laziness on our parts) or have the marketing efforts of the food industry been successful in convincing us that puréed baby food could in fact be better than fresh whole foods? I wonder but am betting that prior to the 50s, when H.J. Heinz Company started marketing the nutritional benefits of their manufactured mush no one had ever thought to put beautifully softened chicken pieces (that Zara ordinarily goes nuts for) in a blender like my mother did the other week as she added “Trust me son, this is the best way”. C’mon! Without boring you with the details (think digestion starts in the mouth!), having been giving her finger foods for 4 months now, she eats pretty much everything (including fish, broccoli, zucchini, etc), has developed great fine motor function, is excited at feeding time and goes ballistic when she sees blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and the like... much better we reckon than having to deal with a child that screams and purses their lips every time their parents start making aeroplane sounds in an attempt to convince them that Golden Vegetable Mash was in fact made for human consumption. :)
Re the above picture, there isn’t really much to say other than this was Zara’s first camping trip at Booderee National Park near Jervis Bay in October and that you have to admit she looked super cute hanging out with Maya in her little camping chair. Just thought I’d throw it in. Nor is there anything particularly noteworthy re the swimming one below other than perhaps persistence pays off – and that Daddy’s looking pretty buff :). We tried countless times to get her in the water earlier this summer before she finally became comfortable, happy and even eager to go for a dip either at Balmoral or any of a number of swimming pools. She absolutely adores it now.
Getting back to my hyper-rant about what goes on in Daddy Day Care’s head as he’s looking after his little munchkin, let me address those questions regarding the developmental effects of over-loving our little ones. For the past month we’ve been taking our little girl to Gymbaroo and since having started to look into the various developmental milestones that babies all go through (with a view to getting there first of course :)) for the past couple of months we’ve been doing little else beside encouraging independent play and ample floor time. The thinking here again we reckon is profound in its simplicity; the normal, sequential development of a human being is a miracle of nature and altering it in any way is foolhardy, reckless or worse. Which is to say that that while our efforts as parents to improve on nature through the use of aids and props is often well intentioned it is ill-informed and the current thinking in Neurophysiological Psychology is that there’s a strong connection between a baby’s early physiological development and an individual’s future academic and intellectual abilities. Put another way the theory purports that certain types of movement are required for the creation of particular neural pathways and skipping or by-passing certain developmental steps (or expediting a baby’s learning to walk par example) could be having extraordinarily detrimental effects on our offspring. We look at the alarming rates of ADHD in our society, falling literacy and numeracy levels, dumbed down school curricula and yet we never think to ask whether that Product Manager from Fischer Price, who in their creative wisdom invented the Walker or Bouncinette or whatever, had any idea that they could be stymieing the intellectual development of future generations – damn Product Managers!
Anyway, changing the tone slightly (to tone deaf some would argue :) – see pic above... I say you gotta teach ‘em the classic bass riffs first!) Zara’s been having a whale of a time over the last few months. Just days from exactly 9 months old she’s weighing 7.9kg, she’s 71cm tall, she’s just starting to creep forward (not quite commando-ing yet but she’ll get there) and we’ve just detected the first bottom incisor. And whilst Zara’s been busily learning about the world and her place in it her parents have been equally busy learning what it means to be parents. Noting too that in just a few months we’ll be celebrating her 1st Birthday, we can’t believe how the time has flown, how much she’s changed in that time and how greatly she continues to enrich our lives. We look forward to the all the lessons that we’re still to learn from our little girl and sharing them with you next time.
‘Til then, keep swinging and all the best.
