/Karen/

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Chinese peanuts

Thursday, 12 October, 2006

I found out recently that when my mum was pregnant with me, she had this massive craving for peanut butter. It probably explains some of my addictions. (Incidentally, I now think the best Chinese peanuts are Mustang brand, roasted. Yummy ...)

This week, realising I was starting to go slightly dotty, after spending a day on Teaching Little Ones, I went home and took the evening off—watching Gray's Anatomy, going to bed early, spending Tuesday morning watching a taped Love Actually and knitting (actually started Emma's gloves!) Ben has been feeling down and had the first couple of days off college.

I went in to work and discovered that at 1 pm it is near impossible to find a park around the Uni. So I was a little stresed by the time I got to New College. CASE work that afternoon was the standard fare—a bit of everything—but one fun thing which Greg and I did was talk about the writing conference we want to run in February. It will be for Christians who write and it will take place over a Friday and a Saturday. We are hoping to get people from all over the country, if they are willing to come. My job now is to email a bunch of people to see if they would be interested in coming (and therefore whether the conference is worth running). If you are keen, please shoot me a line so I can add you to some sort of list which will be kept well-hidden from spammers.

I had dinner with mum afterwards (yummy Indonesian food at Ratu Sari) and then she drove me to my car. I drove into the Uni at Gate 14 and tried to work out the complicated parking rules. I even moved my car to Level 5 of the multi-storey where they had ticket machines because I wasn't sure whether after-hours parking was free. Turns out I was out of change anyway. And George says they never check.

The New College Lectures were being held in Scientia and I arrived just before they were about to begin. I got a very good seat in the second row and even ran into a girl I used to go to school with (and her husband). Their entire Bible study group had come to the lectures.

Kim Oates spoke about the early years of childhood development—Ages 1-3—and it was fascinating stuff. He started off by pointing out that children have been traditionally defined by what they can't do but recent research has shown that babies can do quite a lot, and they can actually perform fairly complex tasks which you wouldn't think they'd be able to do. For example, apparently if you held a newborn up close to your face (because their vision is limited and they cannot see beyond a certain distance) and then smile, open your mouth and poke out your tongue, the baby knows that s/he also has a tongue and a mouth and will try to do the same thing. Somehow the baby knows that s/he is human like you which is pretty amazing, when you think about it.

The lecture went for about an hour and I got a lot of out of it. It made me feel less scared of babies which I know sounds a bit ridiculous but, apart from Miriam R, I don't actually know that many babies—I don't know much about babies—and Kim's lecture helped me understand a little more of what they're like and what they're capable of.

One of his big points was that the early years are critical in laying the foundation for future development. Babies learn more stuff in their first two years of life than we do throughout the rest of our lives. But they need to be brought up in an environment of unconditional love, security, consistency and play. If not, it leads to great problems later. So you'd think that society's resources and energies (and the church's, for that matter) would be more invested in a baby's early years. But they aren't. During question time, Greg asked him, if he was in charge of government spending, what he would do with the funds, and he said that he would make it possible for parents to spend more time with their kids when they were young and not feel like they are second-rate in doing that.

Yesterday I spent the day ignoring Teaching Little Ones and going through all the Briefing submissions. Some were good, some were average and some we definitely would not publish. The feedback for Issue #337 has been coming through thick and fast, and I think it should make for some very interesting Interchange in December's issue.

After work, I moved my car and went to meet Elsie and George for dinner at Ayam Goreng 99 (more Indonesian food! But this time the cheap stuff!) It was lovely hanging out with both of them. George wasn't up to going to the second night of the New College lectures and I think that was a very wise decision because last night Kim spoke about parenting—good and bad—and it was quite an emotion-charged lecture. When he talked about physical abuse—parents shaking their babies, or throwing them against the wall and kicking them, or dumping boiling water on them—you could almost feel people wincing around the room. The talk made me feel sad and I had trouble sleeping that night.

Unfortunately I can't go tonight because we have Bible study but I would have liked to because it's on sexual abuse and I don't know enough about that topic (and I know too many women who have had that happen to them). Fortunately the MP3s of the lectures will be going up on the New College website in the near-future. So make sure you have a listen.

/Karen/ had a thought at 9:58 AM | | EE comments (2)

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