How to a treat a child

I am very good with children. I make this claim based on the fact any child I meet and interact with, end up liking me in a short time. I have a calming effect on babies (except for an incident of a Japanese baby, who was not familiar with men with mustache, bursting into tears on seeing me!). I am sure you have seen video clips of politicians who make make crying babies calm down (like President Obama) or vice versa (like Donald Trump). While I am proud about this talent, I do not think it is a God given talent. I think anybody who follow a few basic norms about child interaction can be as good as me. Here they are:

·         Be relaxed when you carry a baby. I am convinced that babies can sense the tension in you, and they get affected by it. When you pick up a crying baby realize that the baby is most probably upset about something just happened, and it is a matter of distracting the baby to something else. There is nothing to be tense about it.

·         Do not invade the body space of the child. When seeing a smiling baby, it is a normal urge to grab and kiss or pat the cheeks of the baby. We forget that we are intruding into their safe body space when we do that. Remember how uncomfortable we get if someone grabs our hand or gives a big hug when meeting us for the first time.  Kneeling at a safe distance and talking softly to the child is the way to go.

·         Never raise your voice to a child. Of course, babies do a lot of ‘wrong’ things, and you have to teach them not to do them. But saying ‘No, No!’ with a raised voice is not the way to do it. If the child is under two, the best way is to distract but never admonish as the child is too young for your lectures about right and wrong. Loud voice only helps to startle the child and feel uncomfortable about your presence.

·         Talk to the child at the same level. Do not pepper the child with long comments and questions right away. I usually watch the child for a few minutes, and ask an easy to answer question like ‘is that your only toy car?’ The trick is to make the child feel that he/she knows a few things we do not know, and we are willing to learn from them :)

My daughter jokes that her children (a six year old and a one year old) consider me as their ‘servant’ as they can order me around. It is OK as I enjoy children very much.