Baby, Toddler and Preschooler

This site is about baby. About what is happening within your child--from the moment of birth until the time when your child goes to the wider world of school.

Babies and children live minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day, and it is those small units of time which will concern you most in your twenty-four-hour caring. Loving a baby or a child is a circular business, a kind of feedback loop. The more you give, the more you get, and the more you get, the more you feel like giving...

It starts in the very first weeks, when you chat to your baby as you handle him and one day you notice that he is listening. When you can see him listening you talk to him more. Because you talk more he listens more and cries less. Less crying and more smiling from him mean that you feel like giving him even more of the talk that so charmingly pleases him. You have created between you a beneficial circle, each giving pleasure to the other.

It goes on like that too. A crawling baby tries to follow you every time you leave the room. If his determination to come too makes you increasingly determined to leave him behind, each trivial journey will end in miserable tears from him and claustrophobic irritation for you. But if you will accept his feelings and help him stay with you, he will pay you back in contented charm and turn the chore you do into a game you both enjoy. 

Later still your preschooler child will chatter endlessly to you. If you half-listen and half-reply the whole conversation seems meaningless for both of you. But if you  really listen and really answer, your child will talk more and what he says will make more sense. Because your child talks and says more, you will feel increasingly inclined to listen and answer. Communication will flourish between you and your child.

Bringing up a child in this flexible, thoughtful way takes time and effort. It involves extremely hard work as well as great rewards. Bringing up a child is one of the most creative, most worthwhile and most undervalued of all jobs. You are working to make a new person, helped to be as you believe a person should be.