Nature vs Nurture

I often get compliments on how good-natured Aaron is or how well-behaved he is in public. I have to say, he is a pretty easy baby. And although I seem to constantly worry that he will have a melt down in public, he never does.

So as a scientific-minded parent, I have to wonder, how much is nature vs. nurture. A neighbor recently told me that I must be doing a good job since Aaron is so content. Am I? I often wonder that, or whether we just got lucky.

However, we have made a conscious effort to do certain things, which I think has had an effect on Aaron. We try to be calm and relaxed around Aaron, even when he is upset so that our anxiety doesn't rub off on him. (I haven't always succeeded at that, but it's been a conscious goal.) We also tried to keep toys to a minimum when he was younger and to give him simple toys that weren't overstimulating. As he gets older and more sophisticated with his play, we are introducing more complex and noisy toys, but as an infant, he was happy playing with just a few things over and over so we let him.

We've also tried to take him out and expose him to new things outside the house. When we go out, we take a couple of emergency toys in his diaper bag, but unlike a lot of parents I've seen who are out with their kids, we didn't attach multiple toys to his stroller to entertain him when we were out. Instead, he is entertained by the sights and sounds around him. I think his interest in other people and places is a big part of what makes him so well-behaved in public. But whether that is a natural part of his personality or a result of not having toys to play with in his stroller, that I don't know.

What I do know is that we've tried to instill certain traits in him by how we respond to him and the environment we put him in. And it seems to work for him.

I would certainly like to take credit for his contentedness, but somehow it seems presumptuous to do so. With only one baby in our sample size, it's hard to draw conclusions. Given a different baby with a different combination of our genes, could we produce similar results? That remains to be seen (hopefully sometime in 2009).

Here are some shots of Aaron with Auntie Lia. His sitter Katrina lets him play with her sunglasses, so when he saw Lia's sunglasses on top of her head, he wanted them. She obliged.