What How You Baby-Gate Shows About Your Parenting Values

Somewhere around seven months old, Beena Boo started scanning the room for her caregivers in order to see if she could make a stealth move out of our reach. When she saw we were out of a foot’s step and arm’s reach, BB would crawl over to the fireplace. Slowly, she’d poke her right pointer finger into a pile of ashes. “Beena Boo, what are you doing, sweetie?” I’d ask her while doing a quick pick up move that happens so fast it must be programmed genetically into all parents.

After three months of finger pokes in ashes, grabs of cables, and tugs of dad’s audio engineering gear, we bought a baby gate. This gate is grey and long. There are two assembly options for it. You can set it up to encircle your child like a baby goat at a petting zoo.* Or, you can encircle your living room or parts of it making it like you are all animals in a petting zoo, or like you started a petting zoo and but stopped part way and now the animals can trot away.

Of course, we chose the latter configuration.

Contemplating this, it occurred that baby gating, like myriad other small parenting choices, reveals parents’ values. Taking a look at our gate’s configuration and how our family interacts with it, several values appeared. They are curiosity, exploration, loving and firm boundaries, unconditional love, play, and trust. For her to learn these values, we’re willing to give BB a broad space in which to play and in turn trot around after her.

It also occurred that these values aren’t surprising. My husband and I held these values before BB was born. It took BB’s birth, though, for me to begin to understand what loving unconditionally, playing, and trusting actually mean.

To keep exploring together how small parenting choices like baby gating reflect parents’ values — which of your parenting choices reflect your values? What do they show? You can share your experiences and thoughts here with highlights and comments.

For this week — and in gratitude,

Cecilia

*To see a Cirque Du Soleil quality baby-gate escape, watch this.