If Your Kid's An Einstein, I'm A Fruit Loop
When I became a parent six years ago I was both excited and scared out of my mind. My emotions are shared by all first time parents. You can read every book and watch every video and pray to the deity of your choice. But, when that first little bundle of joy shows up and looks at you for the first time seemingly to say,
"What you gonna do to raise me?",
you panic, you freak, you forget everything you had learned prior to that moment.
I believe all parents want the best for their children. We want them to be happy, safe and loved. We want them to be smart.
Let me rephrase that.
We want our kids to be smartER then THAT kid.
It doesn't matter who THAT kid is, we just want our kid to be able to do more. We're all guilty of it. We can't help but to watch and see if THAT kid is crawling yet or sitting up, rolling over, grasping, talking, teething, pooping, peeing, sleeping, signing, reading, writing, cooking, walking shedding, blogging, bathing or preparing for their dissertation.
And that is all in the first month.
We are first time parents, and we are sleep deprived neurotics.
My wife and I didn't have the 9 months to attend the first time parents boot camp. Not that we didn't want to, that's just how it worked out for us.
(If you want the whole story, send me an email.)
Because we were foster parents we had less than 24 hours to go from couple of two, to a family of three. So our pre-baby mania was concentrated. But, over time we caught to the hysteria.
We went so far as to get a Baby Einstein DVD. If you don't recall or never heard of Baby Einstein DVD's, they were designed (sold) to make your childa genius. At the least, smarter then THAT kid.
Because I was a typical first time parent I was intrigued to say the least. So when we started the DVD I was excited to see what state of the art educational baby stimuli looked like.
Would my intelligence jump as well from this infantile IQ workout?
How soon would my child be on the news displaying his amazing brain power?
We hit PLAY on the DVD.
I knew after the first twirling frog toy I had been duped. It wasn't even a good twirling frog. It was like somebody was cleaning out a toy box and they were video taping the contents for insurance purposes while classical music played on their stereo.
If you ask my wife she will tell how irritated this made me. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one. For fear of a huge class action lawsuit, the Baby Einstein people, Disney, are offering refunds if you were not happy with their product.
This is just one product out of thousands aimed at making babies better then THAT. Truth is most wont do anything more than entertain your child. And that's ok.
What I have learned in these past six years is that THAT kid's parents are trying to better then MY kid and THAT kid over there too.
OUR kids will be fine if we parents learn to follow their leads now and then. It's not the video they want to watch, but they want to watch that video with YOU.
Children will have all the pressure on then that they need. WE just need to learn from THEM.
When I became a parent six years ago I was both excited and scared out of my mind. My emotions are shared by all first time parents. You can read every book and watch every video and pray to the deity of your choice. But, when that first little bundle of joy shows up and looks at you for the first time seemingly to say,
"What you gonna do to raise me?",
you panic, you freak, you forget everything you had learned prior to that moment.
I believe all parents want the best for their children. We want them to be happy, safe and loved. We want them to be smart.
Let me rephrase that.
We want our kids to be smartER then THAT kid.
It doesn't matter who THAT kid is, we just want our kid to be able to do more. We're all guilty of it. We can't help but to watch and see if THAT kid is crawling yet or sitting up, rolling over, grasping, talking, teething, pooping, peeing, sleeping, signing, reading, writing, cooking, walking shedding, blogging, bathing or preparing for their dissertation.
And that is all in the first month.
We are first time parents, and we are sleep deprived neurotics.
My wife and I didn't have the 9 months to attend the first time parents boot camp. Not that we didn't want to, that's just how it worked out for us.
(If you want the whole story, send me an email.)
Because we were foster parents we had less than 24 hours to go from couple of two, to a family of three. So our pre-baby mania was concentrated. But, over time we caught to the hysteria.
We went so far as to get a Baby Einstein DVD. If you don't recall or never heard of Baby Einstein DVD's, they were designed (sold) to make your childa genius. At the least, smarter then THAT kid.
Because I was a typical first time parent I was intrigued to say the least. So when we started the DVD I was excited to see what state of the art educational baby stimuli looked like.
Would my intelligence jump as well from this infantile IQ workout?
How soon would my child be on the news displaying his amazing brain power?
We hit PLAY on the DVD.
I knew after the first twirling frog toy I had been duped. It wasn't even a good twirling frog. It was like somebody was cleaning out a toy box and they were video taping the contents for insurance purposes while classical music played on their stereo.
If you ask my wife she will tell how irritated this made me. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one. For fear of a huge class action lawsuit, the Baby Einstein people, Disney, are offering refunds if you were not happy with their product.
This is just one product out of thousands aimed at making babies better then THAT. Truth is most wont do anything more than entertain your child. And that's ok.
What I have learned in these past six years is that THAT kid's parents are trying to better then MY kid and THAT kid over there too.
OUR kids will be fine if we parents learn to follow their leads now and then. It's not the video they want to watch, but they want to watch that video with YOU.
Children will have all the pressure on then that they need. WE just need to learn from THEM.
1 comment:
The sad part, is that most of the early pushing parents these days do isn't for the child. It's all about the parent's ego. "Look how smart my child is...see what a great parent I am..."
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