As the parent without the boobs, there's a lot of pressure on us to carve out our own relationship with a newborn. Everyone will have an opinion. But how you go about it is entirely up to you.
It was a magic moment just before my son’s first Christmas. I was reading to him. You know they all say it’s important that we read to children. Really important. If you don’t read to your kids you’re a crap dad, etc.
Well, there I was, reading to my son. Dad of the year, right? No – dad of the century. And I wasn’t just reading Where’s Spot? or a Maisy book or some drivel. No, I was reading him children’s literature. A classic and seasonally appropriate Dr. Seuss book, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.
He was transfixed. Following the pages, he was looking at the pictures (!) and responding to my voice as he focussed on the book.
I could almost see how what I was doing was lifting his future school scores right there. A+s were falling from the sky. Olympic gold. Bugger it, he was going to be Prime Minister. Because he had a dad who read to him.
I was such a knob
My young son was two months old. He didn’t give a toss about the paper I was flipping in front of him, the rhyming or the voices I put on for him as I moved through the residents of Whoville.
My son cared about two things, just two little things: I was with him, and I was paying attention to him.
Newborns don’t care about words, they care that you’re talking to them and they love listening to your voice. Well…. try not to swear too much, but honestly you could be reading War and Peace, you could be singing Metallica or you could be babbling like an idiot. If you’re talking to them they love it.
Newborns don’t care what you’re doing. You could be juggling 15 balls, break-dancing or just looking deep into those steel-blue newborn eyes. If you’re looking at them, they love it.
It’s easy to feel pressure to always be doing something with a baby. To be on to it. To play classical music, read great literature, speak in a high-pitched voice or show them flash cards. It’s all crap.
How you build your relationship with the little one is up to you. And it’s entirely up to you because these little blobs (and that’s what they remain for the first four-six months), aren’t all that interactive. That changes, but initially you might feel like you’re performing to an eggplant.
Trust me, that time you put in, that focus you put into your child is making a world of difference, both for them and for your future relationship. Your little eggplant will thank you when it grows up, and you’ll probably look back on those times you were a knob (like I was) and be thankful that you were.
Here are three great books that you’ll enjoy reading to your newborn that won’t make you wanna throw up.
I want my hat back – A funny story about a bear who loses his hat.
The bear snores on – It even has a button that you can press to make the bear snore.
Everyone poops – The title itself is reason enough to read it to your baby.
And of course, anything by Dr Seuss – you can’t go wrong with awesome classics like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.
