Eat, Mess, Learn

Mashed avocado hangs precariously from the bottom of Claire's plastic spoon, as she inches it to her mouth like a drunkard.

I want to intervene, badly. I know the odds. In the race between speed and gravity, gravity usually prevails with a baby learning to eat from a spoon.

"Oh, no!" Claire says, rubbing the glob of green that has hit her shirt further into the weave of the fabric. In the process, she elbows the sippy cup off the table and onto the floor.

”Yup. I was right. I win,” I think.

If my baby could talk better, she would respond with something like, "But who needs to win, mom?" Why you spoiling all the fun?"

Each meal is new adventure for Claire, an opportunity to investigate properties, try new things, practice hard-won skills. She's part explorer, part scientist, part conqueror of the world -- planting her flag gloriously atop a mountain of guacamole. When I look at it from a baby's perspective, I'm happy to serve as her guide, to be the Sacagawea to her Lewis or Clark.

The problem is that I don't always see things the way Claire does. Instead, I see the big, giant mess she leaves in her wake. And the chaos that I am left to clean up.

The funny part is that I'm not considered the Donna Reed of housekeeping anyway (my husband would concur). I often wonder how moms with greater perfectionist tendency than my own deal with the amount of daily mess that toddlers make (and I'm clearly not talking only about disarray in the eating arena here). It must be a challenge.

I'm able to temper my own inertia about the Groundhog's Day phenomenon of toddler chaos by putting on my teacher's hat.  I find inspiration in the beliefs of the 19^th Century father of American education, John Dewey:

To 'learn from experience' is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction -- discovery of the connection of things. 

-Democracy and Education

I'm reminded to value the time that Claire gets to experiment, explore and play. It's the best way for her to learn about herself and her world, to gain confidence in her abilities and to grow more independent.

The part that Dewey leaves out in his philosophy is that the process of learning can be extremely messy, particularly when the learner in question is of the baby or toddler variety. Still, I’m a believer. His ideas embrace exuberant curiosity about everything around us; a quality I desire to instill in my daughter, even when I’m wearing my mom hat (or cleaning gloves, as it were).

Yes, being a mom is filled with daily banalities like rubbing Spray & Wash on green stains. Thinking about some of our great philosophers makes these routine things about motherhood feel a bit more heroic!

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Photo Source, Molly, Moom in Molly, Flickr. This photo has been adapted and does not suggest that the licenser endorses me, this blog or its use. License.

Baby's Oral Fixation

“What are you eating?” is universal parent shorthand for “You have something in your mouth that’s surely not food stuff, and I will now have to risk being bitten by you and/or pissing you off when I pry open your mouth in order to figure out what it is and to make sure it won't kill you”.

When Claire surreptitiously eats in the proximity of the highchair, I can be relatively sure that the question mark in the mouth is food related. However, a question mark still remains about the age and freshness of the piece of food resurrected from the floor. Greater concern and urgency occurs when I see her mouthing something near the change jar or litter box.
 

Certain gustatory attractions make sense to me. When Claire reaches for the chalk for the fifth time, my mouth waters right along with her. I also know that if I actually let her try chalk a few times, she’ll figure out that it looks tastier than it really is. In a few years, she will also learn that Smarties are supposed to be candy, but they look and taste a lot like chalk. These disappointments are early lessons in the principle that things aren’t always what they seem.

Other things hold an edible appeal to Claire that I struggle to understand. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to convince her that the taste of Kleenex is not on par with her favorite food, banana.

Soda bottle caps clearly belong in the “if it can fit through a toilet paper roll, a baby can choke on it” category. I’m willing to risk it by applying the following rationalization: With a close eye on her, I can avoid both the choking and the tantrum that will ensue if I make her stop sucking on it.

Unlike non-toxic chalk or closely supervised cap chewing, sometimes Claire tries to eat things that require her swift removal from the source. The other day, I moved her away from the most intriguing mulch in her Aunt Daphne’s yard. I had hoped grass would prove as interesting; however, she continued to return to the forbidden place of her original oral fascination. After we repeated the grass/mulch dance a few times, I said to George’s cousin Mini, “I can’t wait for this oral fixation phase to be over”. Mini has a seven year old and related, “Yes, but then it will be on to the next phase. There’s always something…”

The way she trailed off at the end made “the next phase” seem too ominous to ask her to detail what it might be. So my mind jumped ahead a few years to Claire asking for keys to drive the car (now, she just chews on them). Suddenly, the present risk of Claire cracking a tooth on a set of metal keys didn’t seem so bad.