Give a baby your heart and home!

Anna and I received the news of the birth of a grandchild to a family we know for about forty five years. It is their second grandchild. Since getting the news, Anna knitted the above sweater during the in- between time in a week and it is now ready to be posted. 

I was touched by the attention, care and thought with which Anna knitted it thinking of the family, grandparents and carrying in her thought the baby and the parents in their transition experiences. 

A new born is a gift to the parents, grandparents and the extended family on both sides of the parents. But a new born is also a gift to rest of us and the fellow citizens of the country. 

I watched this pair of Bulbuls chirping the love language to each other at day break in our garden. As I watched them in this love exchange, my thoughts turned to the process of becoming a husband and wife and later a father and mother. The endearing relationships between the couple is what forms, nurtures and develops a baby from his or her conception onwards. 

Every baby born to a family is a celebration of this relationship of intimacy, trust, mutuality and shared living! It is this ambience which makes a baby to grow into a person. The writer of the psalm 139, found in the Old Testament of the Bible, expressed the wonder and mystery of this life formed in the mother's womb: "For thou didst form my inward parts, Thos didst weave me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" ( v13-14). 

The parents and the God of the formation participate to make each baby to be born and to grow into his or her stature of fullness of life! 

The decision of the government of the state of Tamil Nadu granting six months of maternity leave for child birth and nurture, comes to me as an enlightened regard for the life of a baby and the provision for the mother to be available at home for shadowing him or her in the early formative months. From a child development point of view, an infant develops signs of attachment behaviour with the mother from three months onwards, which is the foundational experience for the psycho-social formation of an infant. This leads him or her into fulfilled childhood emotional experiences of belonging during the pre-school years. 

I wonder, whether in a hurried pace of living we have been conditioned to  in the recent years, parents pause to give regardful attention and their physical presence to the baby!

The message of the Bulbuls was a refreshing invitation to grow in intimacy of relationship. It is such an ambience which would initiate infants into a childhood formative journey. 

Anna and I recently presented this book as our contribution to support parents in creating a play-based home environment at home for their pre-school children 

We remember parents who have infants and toddlers at home! May they feel the delight and fulfilment of being companions to their child! 

They have a future beyond our expectations or imagination in the words, of Kahil Gibran, the poet who defined the mystery of childhood.

" Your children are not your children,

They are the sons and daughters of

Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you,

You may give them your love but nor your thoughts,

You may house their bodies, but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you,

For life goes not backward nor tarries 

with yesterday".

For all parents of infants and toddlers, this is a calling- live beholding the joyful surprises in your growing up child and stay content in giving  the child a home and your presence!

M.C. Mathew(text and photo)