老人应当哄; 小孩不要多抱?

I think a lot of Chinese have the tendency to treat babies/kids as adults emotionally and treat our parents as babies. I often hear we need 哄 our parents. On the other hand, we tend to change babies/kids so that they don’t demand our time and effort too much. The second part probably applies to parents from other races too.

 

I understand most parents wish their babies are perfect babies who can fall asleep on their own, play by themselves, eat whatever and whenever parents feed them, and always be happy because we all have very busy lives and we want time for our own. Most parents wish their babies can sleep through the night as soon as possible. I also hear parents say don’t hold babies too much; don’t rock them or feed them to sleep and let them learn how to fall asleep on their own from day one. If your babies are born independent (I doubt there are many babies of this type) who are very happy to fall asleep all by themselves and who are very happy without being hold much, fine. I believe most babies don’t like to be alone, long to be cuddled and held, and like parents help them fall asleep. If we just think about the convenience of our lives and refrain from holding babies and spending time with babies, and we train them to sooth themselves to sleep, I think it is pretty cruel for babies. They come to this unfamiliar world and haven’t master abilities to care for themselves emotionally and physically yet. There might be permanent damage done to babies emotionally, if they haven’t got enough nurturing from their parents. So think about babies from their point views often and don’t push them away from us emotionally.

 

More and more mothers have realized how fragile babies/kids are, and what a happy childhood meant to their children. If babies/kids received a lot of love, touching, caring, attention, they will grow up emotionally more balance, more independent, more optimistic, more confident, and more caring, i.e. with higher EQ. People with higher EQ have better chance to achieve happiness in their lives. So try to hold them more, talk to them more, touch them more, smile to them more, kiss them more, be with them more if they need you when they are young.

 

We need to distinguish love and caring from doing every thing for your babies/kids without let them try to do it themselves. True, babies/kids are vulnerable and haven’t mastered a lot of abilities to care for themselves. But they are growing everyday and they show interests to do thing for themselves constantly. We should encourage them to grow. Eventually kids will know how to fall asleep on their own and we need to let them go at the right time. Eventually they will know how to feed themselves, so we should encourage them when they show interests in feeding themselves. I noticed some parents still feed their two or three years old kids and almost do everything for them. That is why we see so many wives complaining that their husband couldn’t do any household chores and even could not take care of themselves.

 

My view is that give babies/kids what they need, in the meantime let them grow. And our parents should be treated as adults because they are grownups. I will stop here although I do have other thoughts to share.