Our daughter, Lily, was born January 4th and has occupied Jessi’s and my attentions and hearts ever since. If you’ve yet to see pictures, that’s intentional. Jessi and I made the decision not to post her picture much on social media since she’s going to apply for jobs one day, and I don’t want an employer to be like, “We found ‘The Daily Lily’ on your dad’s blog! You were adorable!” Of course, given our stinginess with photos, I’m getting even more questions from friends and coworkers.
Are you getting much sleep?
Look, given that she’s only been out of the womb for two months, and she didn’t really have a set bedtime in there, no, it’s going to be at least a few more months before we’re getting long stretches of sleep and probably still longer before she actually sleeps all the way through the night. Thankfully, I’ve been an on-call chaplain for the past five years, so this was already a pretty normal sleep pattern for me.
Does she have you wrapped around her little finger?
Well, yeah. She’s a baby. She can’t really do much on her own, so when she cries, I’m usually pretty quick to try and figure out why. Not like she’s doing it on purpose.
How are you liking being a dad?
It’s surreal. I know I’m in my 30s, but in a lot of ways, I still feel like a kid myself, so it feels wild to be trusted with something so precious as another human’s life. I love it though.
Is she smiling yet?
Yes, and it’s absolutely adorable. I’m still not going to post all the pictures though. You’ll have to ask me offline.
I love getting to talk about our daughter, so I welcome all of these conversations. However, there’s one question I keep getting which makes me uneasy:
Is she a good baby?
I understand what this person is really asking —”Does she fuss and cry a lot?”— but the question includes a dangerous value judgment:
fussing and crying = bad
quiet and smiley and cuddly = good
Don’t get me wrong, I love the cuddles and smiles and quiet moments, but if she didn’t cry, how would I know when she’s hungry or wet or in pain? How would I know that she wants to be held or that she’s uncomfortable? How would I know that she’s scared or mad or sad? And perhaps most importantly, if I condition her that “crying and fussing = bad” at this young an age, how will she ever trust me to tell me when something’s wrong in her teen and adult years?
Now look, I’m not a child psychologist. I have only a smattering of developmental theory from my chaplaincy training— probably just enough to be dangerous! However, I had the great misfortune of being a “good kid” when I was younger. I remember being conditioned by my church and school to think that expressing anger was always a bad thing, and that conditioning meant having to do a lot of painful anger management work in adulthood. I wonder what would have happened if, when I was a child and teenager, someone had looked at me and said, “Anger isn’t a bad thing, and neither is expressing it. Let’s work on finding better ways to express your anger so that you don’t just repress it all and grow into an emotionally stunted adult.”
Now, when I hear “Is Lily a good baby?” I think about my own experience of being a good kid, and I want to change what we mean by good.
My baby cries when she’s hurting. That’s good.
My baby fusses when she’s hungry. That’s good.
My baby grunts and groans when she wants to be held. That’s good.
Lily is a good baby because she tells me when something is wrong, and I hope she always will.
“Good” isn’t about quiet or control.
“Good” is about truthfulness and openness.
I hope we’ll never teach our children otherwise.
Of course, I’m not perfect. I still give the instinctive “shhh!” when she cries late at night. But I’m trying to make it my discipline to thank her when she cries.
“I hear you. Thank you for telling me. Let’s get you a bottle…”
“I hear you. Thank you for telling me. Let’s get you changed…”
“I hear you. Thank you for telling me. Let’s rock you a while…”
And that’s good.