Come to Laura June's Parent Rap post about giving a kid time alone for The Awl for the license it gives you to not spend every waking minute attached and focused on the kid. Stay for writing, and the emotional and developmental benefits the kid gets from having a little Me Time:
I know now from observing my daughter that she has acquired most of her basic skills while she is left alone, in the space of the early morning between waking and starting her day with me. I watched her struggle to roll over on the baby monitor. I watched her up on all fours, rocking back and forth ready to launch herself into a crawl. I have heard her mumbling to herself in her sleep: first, unintelligible sounds, then noises that are not words but that seem to be communications, but only with herself. She is figuring it out, and she is doing it, for a short period each morning, alone.Though I swear when I opened this tab a couple of days ago, there was a baby monitor nightvision picture of a kid in a crib, and now it's a slug...
The Symbiote [theawl]
