Selecting Toys For Infants And Toddlers

Mothers who stay at home to look after their children start to wonder whether their minds are going. 'Oh for some adult company!' sighs my girlfriend from time to time, giving me the sort of look that wakes it clear I don't count. Women who used to work full time, especially in high-powered jobs, become convinced that the loss of these jobs turns them into morons. What they never notice is that the men in their lives, the ones going out to work every day as usual, are also turning into morons.
 

Selecting Toys For Infants And Toddlers

It's babies wot do it. You go to the playground for the first time and you look around at all these wonderful contraptions they now have, the huge climbing frames and rope bridges and long slides and sandpits, and what do you think? Do you think, 'Wow! My baby is going to love playing in this when he/she is a bit older?' 

No, you don't. You think, 'They never had playgrounds like this when I was little.'
 
Then you go to the toy shop, ostensibly to buy something for your infant, or maybe to avoid real shopping. You try and look around the shelves with a baby's eye. Would Junior like this? Is that too old or too young or too expensive? This lasts twelve seconds, for that's how long it takes you to find something you want to buy for yourself. 

For me, it was one of those ruinously expensive Brio wooden railway sets, which I bought for my daughter before she could walk. After you get the basics there are some terrific accessories to collect: junctions, bridges, stations, level crossings. Eventually your child will be old enough to play with it, but you will probably have moved onto something else by then.
 
(As with so much in this blog I thought I was the only person who did this, until I started asking around. Several dads told me of the cheap pseudo-Brio tracks you can buy at Tesco. One showed me a great little three-point junction he had picked up somewhere on a business trip.)
 
'When I became a man I put away childish things.' Now we are buying childish things again, and playing with them. Fathers used to be distant, slightly scary figures who had fought wars. Even today, some dads feel the need to be jaw-droppingly pompous, although I think we can recognize this as a lack of confidence as much as anything else. Join in, or keep your distance and your dignity? It's not that hard a choice. Better, I believe, to acknowledge that the infantilisation of parents is a natural process. You can only play with your child if you know how to play at all and if you have forgotten you can learn again.

It is funny that we spend all those years in our teens and twenties trying to be cool learning to put an adult face on, to be men who maybe don't smile much and certainly try and show no weakness if we can possibly help it. Work culture punishes weakness mercilessly, most male peer groups do. Babies render this invalid. You cannot be cool or authoritative or scary with a blob of baby puke on your tie. Hey, and there's Lego and roller-coasters to come. This is the true maturity, I believe: the reaIisation that all your formerly held notions of maturity were completely immature. Go on, have some more pud-pud. Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate, wibble wobble wibble wobble, jelly on a plate ... To find out more, you can check out Selecting Toys For Infants And Toddlers.

How To Speak Baby Language

A few old nursery rhymes incorporate jokes that only adults will understand. That's because they are not jokes as such, but archaisms whose meanings have changed over the centuries and have now become unintentionally funny. For instance: 

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.

How To Speak Baby Language

This much we know. Crown, as you will explain to your toddler in a couple of years' time, is an old word for head and not the heavy bejeweled thing kings and queens wear. It is in verse two that the trouble starts. This is the original unbowdlerised version:

Then up Jack got, and home did trot, as fast as he could caper, to old Dame Dob, who patched his nob with vinegar and brown paper.
 
However many times I sing this, it still makes me laugh. I don't think I found it that funny before fatherhood.
 
The more you hang around small children, the more like them you become. Childishness turns out to be catching. With luck you will grow out of it, but probably not before your children do. You can either accept this, or you can have a big sulk about it, and go to your room without any dinner.

If you don't believe me, consider for a moment the area of your body south of your nipples and due north of your pubes. In our previous lives as adults we called this our stomach, or if we drank beer, our belly, or if we were doctors or fitness fanatics, our abdomens. Now it's our tummy. Kingsley Amis called this word 'insufferably arch' but then he wasn't a parent in the first decade of the new millennium. It is indeed a horrible mimsy cutesy word, and we all use it.
 
Now consider bodily functions. In this blog, for comic effect, I have generally used words like shit and piss and vomit, as I did before I became a parent. Notwithstanding that most parents swear less anyway, because they don't want their child's first word to be 'cocksucker', you will veer away from shit and piss in normal conversation, towards poo and wee. 

'Have you done a poo then?' you say to the baby as you prepare to change another nappy. The answer of course is 'Yes, you twat,' although happily the baby can't say that yet. The baby could add, 'Why are you talking in that ridiculous tone of voice?' because however hard you try not to, you do speak in a particular way to your infant. This baby voice is slightly higher pitched than normal, slightly slower and more clearly enunciated, and slightly more patronizing. This is the way you might talk to a dog, or elderly upper-class people on holiday talk to waiters.
 
Words themselves begin to mutate. Some acquire inexplicable echoes. 'Eat your pud-pud.' 'Let's change your nap-nap. Ah, it's a poo-poo.' Extra vowels attach themselves. 'Come on, let's put on your vestie.' The other day I tried to tempt my son with the promise of a 'bathie'. Is this really supposed to sound more appealing than a dull old bath? One father I spoke to admitted that in his house 'pants' have become 'panters', which must be a bit worrying.

BASlL: Out walking, with or without children, I now say 'l'm doing to do wee-wee bush' rather than 'I'm going for a pee in those bushes.' My wife thinks I'm lucky not to have been arrested.

Then there is the swaying to the music. Every parent does this when comforting their child. Only this time you are not comforting your child, there is no music and you are standing at the checkout in the supermarket paying for the weekly shop. Everyone is looking at you the way they look at loonies. You would look at you as if you were a loony, too, if you could. To find out more, you can check out How To Speak Baby Language.

Importance Of Teaching Nursery Rhymes

I have been writing about pop music for 15 years on and off and I still buy scarcely justifiable quantities of new CDs. And yet, as I walked up the road to the sweet shop this morning, what was I whistling? Could it be the theme tune to Rosie And Jim, a forgotten kids' TV show of the 1990s? 'Rosie and Jim, Rosie and Jim ...' are sadly the only lyrics I know, for this is the featured melody on a tatty plastic musical box our daughter was given when she was six months old. Both our children have since played it to death, and the tune is now hard-wired into my brain. Sometimes I wake up in the night humming it. It's not only the words to nursery rhymes that are evil; the tunes are as well, which is why many of them have survived for hundreds of years.
 

Importance Of Teaching Nursery Rhymes

There is a term, meme, to describe anything, a tune, a phrase, that sticks in your head whether you want it to or not. We are all susceptible to memes. Paul McCartney has composed a few. Advertising copywriters try to write little else. Nursery rhymes are all memes. The TV series The Fast Show was built around catchphrases, which are comedy's memes. Children tune into memes instinctively. Adults distrust them equally instinctively but have little effective defence against them. 

How can we expect otherwise? Getting into your head and staying there forever is what memes are for. If we can resist them they aren't memes. Nonetheless, a child's love of memes presents its parents with a challenge. Do you embrace, or reject? Join in, or keep your distance and your dignity? Your response to these questions could determine the whole tone of your parenthood.
 
Myself, I had never sung anywhere more public than a shower before. I have never contemplated entering 'Stars In Their Eyes' and impersonating Jarvis Cocker or Freddie Mercury for the lipsmacking amusement of millions. But as the father of small children, I have found myself singing the following words under a variety of embarrassing circumstances:

Jelly on a plate. Jelly on a plate. Wibble wobble wibble wobble, jelly on a plate.
 
(In case you don't know it, I should add that it has a neat little tune, and not a bad second verse: Biscuits in the tin. Biscuits in the tin. Shake 'em up, shake 'em up, biscuits in the tin.)

You will do anything - literally anything - to amuse and distract a baby that is throwing a vast theatrical tantrum when you need it to be quiet. When you are changing a nappy, especially on a slightly undersized table in a department store loo. Or pushing the pushchair when you were supposed to be somewhere else ten minutes ago. On public transport. Especially on public transport. If singing 'Jelly On A Plate' will do it, that's what you will do. And you never know: with a bit of luck another passenger might strike up a harmony.
 
Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream. Row row row your boat, gently down the stream. If you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream. (You emit a tiny strangled scream and the baby laughs.) 

Soon you know not just all the nursery rhymes, but their alternative versions as well. For 'Row Row Row Your Boat', for which you row your infant backwards and forwards, there is an optional second verse starting 'Rock rock rock your boat ...', for which you rock your infant from side to side. Then there is the rarely used last verse variant, which goes:

Row row row your boat gently to the shore. If you see a lion there, don't forget to roar. (You emit a tiny strangled roar and the baby laughs. When it can speak it will say 'More' and you will have to do it again and again and again for hours.) To find out more, you can check out Importance Of Teaching Nursery Rhymes.

Singing Nursery Rhymes With Babies

The following make good audiences:

1. The bathroom mirror. As pleased to see you as it ever was.
 
2. Your partner. (Unless she is depressed and locked in her room crying, or the two of you are only communicating through solicitors, in which case it's back to the mirror.)
 

Singing Nursery Rhymes With Babies

3. Grandparents. The only people in the world who are even 50 per cent as interested in your baby as you and your partner are. Grandmothers like stories about how adorable your baby is, while grandfathers usually prefer empirical evidence of superior physical prowess. (For every Competitive Dad, there may be up to two Competitive Granddads.)
 
4. Other people who had babies at around the same time as you. The window for this is surprisingly narrow. Anyone with a baby four months older or four months younger might as well be on a different planet. Ideal are people whose baby is virtually the same age but much uglier than yours. By a remarkable coincidence, this is probably the same way they see you.

It should come as no surprise, then, if your social circle shrinks a little in the months following the birth. After years of knocking about together, my friend knew we would not be knocking about together in the same way. And he was right, although we remain good friends. We have different lives now: his, much the same as it ever was, and mine, which involves going to bed roughly four hours before he does every night, and usually only to sleep.

Friendships that can overcome the Venn diagram are worth fostering. Competitive Dad and Baby Bore threaten all friendships, and nearly all dealings with the outside world. Back in your box now, both of you. Lock it tight. And goodnight.

Vinegar & Brown Paper

They could be the deepest, darkest, most skilfully buried childhood memories of all ...

Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. One for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky, twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.
 
Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top. When the wind blows the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.
 
Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run, see how they run. They all ran away from the farmer's wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a thing in your life as three blind mice?
 
Well, no, is the simple answer to that. Poor mice. It's not even as though they were partially sighted. Now they are tailless as well as blind, with nasty suppurating wounds that require immediate medical attention. Meanwhile the farmer's wife chuckles evilly to herself. Who needs a cat?
 
You will ask yourself these questions and many others when you start singing your little one to sleep. Most nursery rhymes are either inane or fantastically violent. Many are both. Things you wouldn't want to see on TV, let alone in real life, are standard behavior in the moral vacuum of nursery rhymes. And yet these are the sweet little tunes your baby will want hear again and again. 

I figure I have sung Rock-A-Bye Baby 3,000 times in the past five years, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star more than 2,500 times. I know this because I was working it out in my head last night while singing Rock-A-Bye for the ninth or tenth time as the small boy finally drifted off. Add 1,500 Baa Baa Black Sheeps, 750 The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Rounds and uncountable, edging-in-the-direction-of-infinite verses to Old Macdonald Had A Farm and you can see how music, like everything else, is changed irrevocably by parenthood. To find out more, you can check out Singing Nursery Rhymes With Babies.

People Who Hate Babies

This is the flipside of Competitive Dad. This is Baby Bore. The two of them live in neighboring compartments, and if both are allowed to escape at the same time you really are in trouble. Baby Bore lies dormant immediately after the birth, when you spend all your time and energy simply trying to cope, but once you have settled into the rhythms of fatherhood he bursts out of his box, ready to bore. Every tiny advance made by Junior is fuel for his anecdotes. The light shines from his eyes as he describes the latest achievement in forensic detail. Because he has never seen it before he cannot believe it is all so interesting. More damagingly, he cannot believe that everyone else doesn't find it interesting, too.
 

People Who Hate Babies

Let us not try to dampen Baby Bore's ardour. Watching your baby develop from day to day, work things out and add to the repertoire - these are some of the best things about being a father. What you may not have expected is how enthralling it is. One day Junior can grasp a spoon, and you think this is the most fascinating thing you have ever seen. Objectivity flies out of the window. This takes some men by surprise, especially those men accustomed to being rational and practical and not hopelessly sentimental bags of mush. But it is not mothers who sit in pubs telling their friends at unforgivable length that their four-month-old daughter smiled at herself in the mirror today. 

Brainwashed by love, we become the Moonies of parenthood. We tell everyone how great it is, and that they should do it. As we were never much good at listening in the first place, we don't notice that they are not listening and don't care. But still we drone on, glowing with pride and self-satisfaction, enjoying the story every bit as much as the first time we told it.
 
Women don't do this. The two sexes converse differently. Women smile more at the person they are talking to. They are more likely to pause and wait for a sign of agreement before continuing. Whereas men just stare into the middle distance and start talking. Women's bizarre and selfless willingness to listen to other people saves them from Baby Bore-hood; also the fact that they spend a lot of time in the company of people (i.e. women) who are also interested in babies. We spend our time with people (i.e. men) who are not interested in babies, and very specifically not interested in your baby. It's hard to know who comes off worst in these circumstances: the Baby Bore or the Baby Bored.

Happily, Baby Bore is more easily controlled than Competitive Dad. It is mainly a matter of selecting your audience. The following make bad audiences:

1. People who have not had children. This includes single people (male or female), couples who don't want children, couples who can't have children, couple who are trying like mad to have children and so are permanently bad-tempered and exhausted, and couples who are putting off the question of whether to have children because they hate each other's guts but do not yet have the gumption to split up. 

Most of these people are delighted for you in your happiness. The will undertake to see a maximum of two photographs of your baby in any one calendar year. They may even buy Junior expensive and useful presents for birthdays and Christmas. But they do not want to know whether baby pushed out a rock-hard stool this morning or a chocolate mousse-style squisher. The friends who are fondest of you will suffer most in this regard: out of misplaced loyalty, they are the ones who won't leave the building whenever you start talking.

2. People who have already had children. Maybe their kids are older, and one or two may already be pleading their innocence in Vietnamese jails, but whatever is going on in their child-packed lives, your newly minted enthusiasm won't make them any happier. They know all about this stage (whatever stage it is) and they don't need to be reminded. And they will be less forgiving than the people who do not have children. Indeed, if provoked with too many stories of Junior's ribtickling escapades, they can turn nasty. It's a terrible thing to see valued old friends flipping instantaneously into implacable enemies, spiritually baring their fangs. Don't say you weren't warned. To find out more, you can check out People Who Hate Babies.