Mana Shah - Facilitator

Observing babies can tell a lot about our own evolution, says Desmond Morris in his fascinating book, Babywatching . How babies behave also shed light on how we behave and communicate as adults. Morris does an excellent job of digging out behavioral research studies, roots of our common traditions, and links many of our instinctual acts to our former avtars-primates! The book attempts to answer specific questions from how do babies enter the world, why do they cry at birth, what makes them smile, how well can a mother recognise her own baby, do men and women react to babies in the same way etc etc? I share some of most interesting answers. Some answers seem too incredible to directly attribute the effect to that cause, but he does make a rational argument! Babies cry at birth because we have significantly altered the way they have historically entered the world. From being born at home surrounded by family, in a vertical position and cuddled immediately by the mother, babies now are d...

One of the most difficult things for us so far in these nine months (besides of course the leg cramps, heartburns and advice from multiple fronts:P) is deciding on a baby name (well two since gender will be a big surprise)! We of course started with what criteria it should ideally fulfill. First, it should have some meaning , something that signifies our way of life and living, that connects with who we are as people. Second, should be unique, something different, something that creates this "aha" response for us everytime we say the name and for the child when she/ he says the name. Parth's benchmark for uniqueness has been that we should be able to get the domain with the full name:P. Third, should follow the KISS principle ! Keep in short and simple:) No more than two syllables, no scope for annoying petnames that haunt you for the rest of your life and not open to any mispronunciations! Fourth, it should role beautifully and naturally on the tongue , like a musical t...

Children do not listen, they model! One of the many interesting insights in Happy Child Guide by Dr. Blaise Ryan and Ashley Olivia Ryan. (Thanks Iris for sharing this!) The book lists seven simple ways to transform misbehaviour to great behaviour! What made it interesting for Parth and me was how the strategies in the book were very different (sometimes even opposite) from what we had seen being used by parents around us. But the authors have been practicing this with their child and seen results. They admit that all the crying and tantrums did not completely stop, but they have reduced substantially. The key message according to the authors is for parents to understand how to respond to the child's behaviour and instill the principles of connection, trust and respect so that the child listens and cooperates naturally. They see two ways of influencing a child: one is to develop skills that help us respond to her needs and behaviours (internal) and second is to develop lifestyle ha...

My friends and family had been planning my Baby Shower for a month now and by chance I happen to come to know:) It was a good thing for me but not so for them. My nosy and skeptic self crept in much to their chagrin, but they love me for better or worse, right? But on the D day, which was yesterday, I chose not to butt in and stayed away from all the hustle bustle at my parents house, a very wise decision indeed. When I walked in the house all ready, it just looked so beautiful! All the lovely decorations, the silver strings, the all time favourite colourful streamers, yellow gende ke phool and white carnations, the variety of shapes stuck to the walls, the hanging octopus (unique idea for a stuffed animal!), my photo collage (which my Mom meticulously made many years back and I just love looking at again and again!) and last but not the least Parth and Jyot Bhabhi's unusual diaper cake (yes a cake made with actual diapers!). Nidh had fulfilled her task of making the place light up...

When we heard of our friends looking for play schools for their children, we kept hearing the "M" word quite often. That led Parth to buy us, " How to raise an amazing child: The Montessori Way " by Tim Seldin. It is a fascinating read more so because of its interesting origins and its liberal undertones. Maria Montessori , born in Italy in 1870, became the first Italian woman to become a physician. In her work with free clinics, she came across many children of the poor. Through her work she became convinced that every child had an amazing potential and all they needed was the right stimulation and environment to bloom in. To prove her point, she took over management of a day care centre in one of Rome's worst slums. The children were rowdy, irresponsible and very difficult to deal with. She delegated various day care management tasks to the older children, like helping with the cleaning, serving meals etc. And her techniques made them independent, responsible...

One of the many things Parth and I have in common is how we deal with something new that has to be done. To us it seems akin to any other project we would be taking up. So it was not a surprise when we heard the big news, how we would start work on....Project Baby Shah!!! Step 1: Internal and external SWOT Logical beings as we are, we first thought a lot about what strengths we have as parents and what weaknesses can make our tasks difficult! This was somewhat doable as we both had some experience in handling nieces and nephews. Step 2: Vision Next came the big VISION questions to which we were quite stumped actually = what kind of parents do we want to be? what values do we want to instill in our child? So came the next step! Step 3: Background research What do we as a species understand about babies, children? What influences their behaviour? How do they learn? How do we balance being permissive and authoritative? How do parents help them become happy, independent, responsible, r...

Usually it takes me atleast a few days if not weeks to complete a book. But this one, took just a day. Disclaimer: I am a firm believer and follower of checklists and todos to the point that my memory is completely handicapped without one! So when I picked up Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto , I was pretty sure that I would understand his logic and reason for dedicating a whole book to a mundane thing as a checklist. His book demonstrates the successes in terms of life-saving, effectiveness and efficiency across professions from those in which split second decisions can decide the fate of someone's life and time is a luxury to others where one can spend as much time as needed to create perfection. Medicine, aviation and disaster relief to architecture and construction, restuaurant business, music industry.... How does one build a 100-storey building without accident or how does one produce 300 mouth watering perfect dishes in four hours or how does one assure safety of...

Despite all the pleasures of seeing new sites, one annoyance that I least look forward to is the rush of tourist guides that surround and hound you. Usually these would be young dudes who claim to show you all the sites at a very enticing price. Recently at Jaipur, we were also approached by "government approved" tourist guides with even a proper name tag. The dilemma facing the average Indian tourist seems quite serious: do you choose the government guide who has a fixed charge or you choose the unlicensed young dude at sometimes even half the price? If you look at the service that these guides provide, its basically history of the particular monument and if you are lucky some additional stories as a value addition! The guides also differentiates their service as per language, we could hear guides rattling off Japanese, Spanish, German...you name it. A new competitor on the scene-the audio guide-is also giving taking away some (not that much as audio guides are largely prefe...