Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Self defense for babies

I think it must soon be time to teach Baby to fight; once or twice during mum's group, a physically bigger baby has crawled up to her and unintentionally slapped her around a bit (just curiosity I’m assuming, rather than aggression), and all she does is take it and cry. (Of course when I mentioned it to the boy, he immediately wanted to know the aggresser's name and address so he could go over and teach the kid a lesson.)

Her upper body could do with a little strengthening anyway (which is probably why she’s still not crawling), so I’m wondering how to get her arms ready for giving punches. I doubt that karate clubs run sessions for babies, and not being able to stand up is going to make doing bicep curls too hard. I heard that visualization really works, but if I tell her to imagine her arms and torso flexing, she’s not going to understand what I’m talking about, eh?

Perhaps I could just sit her down in front of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?

6 comments:

Rainypete said...

Crouching baby hidden diaper?

You should ship her over to me as I can enrol her in a training session with my daughter. She doesn't take crap from anyone. It's going to make her teenage years entertaining for sure!

Anonymous said...

swimming is great for strengthening all muscles just as well as massage and little baby "gymnastics" excercises.
a lot of Estonian babies go to swimming pool from very early (3months) on and some also go to special playgroups where there is a little singing and caressing and also some "real" exercise.

Watson Woodworth said...

"The little baby knows Kung Fu, he tries it on those he meets." The Clash.

I know there are classes for preschoolers but I don't know about todlers.
Watching Buffy with her might help.

Frances said...

I'm going to be incredibly practical and say just two words: Tummy Time. Bub's upper body strength will increase in no time! (Says the mum who forced her babies to have a LOT of tummy time, and in the end they were crawling and beating up other babies at 5 months old...)

Ali-Belly said...

Bugger Crouching Tiger - let her watch House of Flying Daggers. THEN let her loose on the nasty bully-baby.
Mwaaahhahahahaha!

Violet said...

rainypete: Good for her - did she get her training from her dad or her mum?

anonymous: at the moment, Baby's swimming consists of letting me float her on her tummy or back - she still hasn't learned what to do when I say "kick! kick!" and her arms don't do much either.

juliabohemian: I do tend to hover over her because of bigger kids being over-friendly, but I don't want her to get the idea that it's not safe for her.

nigel: I try to avoid having her watch TV, but I guess Buffy has to be an exception, eh?

cesca: I hang my head in shame. Baby never liked tummy time and when she learned to sit up I was slack enough to let her spend most of her activity time on her bum.

wicked: hmmm...I watched Daggers, and it's a love story with an incredibly unbelievable plot...

jon: only if NZ police have really tiny hands! Only cops are allowed to carry pepper spray :-)