News
Here's looking at you, kid
8 Aug 2009
Josh Lacey is charmed by the theory that babies are free-thinking visionaries with plenty to teach us
The Philosophical Baby centres on what Gopnik calls: "a revolution in our scientific understanding of babies...young children are actually smarter, more imaginative, more caring and even more conscious than adults."
She describes babies as scientists who are constantly experimenting on the world and analysing their own results with such enthusiasm and hard work. They are the research and development department of the human species while adults are the production and marketing, set in their ways and able to focus on single tasks.
Later chapters examine the vital role of love in successful parenting and describe the self-perpetuating cycles that babies and parents build into their own relationships. Babies learn about the world based on what they see their parents do and how they see their parents react. When such cycles are changed for the better, the transformation affects everyone.
(The Guardian, 08 August 2009)
