A new learning story: Capability and vulnerability
My friend and colleague Jean Rockel suggested I write a newborn story – “to remind us what it’s all about”.
I’m getting ready to have a baby. I finished work on Friday, with just over 4 weeks of prenatal growth to go. I am very pregnant, very slow, and fairly cantankerous.
Walking away from work can only be described as bittersweet – while I am humbled and joyful by the prospect of open-ended time with this baby (one on one, with an emerging vegetable garden as a backdrop – ah the perfect symbolism in parallel!) I am surprised by how challenged I am to kiss goodbye the manufactured self-esteem that comes with my career.
I allegedly know quite a lot about babies – I’ve had some amazing opportunities for specialised study, and have the bewildering blessing of being one-who-is-called-upon-for-advice regarding infants and toddlers, especially the subtleties of striving for wise practice when these tamariki are in groups. Many of New Zealand’s infant/toddler advocates are my mates, and I’m on hugging terms with some major international infant/toddler experts. I use phrases like “unreasonable developmental expectations” when I sleep talk. I talk about ‘my field’ without shame of pretension.
Instead of feeling buoyed with confidence by these facts, I feel increasingly aware of the things I don’t know – both things I know I don’t know, and the multitudes of stuff I don’t even know I don’t know. I might have changed hundreds of nappies but I’ve bathed about two babies, I have never hung out with an infant at 2am, nor brushed a toddler’s teeth. I also know how many ways there are to mess with a baby’s head.
I feel pressure to be a fantastic parent, an expectation to adore parenting, and conscious of how critical the lens is through which we ‘experts’ often view the practice surrounding babies. Good golly – what if one of my infant/toddler pals stops by and I’m engaging in a controversial activity, like changing a nappy within view of a mobile – interfering with a purist RIE perspective? How will I manage when a friend or relative props my babe into a sitting position before s/he is ready to get in and out of that position on her/his own? Precocious pre-locomotive movement – as evil as feeding Coca Cola to babies – will I have any friends or family left if I make them all sign Memoranda of Understanding before meeting my infant?
I sit squarely at the intersection of Blessed, Overwhelmed, Excited, and Frightened. Herein begins the ultimate test of my philosophical honesty and uprightness, my theoretical knowledge, and my ability to abandon both when they don’t serve me anymore. My colleague Bron encourages me to consider childbirth as the first major lesson in relinquishing control. I talk an awful lot about the need to foster a sense of trust in young children, here is my opportunity to trust myself, my baby, the world, the Almighty, and the perfect ebb and flow of all of us together.
I’ll let you know how I go.
Two months later… She’s Here!
As I sit down to write this, my sleeping babe is four weeks old. Already I can’t imagine a world without her in it.
Brooke Aroha McCaleb arrived on December 9th, 2003, at the small rural hospital in Rangiora. She is a North Canterbury girl, through and through. The seventh generation in her female line bound to these bronzed plains. When I took her outside in her first Nor’wester, she turned her face into the hot, dry wind, closed her eyes, and blissed out so thoroughly as to suggest that her understanding of this place is blueprinted on her very being.
Brooke is teaching me much. Birthing and parenting both reminding me of my life lessons half learned – chiefly, the ability to live in the moment. She is an expert at this. Me, I have to work to neither fret about the past nor worry about the future. For Brooke there is only the moment. Even as I sit and greedily drink in the details of her deliciousness, it is largely the fear of forgetting her newborn perfection that motivates me.
Details like the fine, dark fuzz on her ears. The tiny bones of her dimpled knuckles (weirdly, I can’t help but compare them to the spines of tinned salmon …) I behold in amazement the way her big eyes grow in clarity and understanding day by day, how her mouth opens slightly when she concentrates deeply. How her tucked up knees and suckling mouth fit neatly from breast to breast when feeding. How that top eye peers up at me during a feed. Her hairy little mammal shoulders are a wonder, and her constellation of milk spots present a glimpse into the heavens. I could watch for hours as her expressive hands furl and unfurl. Miraculous.
My mum told me that there is a Japanese word specific to the kind of love a mother feels for her baby when breastfeeding (“amae”), and the feeling certainly deserves its own word. Or perhaps that’s the rush of beautiful prolactin making everything just so sublime. Cute mothering fridge magnets previously thought cheesy are suddenly adorable. Love songs make more sense now. They should put this stuff in the water.
I am also more aware of life at the junction of training and trust. Aware that with birthing and parenting alike, preparation (knowledge and practice) is extremely valuable, but only truly useful when combined with trust – in the child and, in one’s ability to read the child’s cues. This key aspect of my philosophy has saved the day a few times, for example when I have been tempted to listen to the clock instead of Brooke’s droopy eyelids. I wonder: “but she’s only been up for an hour … surely she can’t want to go back to sleep?” – now really, who knows best the needs of the newborn: the clock, the adult, or the newborn? (Down with “BabyWise”, but that’s another article …)
This has been an interesting realisation, that while child development knowledge has been helpful and made this process very interesting, it has not (thus far!) been as useful as a solid belief system about babies. Dusting off my philosophy has been as beneficial as checking in with textbooks.
Having said that, Brooke certainly makes textbooks come alive. While I was pregnant I was teaching infant/toddler classes, and infant reflexes seemed all very interesting and important, all appropriately automatic. But watching Brooke’s perfect Moro response makes me irrationally proud, observing her stepping reflex I am convinced she’s a prodigy. When she turns her head in response to her father’s or mother’s voice, my heart flip flops in joy and disbelief. Of course I knew she would do this – babies do this! – but it is somehow unbelievable that those parents are me and my husband. (“For real? My mate is a dad? I get to be her mother? Right on!”)
I am both an infant/toddler early childhood type person, and a parent. The Parent title has usurped the other, but the other was here first and I still wear it with pride. What, then, can I remind my fellow professionals of? What’s it all about?
What is it all about?
It’s about truly celebrating infants, and the miracles of infancy. Only those with a full and reckless appreciation of all that babies are should be working with them. We can be respectful of infants even as we allow their delightfulness to inspire sonnets, haiku, or pure awe.
It’s about reconsidering the depth and breadth of familial and cultural influence, that the beliefs and behaviours passed to a child are as intricate as they are important. The stories and personalities that surround each child are complex, and can’t be defined as neatly as an ethnic descriptor. My baby is a pakeha New Zealander, and yet she carries with her a Tennessean, Scots-Irish, North Cantabrian cocktail that belies the simplicity of that title. She is the daughter of a lapsed Southern Baptist and a flower child gone to seed. She will absorb a complex value system influenced by a unique blend of ancestors, as has every baby ever born, as will every child born hereafter. The challenge for those of us involved in early childhood is vast, and worthy. We must strive to learn at least some of each child’s stories, to honour their values. To do this, we must acknowledge where our own beliefs and behaviours begin and end.
It’s about supporting breastfeeders! Expressing milk is hard work, and those mothers making the effort deserve total encouragement and practical collaboration.
It’s about recognising that real life sometimes demands or creates situations that are less-than-optimal. Couple this with a desire to provide optimal care and there is a recipe for disappointment or – worse – guilt. Thus, we mustn’t harangue one another, scold ourselves, or berate parents for failing to produce perfection. Instead, we can lead by a compassionate example of graceful forgiveness, of calmly trying something again if it doesn’t go just so, of learning from mistakes. Optimum-Addiction is only cool if it is practiced by adults who also demonstrate pragmatism combined with clemency and humour.
It’s all about realising that infants are motivated to learn. All we have to do is not squash their desire for discovery.
It’s all about understanding that infants are pre-wired for relationship. All else takes a back seat until solid relationships are formed, and even the tiniest baby works actively to create a relationship with her caregiver. Brooke looked deep into my eyes within minutes of her birth and I was all hers. Down with production line childcare, up with relationship enhancing early childhood!
And this all points to the importance of trust. We must trust the power of responsive relationships. We must trust ourselves. And we most certainly must trust babies. It is all about trusting that infants are as capable as they are vulnerable.
When we live this realisation we can’t help but award children the respect they deserve.
McCaleb, M. (2004). A new learning story: Capability and vulnerability. The First Years/Nga Tau Tuatahi. NZ Journal of Infant and Toddler Education, 4(1), 6-7.