Baby Experiments

I've heard of people... mostly psychologists... running social/developmental experiments on their own children.  This seems like a great way to screw a kid up.  However, now entering my 8th month as a father, I have often found myself thinking up various ways to help Liam learn and/or associate various things appropriately.  I don't know that I consider these methods to be "experiments" in that I'm not intentionally depriving or over indulging Liam in something and than sitting by with notebook in hand to record the result.

Where the line is drawn between assistance and experimenting is kind of fuzzy though.  For instance, Lesley and I have been working on some basic sign language with Liam to help him communicate.  I can definitely see that he is comprehending what we're doing and is even beginning to mimic some of the signs.  Very normal, right?  Lots of parents do stuff like that.

Ok, so here's another idea I've been thinking about recently.  Liam is a good sleeper, but almost every morning he will wake up at 5 or 5:30 and cry out for a minute or so and then go back to sleep for another hour before waking up and repeating the same thing.  Sometimes this happens as early as 4am.  It's obvious from his cry that he's not upset, and I'm fully convinced that he just has NO idea if it's time to wake up or not.  So, he'll wake up, think to himself, "Hmm... I wonder if it's time to wake up." and then proceed to page us for a minute or so before deciding, "Nope, must not be time yet... Zzzzzzz"

What he NEEDS is a cue to let him know that it's still sleepy time without having to make loud noises that wake his parents up! (Now you're seeing my real motivation, eh?)  Obviously he can't tell time... although there is no clock in his room, so maybe I'm just not giving him the chance...  But I bet he CAN tell the difference between light and dark!  Suppose we install a timer on the light in his room that turns a light on at oh, 6:45 or so, so that when he wakes up he knows that he can page us and we'll come get him.  It's a simple equaition: Dark + Page = Sleep.  Light + Page = Wake up!  Eventually he'll see that Dark = Sleep, Light = Wake up!

The main complication is natural light that makes it past his blackout curtains being confused for the wake time light.   Perhaps another option is for Lesley to make waffles every morning at 6:45am.  That way "waffle smell" = "wake up!"  Hmm... I'm liking the sounds of this method much better.

I tried to find a funny picture by searching for "Baby Experiment", but they were all pretty boring and/or freaky.  So here is a video of another experiment we ran: The Effects of Swinging on Liam.