Baby Einstein?

I am not maternal. I decided at a relatively young age (around the time I started babysitting) that I wasn't going to have kids. I get frustrated easily with them. It's like being in a country where you can't speak the language, and people start yelling at you and waving their hands, but you don't know what they are trying to tell you. Babies and young children want something and they start screaming and crying, and you check their diper and try feeding them and oogling at them, and giving them every possible combination of things a youngster might possibly desire. But nothing works. All the kid wanted was to get down off your lap, and yet the crying and screaming causes you to want to hold onto them tighter, and hug them, and you can never figure out what's wrong.

And then something happens. Classical conditioning. This happens with animals too, and "lower forms of life". It's easy. If you do something, and eventually get what you want, you learn quickley to repeat that behavior when necessary to produce the same result. So, when babies are young, they learn that crying and screaming gets them more breast milk, or formula, or bum changes, or attention. They hold onto this behavior when they get older to get you to give them more baby food, or let them down, or whatever. Then as they hit toddler age, even though they have words, and can speak, their previous behavir patterns hold. They cry and scream to get more candy, or a new toy, or get their room painted. And this turns into hissy fits as pre-teens to get more money for the mall, or pizza lunch at school...you get my point. Kids suck because they form bad habbits before they can talk.

BUT, last night mama dukes has a birthday thing for one of her friends. They bring their little girl, who is 11 months old. She can't talk much yet. Just the cute little words like dada. So she's at screaming child age, and I quickley notice that she doesn't scream. Why you ask? Because this little girl has the smartest parents I've encountered. They taught her sign language before she could talk. So, when we're eating, and she wants more green beans, she makes the sign for "more". And when she wants down off someones lap, she signs "down" and when she gets sleepy and wants a bottle, she signs "bottle". Amazing.

She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She was the absolute cutest little thing ever. I played with her, and read her stories, and stayed in the same room with a dipered child for longer then 10 minutes. I was pround of myself, and impressed with her. I *almost* considered having children one day, because now I know about this way of breaking the bad habbit that every kid forms. It's miraculous really. Why didn't anyone else think of it?

And then she did the cutest thing ever. Dad is asking her "what sound does a kitty make" and she makes a sound resembling "mew". Then what sound does a ____ make? And on and on. The monkey was super-cute "ooo ooo", but then he asks her, "what sound does an elephant make?" And I'm puzzled. I'm almost 24, and I've been in university fofr 5 years, and I'm thinking "wait a second...what sound does an elephant make??!!" And then their little bundle of joy puts her lips together and blows and lifts her little arm up by her face to make the trunk. Oh my GOD!! it was soo cute!!

So, if someone asks if I'm having kids, I might be tempted to say "I dunno, we'll see" instead of "hell no...!". Mama dukes can thank them if she gets grandbabies out of me.