I've reprinted part of my last column on Gibbon Mothers below. You might want to take this simple examination of your parenting gifts before you read the last few paragraphs. A note to Dads: More than a few fathers these days are taking part in fully shared parenting. You might discover whether you are a Gibbon Mother Dad.
1. Do you understand the nature of true exploration? (Encouraging exploration is not to ship them off to a play-date, hand them your I-Phone or park them in front of a t.v. or computer. Exploration occurs in three-dimensional, multi-sensory reality, be that a public park, a forest trail, a downtown street, a beach...)
2. Can you let your protecting arms stretch long enough for your child to learn how to explore?
3. Can you bring your full and steady attention to your exploring child - not while you are multi-tasking - and know when it is time to gently bring your child back to the shelter of your arms?
4. Can you take the time for your child to report her/his adventure and praise their courage and curiousity?
5. Can you release your child into the next exploration?
As I imagined the questions, then wrote them, I realized that you or I might well ask those same questions in relation to how we allow our selves to explore. Here is the ways the Gibbon Mother cared for her child:
Thirty-five years ago I took a break from the American Psychological Association Convention. I needed to clear my mind of theory and debate. The zoo was within walking distance of the big hotel in which I'd been sitting in rooms with no windows, listening to words that seemed to suck the air from the already airless rooms.
I wandered the zoo, from panthers to moon bears to aardvarks and tapirs. After an hour or so, I found myself in front of a big fenced island with living trees. The morning sun glowed in the pale gold fur of the gibbons swinging from branches, ambling over the fake rocks and sitting crouched at the edge of the moat around the island.
A mother swung down from a tree. Her baby rode her hip. She sat on a low boulder and groomed the baby. It looked up at her with bright dark eyes. The baby began to wriggle. The mother pulled it closer. The baby wriggled harder. The mother looked down. The baby suddenly scooted out of her grasp - and waited.
The mother gibbon laid her arm across the baby's shoulders. The baby slowly crept away from her, but not out from under her arm. Everything slowed down as I watched. The mother's arm seemed to stretch impossibly far. The baby looked back at her and opened its mouth wide. I could have sworn the little ape was laughing.
Just when it seemed the baby gibbon would escape it's mother's grasp, she slowly drew her child back to her. And then? The baby wriggled and began to creep away. The mother's arm sheltered. The baby kept scuttling. It reached the far limit of it's mother's arm. She drew the little ape back. The baby snuggled for a few seconds, then headed out again.
The mother gibbon and her child played their game a half dozen times. Then the baby cuddled on her breast and began nursing. I understand that I had watched not only a game, but...
Gibbon picture: http://2space.net/news/about/gibbon/
