Experiment on your kids!

Two of my favourite parents had some great bathroom reading: Great Lies to Tell Small Kids. They have a wonderful, honest and charming relationship with their daughter (“Phoebe, do you know what hungover means?” “That’s when Daddy sleeps in the bathroom.”) and I quickly learned from them that the best parenting involves a little bit of being a kid yourself. Part of being a scientist is indulging my childish sense of wonder, and I’m finding a wonderful whole new world of possibilities now that my friends have small children, and I have a baby of my own.

Rewind to Tuesday – I take Hannah to a raucous playdate with my friends Jaime, and her 13 month old twins Sophie and Riley, and Carolyn and her 14 month old son Ben. I remembered a simple experiment from my favourite book Baby in the Mirror and sat down in front of Ben, mostly because he was the oldest and nearest. I got him interested in a small plastic lion, and while he was watching, put it underneath one of two small bowls. A toddler shell game! Ben, where’s the lion? Smart boy, he immediately turned over the correct bowl. We did this two more times, and each time I put the lion under the same bowl while he was watching. The fourth time, while Ben was watching, I put the lion under the other bowl. When I asked him where the lion was, he went back to the original bowl. This is called an A-not-B error. It may be a result of an incomplete understanding of object permanence – the understanding that an object continues to exist when it is not in view - combined with difficulty in overwriting old rules with new information. Thus babies and young children repeat a motor skill that had resulted in an award earlier. Incomplete understanding of object permanence leads to a baby’s delight in the game of peek-a-boo. When mommy hides behind something, she is GONE! And then she reappears! It’s MAGIC!

So Hannah, poor girl with the misfortune of having a scientist mommy, is in for it. She’s a little young yet for mind games. Not that behavioural studies can’t be done on newborns, but the metric that’s measured is usually what they look at and for how long, or how hard they suck on a soother. I don’t have the necessary equipment. BUT, we HAVE started experimenting with the more mundane question of what she likes to eat. OH! I have looked FORWARD to this moment for a long time – the introduction of real food! Health Canada recommends waiting 6 months before the introduction of real food, but I couldn’t wait that long and I don’t think she could either. The frustration on her face as she watched Riley, Sophie and Ben eat their snacks was evident, and my fingers had dents from her furious gummy chewing on them. So at 5 months and 2 weeks Hannah was plopped into her bumbo, given a spoon, and the mayhem began.

Why didn’t anyone warn me of the comedic potential of baby eating? The faces, the growling, the grabbing! The look of alarm on her face when she sees how hard mommy is laughing! The mess, of course, I was expecting and looking forward to. Not so much fastidious Brian, the poor guy is going to have a rough few months until Hannah’s coordination improves. Stella, our dog, on the other hand, is going to be delighted. But I digress. The real losers, dear readers, might be you guys, as this blog degenerates to self-satisfied mommy blogging and gets filled with updates on what Hannah likes to eat and what she hates. Bananas are a maybe. I’ll keep you posted.