Posted on 01/06/2013 11:42:22 PM PST by nickcarraway
Parents should carry their babies upright instead of pushing them around in prams because it aids their development, a new book claims.
Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist, said children could benefit from basic parenting methods which have been abandoned in the west but are still used in more traditional societies around the world.
Indigenous people living in the African rainforest, for example, use a variety of behaviours which developed over hundreds of thousands of years of human history, but which have recently become "unfashionable" in the modern world. In his new book, The World Until Yesterday, Prof Diamond argues that readopting traditional child-raising methods could help parents raise children with good qualities like confidence and curiosity.
He said: "It would be impossible, illegal, or immoral to carry out rigorous controlled experiments on Western children, in order to test outcomes of different child-rearing methods.
But a huge variety of different methods has in effect already been tested by natural experiments: different societies have been raising their children differently for a long time, and we can see the results.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I usually put their little feet thru my belt loops and hang them from my hip. That way, it frees up your hands to safely steer your bike.......
No... Actually, I don't. As long as I'm sitting on the veranda, sipping my mint julep and playing with my iPad, I'm fine wit dat. :)
“I prefer to put’em in a tractor tire and roll ‘em down a hill”.
Someone owes me a new computer screen with that one. LOL!
I have read a couple of books....some interesting theories but all rooted in various moonbat socialist assumptions...
Make that Jared Diamond books....arrrrg
“It would be impossible, illegal, or immoral to carry out rigorous controlled experiments on Western children, in order to test outcomes of different child-rearing methods.”
When has that ever stopped anybody?
This guy gets published? LOL.
I can’t help but notice nothing about spanking, and don’t, for a minute, tell me they don’t do that.
Yes, I had one of those things, it worked great. A sanity saver, for sure.
If I did not have more important things to do today, I would love to do some detective work on this clown’s lifestyle. I would bet he does not forgo any modern conveniences and has a huge “carbon footprint”.
Jared Diamond is a screaming example of the “Civilized Savage” in the Sultan Knish article. He outright says that the savages in Papua New Guinea are more intelligent than Westerners, regardless of IQ tests, though malnutrition and disease loads could account for this.
His latest book is an interesting set of contradictions. We should have mixed play groups, babies constantly carried and allowed to explore more, like savages do. He says their way of raising children is more natural, so it should be followed. Then he adds the caveats that many of them have burns from being allowed to touch fire to learn to stay away from it, we shouldn’t have their 50% infant mortality rate, and the sex play they tolerate including borderline rape probably wouldn’t be allowed here.
“Guns, Germs and Steel” was a book with many good points, like how the precursor to civilization was whether you had domesticable crops with sufficient caloric density to be worth the effort and a farmable area capable of supporting a lot of people. Northern California and South Africa had great climate, but not much local people could raise to generate a lot of calories per acre. Papua New Guinea got crops, but lacked a large enough area of farmers to create civilization.
China, India, Egypt, the Fertile Crescent and Greece/Rome all benefited from local crops and animals to domesticate PLUS an ability to interchange information between civilizations. The Maya, Aztecs and Peruvians had crops, but almost now civilization interchange, hindering development.
Unfortunately, now that we have an increasingly global civilization, Mr. Diamond thinks we should emulate the savage because it’s more natural.
And who would be more qualified on the topic of development?
I remember the Snugli. We used one 20 years ago. It worked out well.
Had you followed my advice, they'd be perfect drones for the new amerika
(PS .. we homeschooled three of our five and my favorite response to the, "But they get no socializing" statement is;
We're producing Christian citizens, not socialists)
Good luck and God bless, momtothree
When I have kids, I’m just sticking them in a giant hamster ball. If you want to make sure they don’t get into too much trouble, just make the width of the hamster ball bigger than the width of the doors of your house. Going downstairs might be tricky, but I think they’ll get the hang of it.
They absolutely loved coming down the stairs, bouncing and whirling. After they got the ball down to the bottom and back under control, they would move back over to the base of the stairs and whine until I carried them up to the top again.
One of them still likes to go to the top of the stairs, lie down on her side, and roll down to the bottom.
Cats ....
“Depends. They grow up to be independent farmers living in shacks while we have imbeciles glued to TV’s watching the Kardashians.”
Or, they grow up to be machete wielding members of Boko Haram while my kids grow up to be engineers.
Please don’t do that, muawiyah and I will come over and babysit for you...wont’ we mu?
We are already babysitting this morning ~ this kid is smart ~ she figured out cookies and milk at 10 months!
Dr. Spock said never to punish a child and look where that “expert” got us.
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