Why the Song and Dance?

I talk about my ayis a lot. The fascinate me. They are so different than me, different culture, different language, different political beliefs. We have lived in different generations, different worlds and of course - we have very different child rearing beliefs.

In China, to let a baby cry without immediately picking them up is as bad as making a baby cry in western culture. Over here, babies should not cry, or feel uncomfortable at any time. Recently, I showed up at a baby music class with Robby and his two ayis. They immediately told the grandmothers of the other two babies in the class that I let my baby cry for minutes a time. Shock, horror, the look of death from the two doting Chinese grandmothers. Ouch.

It is not that I don’t love my babies. I do. I love my babies more than anything else on earth. More than myself or any other person. I am proud of them and I am pretty sure they are both perfect in every way possible. But I also don’t think that allowing a baby to cry for 2 minutes so that they can put themselves to sleep is a crime. And I don’t even have criers. When John was a baby, he cried only when hungry. He probably wanted to cry about 10 minutes/day as a baby – but with his ayis never further than 12 inches from him, he was simply never allowed to cry. Robby is not quite as easy. He has three cries: hungry, in need of a diaper and tired. If allowed to cry, Robby might cry as much as 20 minutes/day. If allowed…This is a daily ongoing battle in my house.

As I type, Wang ayi is literally singing at the top of her lungs (some crazy Chinese song about traffic lights) and dancing around the dining room clapping her hands in the air in a far flung effort to get Robby to stop crying. (He’s tired, he just needs to cry for a couple of minutes before he falls asleep) I sit here snickering wondering if he is indeed crying because her routine is freaking him out. I know I want to cry.