Babies!!!

My roommate, Sparks, and I went and saw the movie "Babies"Sunday . Amazing and adorable! It's a documentary of 4 babies from 4 different countries; USA, Japan, Mongolia, & Namibia. I think the beauty of the movie is that there was no commentary or *fakeness* to it. It was simply clips of babies from birth (not any of the birthing process) through walking at roughly 1-year-old. It may sound boring, but if you watch the trailer and like babies at all, you'll understand how you can be entranced by such a feature for 80 minutes or so. Also, as the movie went on, Sparks and I began doing commentary of our own.

Seeing as how I work with babies and toddlers on a regular basis, I also found the documentary interesting in the developmental milestones of the babies. This is assuming that the clips were in chronological order and that each baby was at about the same age as the others for each *set* of clips. As a speech path, I look for beginning babbling, imitation, as well as eye contact, play skills and interactions with adults among other things. The baby from Namibia began babbling and making vocal sounds quite a while before the other three babies. The baby from Mongolia, once he was unswaddled, moved around a lot more and problem solved situations quite well. The parents from Japan and the US both seemed to be a bit overbearing (and the parents from the US were not what I would deem *typical*) and talked to much.

While I think we, in the US, at times see child rearing in other countries, especially in the ones portrayed here, as *weird*, *neglectful*, or even *abusive*, my thought on the whole thing is that if it didn't work out fine in the end, there wouldn't be anyone in those countries anymore, right? Everyone would have died off. The baby from Namibia is a great example and seemed to be the definition of being raised by a village. We saw *mom* at times, mostly for swinging a boob in his general direction, but most times he was being held by other children only a couple years older than him, or playing off seemingly alone. My roommate and I joke that he had pica, because he kept tasting rocks and dirt and other things within reach, but again, he lived through it as all the other Namibian babies have before him.

Even if you don't particularly like babies but perhaps simply like observing people and differences in culture, this is a great movie to show that. The US is not the be all, end all of how things are done in the world (even though we like to think we are). Open your eyes, watch a great documentary without all of the narrative, and laugh along with some adorable babies.