Monday, December 04, 2006

Daredevil


Swing Baby
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.
My daughter is pretty daring for a one-year-old. She loves free fall, she loves speed, she loves wind in her tiny bit of hair, and she loves being up high and climbing. I find all this very exciting and my lovely wife finds herself in a two against one situation as concerns Sabrina doing dumb and dangerous stuff. I'm going to try my hardest to remember not everyone gets a kick out of discovering the limits of a particular situation or activity, and I don't want to push Sabrina, ever, to try something she's not ready for. At the same time I'm going to respect Sabrina's abilities, particularly her ability to learn from her mistakes. She's an amazingly together child and she understands the physics of the world around her very well, instictively almost.

All parents feel a strong desire to see their child excel, and I've sometimes found myself so wrapped up in wanting her to perform a complex task that I don't even notice that although she usually figures out a new skill immediately and never seems to lose it, she often purposely does things wrong in hundreds of subtly different ways, like she's mapping all of the possibilities so she knows what the right way feels like and what every wrong way feels like too. One of the things that has most impressed me about Sabrina is how much play there is in her learning process. Pure research, I suppose you'd call it.

Anyway, she sure does like the swings, and the slides, and just about everything about the playground. D and I like it too, seeing the other children and how happy Sabrina is when she's there. Even the high-pitched screaming of the older kiddies doesn't bother me, I'm a dad and therefore immune.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Up, up and away... in my big, beautiful balloon..oh wait, I am in a swing.... When are we going to bungy jump from the hot air balloon dad?