Altruism by Nature
According to this provocative study, children from the very beginning are predisposed to help others – we are wired to be KIND to others.
Quote of the Week: What A Parent Should Aim For
I really liked this thought by Jonathan Safran Foer on his goal as a parent. He wrote it in the context of his journey as a vegetarian, but it has wider applications and resonates as a noble aim:
I’m not as worried about what [my children] will choose as much as my ability to make them conscious of the choices before them. I won’t measure my success as a parent by whether my children share my values, but by whether they act according to their own.
– Jonathan Safran Foer, in The Fruits of Family Trees, New York Times Magazine
Father-and-son Video
This is a great little vignette…
Hitler’s Children
Here is a project that seems quite powerful:
…a mesmerizing dialogue between teh children of the perpetrators of the Holocaust and the children of the surivors. Both live out the Holocaust daily, unable to move forward. Both finally face the past and are empowered to move on.
The trailer video contained here is worth watching.
I’ve always felt the weight on my shoulders from my Dad’s survival of the Dachau concentration camp. I cannot escape those shadows. It had never crossed my mind that the children of the perpetrators must have similarly been marked and shaped by that experience. Very poignant, and the trailer seems to confront the issue with depth and introspection. It includes the story of a marriage between the son of a survivor and the descendant of a major Nazi criminal.
Definition: Modern Fatherhood
Sometimes when baby Romy is on my lap, I can’t tell if my phone is ringing or Romy is farting.
My First Kiss…
from baby Romy… …as we were getting him ready for his bath…
I was giving him a bunch of kisses and he started imitating me and giving me kisses and smiling!
His kisses involve some licking - but give him some time - he is learning!
Testimonial from the youngest KIND snack consumer
So the other day my 2 year old daughter came barging into my room saying: "quiere nacky, quiere nacky"
translation- my daughter learned the word snack a long time ago, but pronounces it nack, and when she discovered "Kind Snacks: she decided to call them "nacky"
so after asking for nacky, she starts banging on my locked office door where she knows I keep the Kind bars, with increased frustration asking for nacky.
I finally open a bar and hand her a piece, she is satisfied, but wants more, she can eat a whole kind bar quite fast. (did I mention she is 2). once it is finished she is quite upset, wanting more nacky.
finally I pick up the phone and tell her to ask her uncle daniel for Kind, of course he doesn’t answer but she leaves him a sweet message:
"tio, quiere mas Kind" translation- uncle want more Kind
From my brother’s daughter:
Peaceful baby
His face is so calm
Full of love and tranquility
How blessed we are
to have warm shelter and peace for him.
How hard and how painful
for the millions upon millions
who lack peace, or water or heat,
who may not have bread or milk to give their children.
How hard and how painful
for the parents who’d lose a baby to a missile
or the babies who’d lose a parent to a bomb
and the nations who’d lose their innocence along the way.
That juxtaposition gives me anxiety:
the peaceful nap of our little baby
against the horrors and hatred brewing around our world,
whether a few blocks up, or 7,000 miles away.
For my baby’s peace cannot be guaranteed
his Spring cannot be counted upon
so long as babies anywhere else in our globe
are suffering, being targeted or killed.
It is for our baby here
that peace must be waged there.
The joy of changing diapers
If someone had told me that I would enjoy changing diapers I would have thought they have very bad judgment.
But one month into being a Dad, it is my favorite activity of the day.
My attitude all along was that I’d deal with this chore and do what is minimally necessary. As I work very hard for PeaceWorks & KIND, and for the Foundation’s OneVoice Movement, I figured I’d get a lot of latitude and support from my wife to avoid this task as much as possible.
Then baby Roman was born and changing diapers proved to be such a delicious activity. You get to help your son, and that goes a long way - I think - to explain why I love doing it, just to care for him and help him with something he cannot do. It also doesn’t hurt that babies’ poop doesn’t smell when they are breastfeeding. (let’s see if this love affair with changing diapers lasts once he starts eating other food)
But I think it’s also because it is truly delicious - to clean his little tushy and rub Aquaphor over his soft chubby thighs (his "pulkes" in Yiddish), to just hug him and kiss him, and clean him, and comfort him. Nature must have figured babies’ skin should be so deliciously smooth and tender that parents will love tending for them even if they have to wipe them clean eight times a day.
Indeed, second only to changing diapers is giving him a bath and changing his clothes. Well, maybe that is even better, but not as surprising as the joy of seeing your baby poop and wiping it with gusto. I also never imagined that my wife and I would derive so much joy from hearing someone pass gas or poop. It’s such a celebration for us, "yes", "wonderful", as if he just got a dual degree in Medicine and Engineering.
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