How to win friends and and influence toddlers

I’ve decided to embrace the Berkeley way of life. Let’s face it: I am crunchy granola, (refer blog#2) always have been.

I turned vegetarian at 13 because I didn’t want to kill animals, for heaven’s sake. So yes, what’s not to love in organic, whole grain, pesticide-free, homicide-free food products? Edible flowers make me happy (and they’re available down my street every Thursday at the neighbourhood farmers’ market). So what if Babyjaan rejects the goodies at Cheeseboard and has already firmly indicated her preference for Pastrami? As long as she doesn’t wear powdery pink frilly dresses and doesn’t want to participate in vile televised baby dance competitions, I’ll be a relaxed mom.

If I lived here for 10 years, I would be in serious danger of turning into a Berkeley auntie. Salt and pepper hair, adopted baby, agarbattis, a houseful of books, a fridge full of organic foods…you get the picture.

These days though, my main goal is to help Babyjaan make friends.  So off we went to the Berkeley Public Library in search of toddlers. They have an entire floor of children’s books, puzzles, and toys. The pop-up book of the hippopotamus that had hiccups gripped me, but Babyjaan was more interested in running behind the bookshelves and playing hide and seek.

When a sweet 18-month-old finally approached her shyly, Babyjaan yelled: “No Mime!” (mine). Then she grabbed a book from an unprepared-for-attack one-year-old.  I spied a Gerber-sponsored flyer about the development of children aged 18 to 24 months. It reassured me that “among their favourite words are Me and Mine”. Of course it didn’t tell me how to deal with such behaviour.

The flyer did ask me to answer a couple of existential questions: What behaviours do you find most difficult to handle? Why? How were you disciplined as a child? How do you think that influences how you discipline your child? Hmm, well, my failure to discipline effectively will be detailed in another blog, this post is about friendships.

Making friends with kids

“Don’t worry, it was her first trip to the library,” my dear friend S2 reassured me. “She was probably very excited.”

We also did the Berkeley thing and signed up for a music class for toddlers aged 1 to 2.5 years at Jon’s School of Music run by the rather dictatorial Jon. “What is that I see on the carpet?” he asked a mother whose baby had a pacifier in his mouth. “That would be drool,” she replied, slightly embarrassed. “Would you please clean it up,” he said.

Luckily, Babyjaan didn’t put any instruments in her mouth (against the rules) at that first class and neither did she disrupt the class by stroking another participant’s blonde hair (also against the rules after 30 seconds) so I was relieved. Nobody seemed to notice that she said “Mime!” and “More!” a couple of times during the class. Phew. And she had a blast playing with the harp, keyboards, talking drums, bells, xylophone, and god knows what else.

It’s an “adult participation class” so we sat in a circle us eight mothers with our respective babies and sang loudly. Who knows if the class will throw up any friends but at least it was fun.

Going to the park every day is another of our activities and while there are some familiar faces by now, most children don’t really seem to want to play with other children. Finally, one day in the park, we encountered the landlady’s 4-year-old daughter baby L who stays above us. “Come,” Babjyaan told baby L, pointing to the swings. “Come.” Baby L was more interested in playing on the monkey bars, but she humoured the little girl and sat on a swing. That day, Babyjaan made her first neighbourhood friend.

Read the previous Babyjaan entries here