Child Nurture

There is no more hot button subject than child nurture. We've all been children so have opinions. All our lives we observe the children of others. Novels and movies and Sesame Street and Mr Rogers deal with children and childhood. It is a sacred subject; better be careful what you say. Our adult lives may, or may not, be ruled by what happened to us in childhood.

There is a plethora of books about childhood, learned tomes and academic papers. Anthropologists have plotted how cultures are formed by what happens in childhood within each culture, including the influence of breast feeding methods. My city's newspaper only a few days ago reported scientists restating that longer breast feeding is salubrious. To repeat, everyone has an opinion.

In spite of my caution in approaching the subject I'm gonna be reckless and write down a few of my beliefs about the nurture of children.

1. Children learn by copying what their parents do: yes, the good and the bad. They want to be like you.

2. To an amazing degree children are fascinated by what they look like, what they are wearing, and whether it is like, or dissimilar to what their caregivers are wearing. My two year old is stuck at the moment with long pants which have no pockets similar to the pockets in my pants, so he comes by and puts his little trucks and trinkets in the pockets of my pants.

3. One of the biggest lies in American culture is the statement, "Children are color blind." From curiosity, not from judgment, children very early are keenly aware of racial differences. Where things go wrong about race is not the child's observations of the differences, which so fascinate them, but the attitudes of their parents about race. Children want to be like their parents.

4. Children dote on approval. In this matter the best role model I know of for parents is Mr Rogers.

5. Our culture, regrettably, has decided, overall, that Sigmund Freud is a bad man. Rats! Childhood sexuality begins at birth. You'd have to be tremendously uptight not to observe children's fascination with nudity and sex. Crippling, I believe, is for children to get the notion that their fascination is somehow bad or shameful. Light hearted humor and gentle turning away of their precocious quests is what works the best.

Singing, dancing, running, swimming, climbing, should obviously be encouraged. But, oh, the safety imperatives! Too often children are told to be quiet. I have a hunch that adults with gorgeous voices, either singing or speaking or both, were never silenced or quieted in childhood.

The single most important thing that can happen in childhood is for the child to learn that he or she is loved by both parents, and loved beyond measure.

Barry