“The shorter the gap between your children, the less their mental development” says a recent study into intellectual development of children as posted in a blog I read recently (sorry, I cannot remember the url). What affect would this study have on me? I have three girls born less than 18 months apart…! Had I read this much earlier, It would have caused me to worry a lot. But thanks God, now the girls are 10, 9 and 8 years old; and they are as intelligent as they can be, scoring ‘A’ on every subject they learn - making their mum (and of course myself) proud by making her go up to the stage to accompany them to collect award after award on every ‘school annual award presentation’. I am not trying to sound arrogant or boastful but just to share to those who have children with short birth gaps between them not to worry too much about this study. But again, the study was conducted in a region, where their own social environment had influence on the outcome of the study.

We didn’t plan to have three children in less than four years but sometimes things happen not according to plan. We never complain or regret about this particular ‘not-according-to-plan’ thing though.

The positive thing is that it is cost-effective. Here is why I said so; Our biggest financial outlay was with the first child, mainly because of all the equipments necessary for adequate care of a new baby. As our second child and third child closely followed, we were able to use most of these items since they had not been given away to friends – something that we’d have probably done had the gaps between them were large. As the children are all girls, most of the older one’s clothes are still suitable for the younger ones. We spent less on my wife’s expensive maternity dresses too.
Watching them growing together is a treasure you won’t want to miss. We enjoy every moment of them. They play together, learn together and there were endless of activities that keep us amused. Other parents told us that it is easier to take care of girls than boys as their characters are different. Well I don’t know how true they are but our girls still occasionally drive us crazy.

No doubt that a large gap has the advantage that each child can enjoy undiluted stimulation from his mother or father, which is helpful for intellectual development in the pre-school years. I believe that it is universally accepted that practical constraints dictate that in a large family with three children under the age of five, the mother and father have only limited amount of time to play with each child, to talk to him/her and stimulate him/her. However, this potential problem can be overcome if parents make a special effort to ensure that whatever time is available, some of it is spent with each child on her or his own.

Some parents may purposely plan to have small age gap between their children. This is something to consider if you plan so: If you find raising your first child is so demanding and so time consuming, which definitely is, it would be even more challenging to cope with two or more young children at the same time. So , your feeling should not be ignored when spacing your family. It is far better to be honest about it – to wait for a few years before thinking about a second and subsequent children – than to have more children before you are emotionally ready. Deciding on the gap between your children means weighing up all these different factors. And anyway, just like what happened to us, age gaps don’t always turn out the way parents plan.

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Ever encountered a toddler that refused to eat vegetables? Well we have, in fact initially, all of our children didn’t like to eat vegetables. When they were still babies, they happily ate squashed or blended vegetables. However, as they became toddlers, especially our first child, it was, “ No way, mama; no way, papa..” If we told her that she could not have ice-cream if she didn’t eat the veggies, she would remain sitting there in front of her plate of uneaten vegetables until the veggies became cold, limp and grayish. Some she chewed/munched and put them back on the plate.

Our persistence to encourage her to love veggies paid off when we observed one day, as she tried to eat spinach, with a horrified look and tears in her eyes, she cried she could not eat it, it got stuck in her esophagus. I later realized that it was not the taste or the look of vegetables that made her refused to eat them. It was the texture. She would refuse to eat vegetables because of a horrible experience trying to swallow them. From a bad experience swallowing a vegetable that was leafy and green, she would refuse to eat anything called vegetables and green in color, including beans and peas. We then started to give her non-leafy and easily chewed vegetables like carrot, pumpkin, tomatoes which she could happily eat. Later we reintroduced the green and leafy but chopped in small and short pieces that would unlikely caused her trouble to chew and swallow. BINGO!.. we solved our little ones’ veggies eating problem. We practiced the same to our other children that came later and it always worked. Many parents were surprised to see our toddlers eating veggies while theirs wouldn’t.

I don’t guarantee that it will work for every toddler, but you may try.

I found the following in my 9 years old daughter, Chelsea’s diary :

“Myself (9/2/2007 entry)
This is me I don’t like!!! But why, why? Only my sister named Charissa is a very interesting girl. Why not me and Christabelle. WHY!! I cannot write this in my diary. I cannot be like my sister. If God says to me that I can do it and I try and I try and still cannot do it. I already have everything but I cannot be a good girl. And I also pray to be a good girl but I still cannot. She should be the elder sister and not me. She can be anything! I cannot. Until my ‘orang gaji’ (’orang gaji’ means the maid) said she is the one that listens to her and she likes her. And I… I feel like I (am) a bad girl. I cannot do what I wanted. And I said I can (be) number one but I never get it until now. If my dad and mum come home, I will be punished. What can I do”.

I was quite alarmed when I read it. Chelsea is intelligent, obedient and helpfull child and there was no sign of her being unhappy about things around her. Of course ocassionally she misbehaves but that is very normal and we normally respond appropriately to such behaviour. In school, she is one of the students to beat in her class as eventhough she never becomes top student, she never falls below the third spot in exams performance. In comparison, her younger sister, Charissa has always been the top student in her class.
When I talked to her about what she’d written, she tearfully explained that it was “..about her frustration and disappointment for not being able to achieve what her younger sister has achieved in school. ..for being punished for being aggressive toward her younger siblings… ..for not being able to controll herself and hurt her younger sisters when provoked..”

That expression of my daughter in her diary really prompted us to review how, as parents, we handle our children. Have we treated them fairly, equally, preferentially or differentially? Have we unknowingly created rivalry and jealousy between them? It looks like we have, and the maid is no help avoiding it either. Obviously, in my family’s case, the oldest is most prone to jealously. However, the younger one too has moments when she is convinced everyone else in the family gets more than she does.
I found it very tempting to encourage one child in the family to behave better or to try harder at school, by comparing her with one of her sisters. The fact is, this technique is unlikely to have a desired effect. In fact,it is virtually guaranteed to intensify feelings of jealously between them. Judging a child’s achievements against those of her other sisters will ony make her feel inadequate. A more effective strategy is to use a sibling’s superior achievements as a ‘carrot’ rather than a ’stick’. For instance. a child who is struggling to learn will benefit more from her other sister’s help with her learning than she will from an unfavourable comparison. Afterall, being top and third don’t really have much difference.

I am beginning to learn that treating each of our children equally is not the same as treating them fairly. Remember that each child is an individual, with her own particular emotional needs and her own particular likes and dislikes; each needs love and attention in varying amounts and in different ways. The idea that the best way of raising children is to treat them identically - by giving them all the same material items or giving them all the same opportunities - is a mistake, and will not be satisfying for any of them. Treating our children fairly, on the other hand, means taking each child’s individual needs into account.

Simple logistics dictate that the more children you have, the busier you become. But whatever time you have available, spend some of it with each child on her own, whether it is reading a story at bedtime, or taking her for a walk in the park.
Don’t confuse differential treatment with preferential treatment. One of your children may need lots of cuddles before going out t school in the morning, while another may prefer just to have a smile from you. Each has different emotional needs, and you should try to meet these needs even thouggh this may result in children being treated differently. This is unlikely to lead to sibling rivalry; differential treatment and preferential treatment are not the same.

The inocence of my then 5 years old daughter was very amusing. It was enjoyable sending her to kindergarten each morning. She sang, she asked cutely phrased questions and she read road signs aloud, probably to prove that she was improving her reading skill each day.
One morning, in the car, she asked a ‘extra ordinary’ question.
“Daddy, are police like God?”.
Slightly confused, I said: “No, they are not”.
She went on: ” But they are staying above us like God. How do they go up ‘there’?”.
Getting even more confused, I told her that “..they are not and they do not need to go up ‘there’”.
There was a moment of silence, probably both of us were then really confused.
Hesitantly, she broke the silence: “..but.. the sign says they are above”, refering to a road sign board showing the word ‘police’ and an arrow pointing up (forward direction actually)….

Admittedly, there were occasions, especially when I have a busy eough day, I was tempted to dismiss such inquiries as unnecessary interruptions. However, I realize that this kind of attitude will discourage my child from developing her knowledge and her creative thoughts further. - Each day I learn to treat unusual questions seriously, and take time to answer them, and I enjoy it each time.

The most shocking words from a doctor, that sent shivers down my spine, were that our newborn baby may need a blood exchange transfusion. This means the baby’s blood may have to be replaced with fresh blood via her umbilical vein, from a donor. The doctor told us that the bilirubin level in the baby’s blood was too high that it could permanently damage her brain (bilirubin is a substance that is produced in the breakdown of extra red blood cells in newborns, that must be taken to the liver to get rid of). This shattering news was too much for me to take, and I blamed myself for allowing it to happen.
During my wife pregnancy, I read books about pregnancy, baby and parenthood. From this reading, I understood that ‘Jaundice ’ was normal for newborns (jaundice is recognized primarily by the yellow discoloration of the skin). With this limited knowledge, I was not really worried when on the third day, I saw a yellow discolouration on our baby’s skin. We had visitors who commented on the jaundice but also agreed that it would disappear soon and adviced us to expose her to the early morning sunlight. But when my wife’s mum visited us on the sixth day, she immediately noticed the abnormality on our baby and advised to bring her to hospital.

Our baby was admitted to the pediatric ward and placed naked under fluorescent lights (procedure called phototheraphy) as the bilirubin level was high. On the second day in the ward, the baby was sleepy most of the time. It was difficult to wake her up and she refused to feed. ‘Water’ needed to be fed to her intravenously (via the vein in her little foot). When her foot become bruised and swollen, the needle was moved to her other foot, which later became bruised and swollen too. It was too much for my wife to see and she cried a lot. As if that was not enough, the doctor came and told us that unless the level of bilirubin reduces, the baby’s blood may have to be replaced to avoid permanent brain damage. We became more terrified when a married couple shared to us how their son survived after a blood exchange transfusion, but still suffered brain damage. I was so terrified of the prospect of being first time parent with a brain damaged baby. I was not a religious kind of person but realising there wasn’t much I could do, turning to God was the only option.

Blood test on our baby on the early morning of the seventh day in the ward showed reducing bilirubin level. Blood replacement was no longer neccessary. By afternoon, the baby was responding well and beginning to feed. The next day, the intravenous feeding needle was removed. Two days later we were at home enjoying the company of our little fairy! The baby grew up perfectly normal - the picture shown here is one of my favorite which I took when she was 2 years old.

That was a well learnt lesson for me. Decision should not be done based on a very limited knowlege. Fortunately, the unthinkable did not happen.

When I first saw our baby, it was an inexplicable joy! But when I looked closer, she was no beauty. Her skin was discoloured, bluish, wrinkled and loose like little old man. The head was not the most attractive in the world.
It was elongated and swollen at at the top, molded like melon with a point at the back. The eyes were puffy and the eyelids swollen. I started worrying about the effects of medication my wife took during her pregnancy. I even had the silly doubt whether the baby was really ours.
All my worries and concerns were however disappeared after a very reassuring explanation from the doctor attending to her. She was alright.. wheww..

The baby’s head gradually rounded itself and in about aweek it looked perfectly normal with a soft spot at the very top toward the front. Her wrinkled skin started to smooth out as she put on baby fat. She was so adorable…

Those little hands and feet, that wrinkled nose.. no one can ever prepare you for the immense joy you experience when you hold your little one close to you. However, it may take a while before your baby starts looking like the angel or fairy you thought he or she would look like. If you’d like to know more about infant appearence at birth, Your Newborn: Head to Toe: Everything You Want to Know About Your Baby’s Health through The First Year is one-of-a-kind primer that explains to new parents, in a clear and comforting tone, precisely what is happening inside their new baby’s body, the reasons behind various standard post-delivery hospital procedures, and, once baby is at home, what parents can and should do before they call the doctor.

The birth of our first baby brought much joy, work disruption, and worry. Even though we’d prepared for the baby by buying clothes, choosing a crib, discussing names, making arrangements for help, and going faithfully for prenatal checkups, we were still a little bit jolted when we were alone at home with the infant for the first time.
I presume this feeling of unease is normal, especially for first-time parents. All new parents react deeply to the dramatic change in their lives that comes with the addition of a new family member. Many complex physiological and phsychological changes affect new mothers, but complicated changes also occur in fathers when their babies are born. The first born marks a sharp turning point in the life of every man and woman.

After my wife and the baby came home from hospital, I could feel her experiencing a loss of her personal freedom. She was temporarily stunned by the realization that she could no longer do what she wanted when she felt like doing it. She could not make plans for herself only; the baby’s needs must also be considered. As husband and father, I tried my best to understand the situation and play my role. Nonetheless, there were time communication and understanding broke down and the situation almost got out of hand. This normally happenned as a result of us being tired, nervous and irritable in our eargerness to become good parents.

Open communication between parents and flexibility in both appear to be two most salient elements for establishing an equitable sharing of responsibilities. Though traditionally, the mother has been the primary nurturing figure, the father has obligations too. He should involve too by learning about adjusting to his pregnant wife’s mood, the miracle of birth, and the practicalities of caring for a newborn. New mother normally turn to her husband for extra emotional support at this time, and he should be able and happy to provide the needed understanding and help. He should also involve in baby care right from the start. Awkwardness and feelings of inadequacy lessen with practice, which transates into comfortable, mutually enjoyable bathing, feeding, strolling and playing with baby….