The (un)changing world of childcare
I've been reading PB When We Were Very Young. I'd half forgotten most of them but I'm realising how much they are part of my mental furniture. Lovely rice pudding for dinner again; half way down the stairs is the stair where I sit; nobody, my darling, could call me a fussy man; and delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red). This last always struck me as rather sad as a child but now it makes me want to weep. That poor little dormouse and the nasty interfering doctor who thinks he knows best. I must remember The Doctor and The Dormouse as stimulus material the next time I'm writing about the importance of service users' perspectives or iatrogenic illness.
PB is particularly partial to 'They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace' and 'Brownie'. It makes me wonder about who he thinks 'Alice' and 'Nanny' are. It evokes a world that seems so different from his. A world with 'nurse' and 'nanny' and servant girls, and doctors who call at the house when you are sick.
Although the other day he was clearly trying to categorise his keyworker at nursery. He said '[keyworker's name] isn't a mummy. She's a big boy. She doesn't have little tiny holes in her ears so she can wear earrings. She has got teeth.' I think he's got three main categories; babies, mummies and daddies, and 'big boys' which is everyone else from toddler to adult, regardless of gender. On the basis of this utterance, it seems you can't be a mummy unless you've got pierced ears. I love this stuff - him making sense of the world and drawing up the categories in ways that adults don't. I love the way it makes me rethink the categories and see things differently - like reading Donna Harraway's Almost Like A Leaf, which gave me the same sense of the utter arbritrariness of the ways we usually categorise things and the sense that it could all be completely different (which is one of the fundamental reasons I'm an academic - I love the sense of freedom and excitement that gives me). And I like seeing him gradually learn the conventional categorisations. I think he'd probably already hear the classic 'the baby cried, the mommy picked it up' as 'the baby's mommy picked it up because it was crying', and that, to grossly oversimplify a complex area of conversation analysis that I don't really grok, is because he already knows how categories work in our culture. Which is amazing.
And, inspired by PB spending half the day bouncing on his bed (but thankfully not falling off and bumping his head) and my own musings on the changed nature of health advice seeking behaviours among parents:
Five little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called the doctors' and the receptionist said:
Well, if it's really urgent, you can see this trainee doctor with bad breath that nobody ever wants to see tomorrow, or you can wait a fortnight to see your own doctor.
Four little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called the doctors' and the practice nurse said:
Has he got asthma or diabetes and did you know you're overdue a cervical smear?
Three little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called the Health Visitor and the Health Visitor said:
You're rewarding him for bad beahaviour, you have to do controlled crying.
Two little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called NHSDirect and the nurse there said:
Ooh, better take him to A&E just to be on the safe side.
One little monkey bouncing on the bed
He fell off and bumped his head
Mummy looked it up on the internet and the internet said:
If he seems fine and his pupils are the same size as each other, he's probably fine.
PB is particularly partial to 'They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace' and 'Brownie'. It makes me wonder about who he thinks 'Alice' and 'Nanny' are. It evokes a world that seems so different from his. A world with 'nurse' and 'nanny' and servant girls, and doctors who call at the house when you are sick.
Although the other day he was clearly trying to categorise his keyworker at nursery. He said '[keyworker's name] isn't a mummy. She's a big boy. She doesn't have little tiny holes in her ears so she can wear earrings. She has got teeth.' I think he's got three main categories; babies, mummies and daddies, and 'big boys' which is everyone else from toddler to adult, regardless of gender. On the basis of this utterance, it seems you can't be a mummy unless you've got pierced ears. I love this stuff - him making sense of the world and drawing up the categories in ways that adults don't. I love the way it makes me rethink the categories and see things differently - like reading Donna Harraway's Almost Like A Leaf, which gave me the same sense of the utter arbritrariness of the ways we usually categorise things and the sense that it could all be completely different (which is one of the fundamental reasons I'm an academic - I love the sense of freedom and excitement that gives me). And I like seeing him gradually learn the conventional categorisations. I think he'd probably already hear the classic 'the baby cried, the mommy picked it up' as 'the baby's mommy picked it up because it was crying', and that, to grossly oversimplify a complex area of conversation analysis that I don't really grok, is because he already knows how categories work in our culture. Which is amazing.
And, inspired by PB spending half the day bouncing on his bed (but thankfully not falling off and bumping his head) and my own musings on the changed nature of health advice seeking behaviours among parents:
Five little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called the doctors' and the receptionist said:
Well, if it's really urgent, you can see this trainee doctor with bad breath that nobody ever wants to see tomorrow, or you can wait a fortnight to see your own doctor.
Four little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called the doctors' and the practice nurse said:
Has he got asthma or diabetes and did you know you're overdue a cervical smear?
Three little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called the Health Visitor and the Health Visitor said:
You're rewarding him for bad beahaviour, you have to do controlled crying.
Two little monkeys bouncing on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mummy called NHSDirect and the nurse there said:
Ooh, better take him to A&E just to be on the safe side.
One little monkey bouncing on the bed
He fell off and bumped his head
Mummy looked it up on the internet and the internet said:
If he seems fine and his pupils are the same size as each other, he's probably fine.