Take a look at your baby; boy or a girl. Take a look again, because you are looking at a very unique gift! No other individual is like him or her. No other eyes or nose, no matter how similar, is exactly the same as your baby’s. His laughter and frown; his gait and posture are all so unique. But it doesn’t end there; it’s the same with his traits and habits, likes and dislikes, too.
But have you ever wondered why this is so? Is it just so that we can easily tell him apart from other babies? I think not!
Rather, I favour the answer that it is because his path in life is very unique. He doesn’t need someone else’s eyes because he was not designed to see things the way others do. He has no need for another’s laughter, because he wasn’t meant to use it to bring joy to everyone, but only to his own. But I find something amiss in all this beautiful design; not from nature but from the way society is structured. It stems from the fact that even before we begin to appreciate the uniqueness of our babies, we ship them off to school and forget about grooming their distinctive qualities.
Don’t get me wrong, by all means send your babies to school. Classroom education increases their chances of future productivity, civic participation, healthy lifestyle and earning power while diminishing their proclivity to misdemeanour. But, when they come back from school, there’s need to work on defining and retaining their uniqueness. They must not be allowed to forget how special they are and how another him or her will never be. Even though the school is helping to make babies eventually employable, parents need to provide them with the tools that will enhance their uniqueness or it may be blurred from their memory and consciousness forever.
What is being advocated in this piece must begin at infant. Parents should look for the unique marketable package (UMP) that God has placed in their baby; help them develop it, so that they can deploy it (as a career/business venture) along with their school education when they are old enough to become productive. Discovering and developing their UMP has often been a product of painful years of soul-searching for most people. But it needn’t be so, if parents had been actively involved in doing so with them from childhood.
How to discover your baby’s UMP
Let’s examine this with a few examples:
When your baby is playing in the nursery, when he is talking to fellow toddlers or when he is rummaging through your bedroom and you are screaming that he should drop that vase, endeavour to look out for clues as to what his unique package is. Items or activities that your baby is often drawn to are pointers you shouldn’t miss. And I don’t mean the ice-cream in the fridge or the water tub in your backyard. A child who is enamoured by beads or works made from them, not only once but every time; not only at home but even on social outings; not just when he is three years old but when he is four and five and on and on is communicating something to the parents. When you find that you always have to ask your daughter to stop playing with the knitting needles but three months on, one year on, you are still shouting the same instruction and now she is hiding it in her room to play with when you are out of sight; take note. When your son drums on every
surface he finds, including the head of his younger sister and you beat him, but he still continues drumming anyway whenever you are not looking; take note.
Another pointer is the sights, smells and sounds that always catch your baby’s attention. What does he watch on the TV, in magazines or as you are driving round town. If your baby always remarks about a bill board on his way to school, listen to what he is saying or what is on the sign. If your daughter does not watch any other channel on cable but the Food Channel and each time she sees you cooking, she comes around to watch and ask those one-million-answer-less questions about cooking; take note. If things like car mags, car racing games and the Grand Prix are recurring themes of your child’s habits; take note.
Finally, watch what your baby always read without being prodded to. The particular class subjects he loves to read or the kind of books he picks from the shelves in your study, irrespective of whether he is bored or happy, he’s on vacation or school is in session, he is hungry or full, these are other pointers you don’t want to miss.
Honestly, it sounds like hard work but what about parenting is easy?! However, if you train yourself to recognize patterns it will become easier and it will help if you can journal your observations. In fact as soon as you have a baby, open a Unique Qualities diary for it. Regularly enter habits and traits that you find bearing resemblance to the points listed above and hand it over to your baby in addition to the other gifts at his/her 18th birthday. I wish my parents kept one for me, but my mum’s memory bank has worked wonders for me still. Thank God she’s still alive for me to help me with the things she so vividly remembers.
Watch out for the concluding part on how to develop and deploy your baby’s UMP.
By Segun O. Adio (from bizlabel.blogspot.com)
The views expressed above are solely that of the writer and not of Omojuwa.com or its associates.
