Sleep Tight

So we slept with the baby, the first few months, but have been gradually transitioning him into his crib as he gradually transitions into waking up fewer than four times every night, and I was just thinking how odd the expectations are with regard to sleeping.

I mean, to the extent that being partnered is considered a natural state for adults (that is, to a pretty great extent), sharing a bed is considered the natural sleeping habit for adults.

And yet, for years and years before this, all through childhood, sleeping alone is considered to be the natural state. (In contemporary US culture, at least: obviously there's a lot of variation between cultures and time periods.) You spend years accustomed to having your own bed, and then you're supposed to just naturally make this big shift and spend years sharing your bed with someone else.

When you think about it, doesn't it seem more reasonable that children should be the ones who customarily sleep with someone? After all, they get anxious and scared of the dark (unless that was just me), and having someone to curl up next to makes it somewhat less alarming. (It's a known fact that monsters don't like to pounce if there's more than one person in the bed.)

Presumably as adults we're less likely to be scared of the dark, and yet that's when we're expected to be able to curl up next to someone as a matter of course.

Personally, I often shared a bed with one or more of my sisters as a child, because there were sometimes more of us than than there were mattresses, but a lot of people don't have this experience. Thanks for helping keep the monsters off, sisters!

Now I feel kind of bad about putting the baby in his crib all alone, although I think he's too young to be scared of the dark at the moment.

Also, I'm suddenly kind of worried about monsters again. Thanks for opening up old wounds, brain.

Mystery Solved?

I've often idly wondered why babies and little kids have such long, long eyelashes, and on reflection I think this is the answer:

It's not actually that they have super-long lashes, it's more than they have regular-length lashes that look super-long on those little faces. It's a perspective thing, in short.

So no need to be jealous of that kid's gorgeous long eyelashes. Be jealous of his tiny face instead. Your eyelashes would be just as impressive if your face were smaller.

That's my beauty tip of the day: shrink your face for dramatically longer-looking eyelashes!

On further reflection, it's probably easier to just use some mascara. Really, people, no need to complicate things. Makeup exists, just use it if you're that concerned about your eyelashes.

Toss the Shoes

This Well piece on running barefoot (which follows another story) is kind of old, but I forgot to notice it when it was new, and still think it's pretty interesting.

I guess the idea is that considering you put huge piles of pressure on your feet walking or running anyway, what's the difference if there's half an inch of rubber between your foot and the road?

One obvious difference is, at least the rubber will keep bits of broken glass from getting stuck in your feet. Also, there's a lot of grit and dirt out there, some of it kind of gross. We used to run around barefoot all the time when I was a kid, but we lived in the country. When we went into town, we had to put on shoes, because, as my mom once said, "people chew tobacco and spit on the sidewalks." 

She probably assumed people didn't want to see grubby barefoot children running around in the aisles of the supermarkets, either. There's no logical reason it would be any dirtier to have people walking around stores barefoot than tracking the same dirt in on their shoes, but somehow it's way more off-putting.

Probably a class issue. "No shirt, no shoes, no service" and all.

We had super tough feet, though, and didn't seem to suffer any ill effects from the lack of shoes. We'd run around on gravel roads and in prickly forests and through stubbly fallow wheat fields. Sometimes we did have to pick stickers out of our feet, but it was just one of the costs of doing fun.

We could justly sneer at anyone who was a tenderfoot. Also, we sometimes ate thistles. Just for the hell of it. Yeah, we were tough.

Now, years older and with the paper-thin soles of one who wears shoes everywhere outdoors, I myself am a tenderfoot. I limp with every step over gravel. Siiiiigh.

Maybe I should take up barefoot running to recapture the glory of my youth. The only problem is that I'd have to take up running, and no way.

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Battling With My Blog Feeds

It turns out that paper tickets and not being allowed to check oneself in online are just as annoying for everyone as I expected. Oh well.

I am still trying to recover from some dedicated party-attending over the weekend that involved very limited sleep, but here are some things I liked this evening.

A reminder from Greta Christina that we should be involved in politics (I like the argument that it's a good idea whether you think politicians are honestly trying to do the right thing by their constituents, or are just trying to get re-elected: either way, they have a reason to listen to you!).

This interesting quote from How We Drive:

There are many words for what happens when people texting while driving crash, but “accident” is not one of them.

I could argue about that from a definitional standpoint--it's an accident if you didn't do it on purpose, after all, and presumably very few people crash on purpose--but it makes a telling point that if you choose to divert your attention from the road in order to send a text message, you can't exactly profess shock if you happen to not stay exactly on the road.

And some fascinating excerpts that Navelgazing Midwife has taken from A Nurse's Handbook of Obstetrics (linked copy digitized by Google, 7th edition copyright 1915, and, I deduce, once the possession of a certain Lane Library).

All are interesting, but for some reason I especially note that

When the baby is about two weeks old, the doctor probably will order one teaspoonful of freshly extracted strained orange juice to which an equal amount of boiled water may be added to prevent the baby from "choking."

I know we're into fruits and vegetables, but two weeks? I've never heard of anyone being advised to give food other than milk/formula to a two-week-old baby these days.

Brandy on the gums to soothe teething pains, yes, everyone I know still does that,* but orange juice?

*Note to Child Services on behalf of my child-having friends: this statement is a lie. Why would I make up a lie like that? It is a question that will bedevil the ages.

Unexplored Childhood

There's an interesting piece in The New York Review of Books on Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood.

It talks about the way children (and adults) like adventure stories, relating this to the fact that every person's childhood is an adventure through an unknown, only gradually discovered territory of land and relationships. So many children's stories are about children dealing with things in situations where adults are only marginally present, and an important part of progress through childhood is to live in and explore the adults-nominal world each child also inhabits at times in his or her life. (The title really foregrounds the idea that this is a boy's concern, but the text is more general, and I think applies to girls as well.)

I like the idea.

The article also laments the way that children no longer get to go outside and play as much in the U.S. because we're so worried about them eating dirt or being kidnapped or getting hit by cars. I've heard this concern before, and it does seem unfortunate. I spent a lot of time running around outside as a child, having bold adventures in what seemed like vast expanses of unexplored wilderness (ah, the cow pasture across the road! the fallow wheat fields!), and I remember those days fondly.

Kids should get outside sometimes, right?

The piece includes a grim tale of two children living on the same street a few houses apart who had never met, presumably because they never went outside to play and run up and down the street (although one can also imagine a blood feud between their parents, just to keep things lively).

The moral is, live next to unexplored wilderness and kick the kids out into it once in a while. Sadly, this is not that easy for many people.

Also, be sure to warn the kids about the dangers of getting eaten by mountain lions if you are out in the wilderness. This information from a study at UC Davis suggests that the old advice about holding your ground if you do see a mountain lion may be faulty: you might want to just run for it.

Bribing Children

LISNews links to this post by a homeschooling parent in Seattle who spurns summer reading programs.

She argues that offering children prizes for reading a lot of books undermines what should be the real reason they read books--you know, 'cause books are awesome.

I have recently been thinking about rewarding behavior that ideally is its own reward, and I was a homeschooled child who once participated in a summer reading program, so I could naught but comment.

To the internet! Is what I said, before showing up here.

When I was 11, I thought the summer reading program at the library was the best thing ever. I read books all the time anyway, and now I could get a coupon to Dairy Queen for it? Sweet!

So in retrospect the program did not actually motivate me. I don't think I read any more than I would have without it, which was already about twice as much as was required for that free ice cream cone or whatever.

I guess I do get the whole "bribery is icky" aspect of trying to convince some child who normally wouldn't be reading all the time to read for ice cream, though. I mean, doesn't that kind of cheapen the whole thing? If you're only reading because you want ice cream, are you really getting everything you could out of it?

At the same time, this assumes that reading and learning are only ever to be properly valued as abstract jewels free from that taint of filthy lucre. And certainly they are valuable in that sense. If you like to read and learn stuff, I think you're more likely to have a sort of lively, thoughtful mind that will make you good at getting stuff out of life.

But reading and learning stuff can also be put to the service of making money and earning a living, and we can't really argue that that's a waste of time. Maybe it doesn't really matter if kids read for the love of reading or for the love of ice cream. Or money. They're going to wind up doing a lot of boring stuff for money later on, right? Get 'em in the habit!

Besides, maybe they start reading some boring book for ice cream, and then discover that it's actually fascinating and cool!

Bribery: is it really so wrong?

Yeah, I'm working on a parenting book right now that will lay out my theories on child rearing in more detail.

Grow-Your-Own Research Subjects

Respectful Insolence has a thoughtful post (inspired by this NY Times article) about scientists who use their children as subjects in their research studies.

While I can see the convenience (these kids are right there all the time--perfect study subjects), I can also see the author's point when he finds this sort of creepy and questionable. The original article also talks about how having a child as a participant in a parent's studies can potentially affect the relationship in unforeseen ways.

On the other hand, everything anyone does with a child can potentially affect the relationship; every childhood is sort of one long, mostly undocumented, non-IRB-approved and unrepeatable experiment to determine what kind of person will result from the combination of x genes, y experiences and z environment. Is it that big a deal to toss in some documentation and some specific questions?

I really don't know. I definitely get that it's odd, and I have kind of an "ew, weird" reaction myself to the idea of experimenting on one's children, but as long as the studies are not abusive and you maintain a good relationship otherwise, I don't know if I really think it's bad. 

I guess I just imagine these kids' lives, and figure things are probably no weirder for them than for any kid whose parents follow any sort of unorthodox child rearing practices (special diets, home schooling, non-mainstream religious beliefs, pathological hatred of noise-making plastic toys, etc.). 

You could even say that all these unorthodox practices are experiments (again, mostly undocumented, not approved by any overseeing body, and unrepeatable), designed to see how effectively one can produce, say, grub-eating, public-school-fearing, gnome-worshipping, noise-abhorring adults by following certain steps. And while I certainly don't agree with everyone's take on food, education, religion or toys, I'm hesitant to condemn their practices, as long as they aren't abusive. 

Still, an interesting question.