Milestones, Baby Einstein and more...
Social, Congnitive, Emotional, Gross and Fine motor skills development - sounds familiar??? then you are a parent of newborns/toddlers/kids or you have probably heard/read this often enough thanks to marketing guys of the toy world. According to Fisher Price, their simple stack of rings for a 6 month old is supposed "to stimulate baby's visual senses, strength the sense of touch, aid in learning the concept of sizes and colors and fosters baby's problem-solving skills"(and to think of it, it is for a six month old baby).The more elementary the toy, more grandoise is its "claimer". That makes me wonder how many parents get impressed by this mumbo-jumbo and apparently it is the whole new generation of parents. Parents seem to buy only "value-added toys". The most popular brand seems to be Baby Einstein whose every book and video come in different languages - parents of Baby Einstein clan assume their lil ones will be multi-lingual (in French, Spanish and Swahili) by age of three. It is fasicnating to read the forums for parents of newborns and toddlers. Some of them write about the accomplishments of their lil ones with so much pride that it is unbelieavable. Those super parents cant bear the thoughts of their obviously exceptional kid to waste breath on any activity that wont help them achieve anything spectacular.
We have been asked numerous times as to which pre-school does our 22 month old daugther go to (especially since we both are working). And when we reply negatively, we are advised about the importance of social interaction and development in a supervised school environment.
- School for a kid who is not even two ? come' on - isin't this an age where they are supposed to enjoy themselves? The gymnastics class that Nikitha goes to for simple plesures of jumping and running around has hi-fi goals of "building confidence and blah blah" and at end of each session, they are presented with certificate and medal in Olymics style (and just for clarification, it is same for all the kids, there is no competition). And you can see the parents gleam with pride while the lil ones think that medal is just another toy to play with.
Why do parents want their kids to be over-achievers? May be we are trying to justify ourselves of our actions. Maybe when they are playing with the toys, we want to know that we are doing something grander than just keeping them occupied with toys while we do our work. And since child-rearing is all about playing the same games, singing same songs and telling them the same things hundreds of times that parents like to think that trivial activities serve a higher calling. Maybe...

Swathi