Post 5 of N: Oh Baby

[wellstar]

scholargipsy asked "do you believe, as some aver, that all babies are adorable, or do you think there's such a thing as an ugly baby/toddler? If the latter, how do you pay compliments to a child who has not, as yet, not manifested agency or personality, when it's manifestly unattractive?"

My first thought is literary--a passage from Anne of Avonlea:

"What

Comments

[wellstar]

Oh dear. This post showed up back-to-back with someone's birth story. The baby in said birth story is very very cute, but now I can't say that without sounding disingenuous. I should have declined to answer the question in the first place. Now no one will trust me with anything I say about their children. Thanks, scholargipsy, you turd.

[scholargipsy]

Oh, sure, blame me. But I will respond to your accusation with positivity!

Your answer is a good one, and helpful. I am often at a loss for what to say in these circumstances, and often say nothing.

[wellstar]

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have name called, huh? If you don't have anything nice to say and whatnot. But that's what got us into this discussion in the first place...

My answer reminds me of the day I discovered that saying "you look like you were having so much fun up there!" is tantamount to saying "I can't think of anything nice to say about your performance." I was shocked to learn this because I really meant this as a compliment. Part of the reason I do (did?) theatre is the fun of it and I very much admire it when others have fun too. This is the component missing from my answer, by the way--the extent to which compliments are a reflection on the person giving them. But not everyone considers that upon receiving them. Perhaps you should start comparing people's children to literary characters they remind you of. No room for that to be taken badly, right?

[spoothbrush]

To be fair, I've had to work at not responding to every statement of "your baby is so cute!" with "I bet you say that to everybody." What's far more important is that this baby has for the most part stopped making "I am intent on the destruction of the universe" faces while nursing.

[neko038]

I love this, this is how I think about babies too with more thought put into it.
Hugs.
Miss you
Crys

[wellstar]

Babies! I hope yours is well.

So good to hear from you. It's been too long. Hugs back.

[g_me]

Awesome! So much of this resonates with me, too!

We get a lot of "Oh my, she's so alert!" From day one, literally. I joked that if we had a word cloud for all the adjectives people have used to describe our baby, "alert" and "aware" would be huge and all the other words would be tiny.

[wellstar]

Oh my goodness, if I ever have another child, I TOTALLY want to do a word cloud. This is the best idea ever. Or the worst. I'm not sure.

But if you're baby's so alert, people need to be extra careful what they say around her....