"I brought a baby into the world but I still had no idea how to raise her, how to change her, how to feed her properly....I had no idea at the time Del-C was born that when she cried it meant she was wet or hungry."I read this out to my 15 year-old daughter and asked, Would you know why a baby was crying? Well, yes, she answered. Usually if someone cries there's something wrong so you try to figure out what it is.
What is that? Commonsense? Or instinct? I thought a mother's response to her baby crying was instinctive. Does everything have to be spelt out?
She then said, When I'm older I should get a job inventing lame, pathetic excuses for people. I'd be really good at it. Better than that anyway.
2 comments:
That means she missed anything to do with babies in her home life and that of her friends, missed or evaded the hospital instructions and supervision in the days after birth and then the visits from the Plunket Nurse at home.
All possible I suppose..
JC
Lindsay
We impart our culture, common sense, values, and ideas through those myriad of small conversations we have with our children every day.
Through acts of selfless kindness, compassion, mercy and tenderness we demonstrate how to live well with others.
There are as we all know, children growing up in New Zealand without anything resembling that kind of parenting, without empathy, without human warmth and affirmation, without hope.
We who live in functional families consider it normal, we take it for granted.
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