Take a Picture

Stop right now and look, really look, at what your child is doing. Click. Take a mental picture. Save the snapshot in your heart, and pull it out when you need it—maybe on a day when your child is driving you crazy, maybe years from now at a graduation or wedding ceremony.

When you take a picture of your child with your heart, you capture more than how he or she looked at a particular moment in time; you capture how that moment really was, how it felt. Watch for ordinary moments: Your three-year-old at home with a cold, her bathrobe buttoned wrong and an upside-down tissue box for a hat.  She’s standing on a chair next to you at the kitchen counter watching you peel an orange for her lunch…She’ll never again be exactly that size with exactly that same awe of your orange-peeling skills and total confidence in her choice of headgear.

Take a picture with your heart of your toddler driving a doll carriage full of stuffed animals through the house, steering with the same daring speed and energy that makes his stroller rides with Dad so exciting.  The earnest goodwill with which he dodges the cat and rounds the kitchen corner will be worth remembering in years ahead when he inevitably rounds other, less predictable corners.

Such scenes might not get recorded in the family album, next to the photos of birthday parties and the first day of school, but they’re part of your life together.  They’re worth a click of the mental shutter.

With a real camera, you probably focus on your child’s face, but pictures taken with your heart are more likely to capture those moments when your child has his or her back to you and is moving off into the world. Take a mental picture of your toddler bravely climbing alone up the stairs, teddy bear and pajamas in her backpack for a first sleepover at Grandma’s…heading over to the librarian to check out his own books…wobbling off on a bicycle without your help. 

You’ll find those back-of-the-head snapshots comforting when your child heads off down the road to college.  Looking them over can remind you that the feeling of loss is only temporary; the feeling of pride is what lasts. The very act of taking a picture with your heart reminds you, “This moment, this ordinary moment, is important.”

Play Together

• Celebrate spring with your child by visiting a zoo or farm. Like Kim and Carrots, you’re likely to see lots of baby animals. Your child will begin to see that every living creature starts out small and grows bigger. When you get home, bring out pictures of your child as a newborn baby and talk about how much he or she has grown—just like the baby animals will grow. 
• After your visit, you might want to reread this issue of BABYBUG together. “Baby Chicks” and “A Mother” show that even baby animals have someone to watch over them.
• Be sure your children, like those in “Ways of Going,” have plenty of opportunities to move and vocalize.  For very young children, honking like a big truck or zooming like a plane are not only ways of going, they are ways of understanding. 
• For clapping, tapping, bouncing, or dancing, traditional Mother Goose rhymes are hard to beat.  Chant “Banbury Cross” while you play a gentle knee-bouncing game with your baby, or join your toddler in a lively gallop around the room.

• Spring dandelions are perfect for hands-on learning because nobody minds if a toddler picks them, digs them up, or takes them apart. 
• When your baby is old enough to hold on tightly to an object, let him scribble with big crayons or chalk. You can provide encouragement by scribbling right along with him. Use big sheets of paper taped to a table or on the refrigerator, flattened cardboard boxes, paper grocery bags (cut open and spread flat), and, of course, the sidewalk.
• Read together! Every time you read aloud to your child, you’re sharing your own love of language.  And every time you enjoy rhymes and tongue twisters together, you’re building your child’s ability to hear and manipulate the sounds of language. A playful understanding that words are made up of different sounds will help later when your child learns to read. “Rickety Train Ride” is a fine example of a verse where many words sound the same at the beginning but end differently.