Generation Gap with Babies

I remembered I used to be able to hang around with younger kids pretty well. Now, I am very hapless around babies.

Yes, they are adorable and charming. However, other than my looking at them and their looking back at me, I seriously do not know how to behave in front of them. Should I play with them? But play what, especially for the younger babies who are not enough to hold their own toys or to identify with different things. Should I talk to them? Say what? It is abit awkward to talk in baby language, but in the first place, what are baby languages? Moreover, language is only the tool, what about the content? I cannot possibly just start with “BB” and continue with “BB” forever.

I am more lost when they start to cry. I immediately freeze. What should I do? How can I pacify them? What are they trying to say? What do they want? Carrying them is clearly not an option. They are so small and soft while I am so clumsy. Handling them with TLC (tender loving care) is almost impossible with my rather retarded motor skills and reflexes. What if I hurt them while I carry them? Worse. What if I drop them? Nope, the best way to protect the babies is I don’t even attempt to carry them. Period.

Maybe, I am so foreign because they are others’ babies. That’s what some people may innocently choose to believe. Nah, if I am already feeling so hapless within the few minutes’ span, I cannot imagine facing a baby 24 by 7.

Is this because the older I become, the further away I am from the thinking and the wants of the babies so that I lose the ability to communicate with them or the comfort of ease with them? After all, I have been a baby before and have gone through what they are going through. Yet, now with babies, it is almost as if we come from two different planets. No wonder, there are so many fairy tales resolving around the fact that adults lose certain abilities of the children. I wonder if those tales are someone’s figment of imagination or is there hidden truth.