Calm Babies

We've heard a lot of compliments as to how calm/easygoing/happy our babies are. Not tht Ralph doesn't have his two-year-old tantrums, or Kaycie those bouts when she wakes up oh-so-hungry and can't wait another minute for mama to turn over and feed her. But overall, they ARE happy kids. A few of those complimenting the babies have also complimented us, saying that we the parents must be the reason those kids are happy. It's difficult for us to take credit for that. Not that we aren't generally happy people, but we're no happier than anyone else, as far as I can tell. And you really don't want to hear about OUR tempers.

But I noticed something last week. First, there was this meeting at our house of some of Ralph's E.I. ladies. Ralph, in the middle of us all, picked up something marginally dangerous. A pencil, maybe? Nothing SUPER dangerous, just something that could conceivably be something you didn't want your two year old to be walking around with unsupervised. One of the ladies (who has a son a little older than Ralph) burst out with some loud exclamation (it all happened so quickly - something like, "OH NO, NO, RALPHIE!"), leaped at him and grabbed it from his hand in the flash of an eye. EVERYONE jumped - especially poor Ralph! He fell screaming to the floor, scared half to death just for picking up a pencil! As I calmed him down, somewhat mystified by her panic, I told her what I do if I see him with something I don't want him to have...I ask him to give it to me. Which he then does. (Isn't there a better chance that he'll hurt himself with whatever it is if he startled and jumps or runs, than if he calmly passes it to his mama??) And I wondered about her overreaction.

But then, I had another mama over at my house with her son a day or two later. At some point, Ralph was trying to step past someone and tripped over the steps to the loft. He's been walking independently all of 6 months now - very late walker, by the charts - so though he now walks well, he does hit the floor sometimes. Especially when we've got extra stuff and extra people about. This is NOT a big house. So whenever I see him go down, or hear the thud of little knees hitting the carpet, I ask, "You okay, Ralpha?" He generally ignores my inquiry, since by then he's already up and on to the next thing. But this time, as soon as his knees hit the ground, my friend literally SHRIEKED, jumped up and raced to him, pulled him into her arms tightly and made a big fuss over him. It was really kind of sweet...but definitely not the reaction he's used to! Later on, she also did an exclamation-jump-and-grab when she noticed that the baby had a C battery in her hand (to her nearly nine month old mind, just the right size for a little teething relief...and often in her reach, now that big brother learned how to get into the fridge and take the batteries out of the drawer). Kaycie startled, but recovered quickly, very happy to have my friend's full attention after we'd been talking over her for a while.

I have no idea what the implications are for any of us in the long term. Some things work for some kids, everything becomes clear only in hindsight - you know, when those kids have kids of their own. So I'm not going to (and wouldn't care to anyway) try making judgments on any of it.

But I AM actually starting to think that those people who attribute calm babies to a particular style or personality of parenting may actually have something there. And just for me...I *like* having calm babies. I don't scare them, they don't scare me -- a system I can live with.