Whenever a baby in a shopping cart is waiting in line with its mom at a grocery store…I sidle in right behind. Because I love children and especially babies. They fascinate me with their tiny appendages, their inventive way looking at the world, the expressiveness of their faces and the imagination of their exclamations (Birds don’t have eyebrows?!) Psychologically speaking, a babies smile can brighten the dullest moment of one’s day, and literally increase the endorphines released in one’s brain. Thusly I try to make the baby/child smile in a display of funny faces, spinning around, and silly gestures. Yet there is always a risk I run into – bad parents. As the oldest girl in a family of six children I helped raise my three youngest siblings and since middle school have avidly kept up with parenting styles while other girls were reading Teen Beat. They way a child’s mind develops, functions, and takes in its environment is incredible and unique. So why don’t many other people feel the same way I do. You see exasperated mothers paddling a 12 month old on her thickly padded diapered bottom because she stands up in her shopping cart seat, and it literally pains me. I admit that some type of punishment is necessary in raising a child but is it really necessary in one so young? These children barely understand language much less physical abuse. Solution: you pick up the child, and set her properly in the seat. She gets up, you do it again. Repetition is the key, and although I’m no child psychologist this seems common sense. Read More »
