As a parent you always hope you will have an easy time taking care of your kids even though you know parenting never works that way. I have had an interesting time lately with my 10 month old son who has recently become afraid of balloons and bouncy balls. Of course the first thing I did was look online for other stories of babies with this fear to make sure my baby was at least somewhat normal. I only found two or three stories online so I have a feeling this may be a strange fear to have.
I had read that one parent drew a smiley face on their ball and that worked for their child. I knew that wouldn’t work with mine due to the design on the bouncy ball that his grandmother had bought him. I then decided looking online was useless as there were no parenting experts with advice on what to do. My five year old daughter had a suggestion earlier on the day we got the new bouncy ball that I should have listened to in the first place. I shrugged it off because I really did not think it had any chance of working since my son literally shook and cried at the mere site of a bouncy ball. Her expert advice was to simply play with the ball and show him how much fun it was. She had said ” well mom, if I was a baby and saw a new toy that was bigger than me I might have gotten scared at first but if I saw other people play with it and having fun and giggling and stuff I would want to play too”. Who would have guessed that a five year old would know better than two grown adults and any internet advice I could find. The baby watched as I rolled the Ball back and forth on the floor with his big sister and his father as we all laughed and had a fun time and all of the sudden here he comes to join in on all the fun. He threw the ball nearly knocking over the lamp on the end table and laughed hysterically as his whole family chased after the bouncy ball.
The moral of the story is that if you are a second time parent don’t underestimate the advice of the older child. The fact that they are a child doesn’t mean they wouldn’t know what to do. In fact if anything they understand their sibling(s) better than you do half of the time.