Giving New Meaning to Parenting

Love… won’t hurt anymore.
It’s an open smile on a friendly shore!

On the way to the zoo with another stay-at-home dad, Boobaby and I sang the entire theme from Love Boat, and I’m simultaneously proud and appalled that my 20-month old sang along with most of it. Boo has arrived at that incredible language plateau where new words constantly flood out of her: she sings, she counts, she converses with stuffed animals and small appliances.

My companion’s daughter, just two months younger, doesn’t talk much at all yet, a fact that he worried about over lunch. As he explained his concerns, my Boobaby climbed out of the high chair, spun around in circles, banged on the window, and of course, just wouldn’t eat. All throughout, my friend’s calm daughter sat charmingly, using a spoon to eat her own macaroni more tidily than some teenagers I know.

As I tore my hair out at my failure to squeeze one bite of fruit into my daughter (who at that point was busily using the table as a tunnel), I had to believe that he had the better deal.

Boo has some incredible qualities, don’t get me wrong: she’s verbal, curious, and very focused when an activity is novel. She can play with my camera for an hour without budging from the chair, but try to sit her down for twenty minutes to eat and she’ll chafe. She’s very engaging, but at the same time, prone to tantrums. And in both extremes, I can’t help but see a reflection of myself and my wife.

I talk constantly, I don’t suffer boredom well, and I’m fascinated by discovering critters under rocks. Boobaby is exactly the same way. My friend is much more introspective than me, a professional writer and an avid reader, and far more reflective. Not surprisingly, his daughter is very much the same way. She’s learned to feed herself and loves to read endlessly; Boo loves to dig in the dirt and jabber.

Every baby develops different skills (and learns bad habits) on her own schedule, influenced by her innate personality but also certainly by our personalities, which of course dictate how we raise them. So, scant comfort though it is, I shouldn’t be worried about Boobaby’s fidgetiness and distractibility. After all, I’m a fidgety cuss myself — what else did I expect?

So what if Boo won’t sit at the table yet? She will, someday, and at least I can be proud that, even better than most other kids her age, or most anyone, probably, my daughter can sing the Love Boat theme.

[tags]kids, children, toddlers, eating, nutrition, fruit, frustration, feelings, love[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by maria clara de melo, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved