It’s truly fascinating how such a tiny baby like Klara can entertain herself for hours. Granted that her tummy doesn’t rumble too painfully, she’ll play with her little hands, stare around, observe, think, and smile to herself for as long as she is awake. I truly hope she retains the priceless quality of knowing how to have fun in quiet solitude into adulthood.
4 responses to “Fun in Solitude”
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Have you started reading to her? She won’t know the words, but she will learn sounds and your voice.
I mention that because the ability to amuse oneself isn’t up to her to retain. It’s up to you to model and show how its done. Teaching by example.
Reading, of course, becomes a key element in that. One granddaughter of ours has been going through 15-20 children’s books from the library. The library has been tallying what she has done, and she just passed 500 books, and can answer questions about them (e.g., “please tell me what that dinosaur is doing?”). And she’s age 3. (The librarian was skeptical and started asking Olive questions about the books, and was floored when the little girl gave intelligent and correct answers on her own.)
With proper nutrition and warm support, they can accomplish a lot while still very young, and it sets a pattern and path for intellectual growth and enjoyment. Parents don’t have to push, but many err to the opposite extreme and inadvertently hold kids back.
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Olive sounds like a brilliant young lady! Klara seems to be very curious about my reading to her. I recently tried adding poetry to the prose and read her some of my favorite T S Eliot. She didn’t seem as impressed by him as she is with Mandelbaum. 🙂 But I’ll keep trying.
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Not sure if you’re familiar with this: Time lapse of four hours of a baby playing with his toys (parental interactions have been edited out – he wasn’t left on his own all that time)
What’s striking is just how hard the baby is working at exploring his space and everything in it.
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True! I can’t stop wondering at how industrious and dedicated Klara is to the cause of growing up. It’s very impressive.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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