Is newborn smiling just a reflex? Research is challenging the textbooks (2018)
Every idea of &quot;Babies can&#x27;t _________&quot; is automatically suspect for me. I grew up in a culture of denial and this language fits the pattern. We&#x27;ve been nurturing a child for 3 years from the assumption that they&#x27;re capable of all the things people say they can&#x27;t do. And wouldn&#x27;t you know it, they&#x27;re showing us time and again they very well can.<p>Babies can give consent and often do. People struggling with diaper changes? Probably not looking for consent from the baby or letting them know what&#x27;s happening. This child has learned we care about what they want.<p>Baby fights taking a bath? This one did 5 times. After that, mom got in the tub and we sat on the edge watching her. We were all in the tub within 5 minutes. Baths are now totally voluntary.<p>Babies can&#x27;t feel pain? Nonsense, of course. We took the advice of a native medicine woman and taught them to feel the pain and stay with it. This was important for the next point.<p>Too young to learn from natural consequences? Bullshit. We let them stay in a diaper until they let us change it. It only took a few painful diaper rashes between age 1 and 2 before they learned what happens. It was really something to experience them crying from pain and when we asked if they wanted us to do anything, they cried saying &quot;No, just let me feel it!&quot; So they cried on my shoulder a couple minutes, said the pain faded, and then asked to get in the tub.<p>Children need to be bundled in the cold? Definitely not! That keeps the body from learning how to regulate temperature. We let them go outside wearing whatever and monitor them for shivering. We learned that in colder parts of the world people watch children for the second shiver. The theory is the first one is the body relaxing into the cold and the second is the body starting to tense up to create more warmth because the relaxed state has reached its present limit. We were just out in a park for an hour before sunset in 50 degree weather. They didn&#x27;t start shivering until a few minutes after sunset and the second shiver didn&#x27;t come for another 10 mins. It was then that they said yes to an offer of clothes.<p>We live in a largely adultist world where science has developed with numerous blindspots for people in minority classes, including children.<p>It makes more sense to abandon conventional wisdom around children these days because much of what humans learned over millenia about humanitng has been lost through the obliteration of the cultures carrying that wisdom.<p>The approach I take is to learn about feelings and needs, observe deeply,  experiment gently, learn from cultures facing extreme versions of whatever is being experienced, learn from indigenous people, and trust (but verify) children are infinitely capable. This allows for maximal growth and a natural discovery of limits, rather than someone else unnaturally limiting learning experiences.<p>And normalize repair and flexibility, not fear of pain &#x2F;injury or rules. Anarchism is closer to nature than all other forms of government, so it makes sense to implement anarchism in the home.