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Friday, October 13, 2006

From One Grain Of Rice Comes Many Grains of Rice

A couple of years ago when my older son (OS) was about 15 months old, a friend of mine told me about a cooking class she took with her daughter. I did a double take. Her daughter was only 18 months. A cooking class for babies? You’ve got to be kidding? But then again what did I know.

“What do you mean she’s in a cooking class?” I asked. I was picturing the girl making soufflés and filet mignon. Those images were quickly shattered as I envisioned a more realistic scenario: she and her fellow classmates spilling flour everywhere and eating butter. I once again consulted my hospital manual and once again found it deficient in information. Don’t the authors of the manual know critical information like this? Then a few moms in my child’s music class were talking about how much their kids enjoyed cooking class. I immediately tried to enroll OS in my friend’s class, but alas the class was already filled. Determined that OS would not be behind because of my ignorance, I asked my friend what “skills” they were working on. Apparently one of them was scooping. “No, biggie,” I thought. OS could surely do that. Or could he? That question led me to enjoy one of my finer moments as a parent.

I decided that I would set up my own scooping station for OS. But I was one step ahead of the game! I would not use flour because flour is way too messy. It was sure to get all over the floor and all over OS. I congratulated myself for my insightfulness. Instead I would use uncooked rice! I had heard from many parents that rice provides a nice sensory experience for children. Based on my experience, those parents were right, and I would highly recommend conducting future rice experiments at said parents’ or experts’ houses instead of your own.

I swear I only put about the tiniest amount of rice in a bowl for OS. Then I put an empty bowl next to it and gave him a scoop. OS reached over and scooped the rice from the “full” bowl into the empty bowl. I was quite excited and relieved that he was not behind in developmental skills based on my ignorance of the importance of cooking classes for babies. Then OS moved on to demonstrating more advanced skills like eating out of the dog’s food dish and playing in his water bowl. While tending to this new mess, I forgot about the rice and subsequently the dog, two cats, all the members of the ant farm ..oh wait we didn’t have the ant farm then, but it looked like they had been there…knocked over the rice and spread it everywhere. Did I mention that my floor was white linoleum? I tried as hard as I could to sweep up that miniscule portion of rice, but it was like it had multiplied. Plus, it was hard to see on our terrible floor.

My husband came home and yelped in pain as he stepped on the rice. When I described the day’s experiment to him and bragged about OS’s brilliance in being able to scoop rice, he told me “It’s an old proverb: From one grain of rice comes many grains of rice.” I was very impressed. Clearly the ancient woman who had drafted this fine saying had also spilled a bowl of rice that her child had been scooping. In fact, the more I thought about it the more convinced I was that this wise women and I were actually kindred spirits. She too had wondered if her child knew how to scoop….My daydreaming was shattered when my husband laughed and admitted that he had made the proverb up.

A. Elliot’s Lesson Learned: Rice makes a mess. Play with it at someone else’s home.

Check out my rice craft on Crafts for the Clueless.

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Name:Alex Elliot
Home:MA, United States
About Me:Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 4.5 year old and a 2 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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For those of us who didn't get an instruction manual with our babies and for whom parenting hasn't always gone as planned. On a more serious note this blog is about supporting a woman's ability to make her own choices about parenting including the choice, for whatever reason, to bottle feed her babies formula.

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