My recommendation is that if you have a child you're sure is fantastically superior to other beings, keep quiet about it.  She might grow up to be literally or figuratively 5'2", if you're lucky enough that she grows up.  Don't be so ecstatic now that you can't help but be disappointed in your children for being the people they are. 

Many gifted children grow up to be "normal" or "average."  In terms of the learning, growth and earning curve laid out for them by school and parents, they are failures.  Normal is "failure."  Extreme success isn't extreme success.  It was to be expected, and the parents and teachers take credit for it.

When a once-labeled "average" child grows up to be a great success, some people will look askance, as though he cheated, or maybe they'll praise him in the backhanded insult ways:  "I didn't think you had it in you!" or "None of us would have predicted this!"

It means "Pretty good for a guy who's not so bright."

If your child is having a slow week or month or year, don't worry.  If your child is having a zippy brilliant period of life where everything's coming up roses and the backswell of music seems always to accompany his glorious exploits, don't expect that to last day in and day out for sixty years.  It won't.  It can't.  It shouldn't. People need to recuperate from stunning performances.

Life is lumpy; let it be.

Make each moment the best moment it can be.  Be where you are with your body, mind and soul.  It's the only place you can be, anyway.  The rest is fantasy.  You can be here clearly, or you can live in a fog.   Defog.

From Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling (by Sandra Dodd ;-)

It's amazing to read the comments and just how HARD parenting/mothering is for so many women. And I'm not disagreeing with them exactly - I mean I've had plenty of challenges and less than proud moments with my kids. But overall I just LOVE my life and them so it kind of makes me sad how many mom's are actually saying, "I don't like babies" or "I can't wait till they are out of the house" or any number of other things. And always the refrain, "it's hard, Hard, HARD!"

So my question is, is this how the Ju/wa mothers were? Was it so hard for them? Were they tired all the time and at their wits ends with their kids?

I know our lives are completely different and so we can't really compare - but I keep wondering if the biggest reason so many people are finding parenting so difficult is because we are living in a way that is not natural - namely isolated and without our "tribe". 

Anyways, there you have it. I would appreciate any light you can shed on their attitudes (or lack of attitudes - maybe they didn't even think about these things!) towards parenting and children. In my mind I just don't imagine it being an issue, that they were just matter of fact about kids and how they grew and what they needed - but maybe I'm way off base?

I think you’re right by saying that the Ju/wasi just took parenting in stride—they wanted children, enjoyed children, and anyway, they didn’t have a choice about having children. Then too, all the people in an encampment looked after children in general—if an adult or an older kid saw a little  kid in some kind of trouble that person would help immediately as a matter of course. Also, the Ju/wa kids could self-amuse. They played all the time, the boys playing hunting games or some rather formal games with rules, and the girls making patterns with their footprints or dancing. I don’t think I ever saw a kid wheedling at an adult about anything. Good social behavior was simply expected of children. 

And also, the Ju/wa kids got plenty of affectionate adult attention, largely because the adults liked them. I have seen Ju/wa mothers seem exasperated though—the woman I was named for, Di!ai, had two little boys about 3 or 4 years apart in age and these boys quarreled sometimes. The older boy didn’t like to see his younger brother nursing and would sometimes nurse too. Both of them in their mother’s lap, pushing each other. She was stressed by this sometimes. She’d tell the older boy that he was old enough not to nurse. He once cursed her. “May the spirit of /Nisa (who was dead) take you by the throat and choke you,” he said. His mom said, “You, you little thing. No curse that you could say would hurt me.” But that was about it. Everyone went calmly on with whatever they’d been doing.

Modern baby wearing, complete with frilly shirt, earrings and sunglasses. Beautiful, natural surroundings. Juxtaposition of the Old Way And New.

I'm printing this date out and hanging it up where I can see it every day... as a reminder to LIVE NOW.

A thought in the midst of the shock. 

It is so shocking to so many, I think, because we expect people to be like us. We expect them to care and to love and to protect and to be noble. And when one isn't, when one does something so terrible, we can not fathom it. And it is good that we can not fathom it. For who would we be if we could make sense of it? Be thankful then, that you can not wrap your head around it and that your friends can not wrap their heads around it and that we are--the vast majority of us--stunned. Because it means that the vast majority of us have hearts and that we are good and that we are, if not yet noble, yearning to be noble. 

Blessings, friends. May your hearts be comforted.