Tip 125: Blog to shape baby's memory

A baby learns exponentially about languages and new experiences. After each experience, a baby would develop preferences for certain experiences, play or taste. Yet at a certain age, the baby does not know how to accurately express himself/herself on what preferences he/she may have to communicate with others. The baby may not even remember what are all options available and the language term for each option. Only when the baby experiences it a second time, the baby would recall the preferable experience and smile or laugh doing the activity. Yet, blogging together with the use of camera and videocamera is a powerful tool to reinforce a baby's memory and teach the baby the different language terms for each activity and experience and further increase the speed of learning. As the activities are participated by the baby, the baby has greater interest to participate in the learning compared to reading a book that is not personalized. The baby thus would not mind going through a blog, video or camera over and over again with daddy teaching him/her the many names of activities in the blog. This could be the solution to recapturing childhood memory, many of us adults have loss. More than memory of activities, a blog can recapture the memory of the relationship parents share with their babies/children.

Like many, I do not have a strong memory of my baby or toddler days or the involvement of my parents being there for me. As my mother is a baby sitter, I could guess that my parents would have been as caring to me, as they had to the other babies I witnessed them caring. While my parents did capture a few photos of the many activities we were involved as a family during our childhood, these were not digital and some may not have been kept well. Also, there were less efforts to be taking photos of every activity and to capture as many special moments in each activity since the speed and cost of photo taking was higher previously. The power of digital photography and video making creates a whole new world of recapturing memories of the past and reinforcing new meaning to them. It further adds possibilities to what a daddy can do for his children and potentially creating a gap between parents who have done, and those who have not. While I observe that consumers are beginning to be more demanding of the services and products they expect from manufacturers, so I foresee children to be expecting more and more from their parents in this consumerist society as children compare what other parents are offering their children. Besides just joining a potential rat race to be the best daddy, I have found that blogging and capturing my child's development is an effective means of teaching. Whenever I am free, I would show Haruka my blog and would tell her the story of her life through all the blog posts and photos. She would begin to learn the different language terms of them. For instance, she would know that she likes to go to a bird park and in the bird park, there are many different birds. As her understanding of experiences advances, she may even be able to differentiate between a bird park in Malaysia, Singapore or a bird park in Hong Kong. I am also glad that I have spend a lot of time capturing photos and videos and in my free time, I play it over the TV and Haruka could recall the activities we do together as a family. Technology has advanced as such that it is simply a plug and play effort and does not involve any complicated steps. One day, when Haruka can read, she will also be able to understand my sentiments and ideas behind parenting and would appreciate the time and effort I spend on my children because I love them very much. This again reinforces the importance for a daddy to blog.

Have you also used a blog to teach your toddler/children? Do share.

(Photos show a relatively small but well designed bird's aviary in Hong Kong park, a footbridge nearby, taichi at Victoria park and a marriage registry at Hong Kong park.)