Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Mixed Messages



Today's guest blogger is my daughter, Sarah Meadow Walsh -
     
               I was always pretty sure I would have kids someday.  I babysat, nannied, worked as a camp counselor, and planned for a career in which I could work primarily with young children, completing Master’s degrees in education, children’s literature, and library science.  But when my husband and I found out I was pregnant, and the abstract idea became a reality, suddenly we were both thrown into this new and very unsettling position of not knowing what the heck we had gotten ourselves into!  When it’s your body changing, and an addition to your family arriving in a matter of months, all bets are off.  It can be overwhelming figuring out how to prepare for it.  Unfortunately, there’s a very aggressive and very calculated market out there targeting wide-eyed, unsuspecting new parents, working to convince them of all the things they “need” to keep Baby happy, healthy, safe, comfortable, and intellectually stimulated. 
  It can feel reassuring that someone has done what seems to be the necessary legwork.  Many online retailers go so far as to provide “handy” lists for parents creating a registry so they can just check off items as they go.  But remember – they’re trying to move inventory!  As with any consumer situation, it’s important to take a step back and separate the wheat from the chaff.    For example, almost all of these retailers suggest that a diaper pail is an absolute necessity.  Well, we got a small foot-operated trash can, which we empty frequently.  Problem solved (was there a problem to begin with?)  Here’s another one: wipe warmers. You’d think from how they’re marketed that they are parenting gold.  We thought, hey, our daughter flinches when a cold wipe touches her bum, and who wouldn’t? But then I read online that they only warm the wipes inside the container; once you pull one out to, y’know, use it, it might as well have been sitting in a bucket of ice.  Read reviews, ask friends who are parents, and figure out the must-haves, the kind-of-usefuls, and the don’t-needs.
Some of this you won’t discover until your baby arrives. And a device, brand or lovey that one family can’t live without, you could take or leave.  There are gigabytes of data devoted to this very topic on baby forums and parenting blogs, so I won’t do the rundown here.  But I’ve noticed a few trends lately that have me either scratching my head or downright concerned, and I want to discuss those here.
When our daughter was only about 2.5 months old, my mother-in-law saw a picture of her chewing on her hand with a look of intense concentration, and said, “She’s teething.”  We haven’t yet seen any teeth push through, but the preliminaries have been rough on her at times.  We have a few teethers that we got from our registry as well as some that people found for us, but I decided to do some shopping online to see what else there was.  I came across a company that makes what’s called “Droolery,” a line of trendy-looking necklaces and bracelets in a rainbow of colors that are actually made of silicone and safe for Baby to bite and chew on, so Mom can accessorize with the best of them and still help her little one relieve the pain and tenderness of teething.  Sounds like a great idea, right?  But it got me thinking…this is just one in a very long list of toys and baby items that replicate actual products that adults use or wear.  A teething necklace is handy, but what if Mom puts on a treasured heirloom?  At best, the child puts bite marks in it (this happened to a necklace that was my great-grandmother’s) and at worst, he or she could choke on a bead that comes off.  And then, as babies become toddlers, parents are encouraged to buy plastic “Shaving Kits” and “Fix-it Sets” for boys, and “Beauty Salons” for girls.  Aside  from the overwhelming gender bias of these toys, I find it problematic that these products, while cute or stylish or endearing, might make it hard for children to understand the difference between their toy and a real, potentially dangerous tool.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a child gets confused about why it’s perfectly okay for him to use a plastic razor, but when he grabs Daddy’s,  he gets yelled at and the razor is taken away.  Plenty of parents let their babies and toddlers play with the real pots and pans, and what’s the harm in that?  Well, if their “toys” are on the hot stove, suddenly they’re dangerous.  Same idea.  Little kids have enough to figure out without trying to differentiate between something they can play with and something that looks just like it, but is off-limits. 
For that matter, instead of surrounding kids with toys (and the sorts of things Magda Gerber, the genius founder of RIE, would call “contrrrrraptions”) give them experiences and watch them wonder.  Go for a walk, understanding that it will take three hours to get to the next street over while they inspect every bug, crack in the sidewalk, and stray leaf.  Visit the park and sit back, letting them dig in the sand with their hands instead of a shovel, so they can feel it sift through their fingers.  When they want to pretend to cook, resist the impulse to outfit them with all those costumey accoutrements and take a cue from my brother when he was about 3 years old.  My mom saw him playing in the kitchen and she said, “I should get you a chef’s hat.”  He responded, with an implied eye-roll, “Mom, I’m wearing a chef’s hat!”  Boy, he sure showed her.

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