Instinct or the learned way?

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking about the way that we have been bringing up Milly.  This started because of a pair of Peregrine Falcons that have chosen the Newton Building of Nottingham Trent University to nest atop of, and rear their chicks.  They have doing this successfully for the last 10 years, but this being my first year working at Trent, this is the first time that it has really come to my attention.  As some of you may know, the University has installed a webcam near the nest so anyone can see the coming and goings of the falcons, and the development of the chicks, it really does make for compelling viewing, but I should warn that if you watch long enough, you are likely to see plenty of dead pigeons being ripped apart!!!  If anyone is interested, http://www.ntu.ac.uk/ecoweb/biodiversity/falcons/index.html.

As I say, working here has allowed me to see quite a bit of the footage (there is always somebody with it on, and as it’s a University website, we are allowed to watch it, or they can’t tell us not to!!).  It has been interesting watching  the falcons work together to prepare the nest, protect the eggs that were laid, and take care of the chicks as they hatched.  What I found most fascinating was the selflessness of the birds, as they would go off to hunt, and return with their bounty to feed the chicks, taking care to serve each hungry mouth (there were 4 chicks).  Just when you thought that one might be being missed, it would suddenly find its way to the front and make sure it didn’t miss out.  Watching all this unfold made me think of how easy it is to lose touch with our instincts as parents.  When Milly was born, we were given plenty of advice, as I have discussed previously.  We were provided with a book that gave us guidance on what to expect as first time parents, which covers up to the age of 5, and we were assigned a health visitor who told us that we could contact her at pretty much anytime if we needed to ask her anything.  What was clear, is that we had a safety net of information that we could refer to when we were unsure of anything and, as I’m sure every parent does, we used this when necessary.  I would say that 9 times out of 10 what we were told, or what we read, backed up what we had wanted to do, showing that our instincts were leading us towards the right path.  But there were occasions when we felt completely lost and needed that extra guidance.  What I can’t say at this point is whether this was a result of information overload subduing a gut feeling, or whether those particular situations went beyond what our instincts could tell us.  I guess that is something that we’ll never be able to answer.  What I can say is, however, that it is entirely possible to raise a child purely on the advice of professionals, and the plethora of paraphernalia that is available to anyone.  In my opinion, this would not be a good way to go about it, but it could be done.

Being in the midst of the weaning process, it was watching the falcons feed their chicks that I related to the most.  It made me think how we had known that Milly was ready to move onto more solid food, but delayed because everything told us that you had to wait until 6 months, and that we had to bear in mind Milly’s 'adjusted' age.  Yet the falcons just got on with it.  They didn’t care that one of their chicks was smaller than the others, it got fed the same way, and the parents let them all dictate how much they ate.  At no stage, did I see them charting how much each chick had eaten that day, and calculating whether that was enough based upon their weight.  It just made me think that we should relax a little bit, take comfort from the fact that we knew Milly, could see how she was developing, and were getting good at giving her what she needed.  Trust in our instincts.  Elaine and I actually had a discussion about the virtues of relying on instincts, in which I said that humans had raised children in caves for thousands of years, so there must be something inherent within us that makes sure that we provide whatever is necessary.  Don’t get me wrong, we were not discussing a radical overhaul of what we were doing, we just found it interesting thinking about how approaches had changed.

The very same weekend that we were talking about this, was the same one when it rained pretty much constantly.  I remember looking at the falcons on the webcam and seeing the mother sat on the nest looking wetter than I have ever seen a bird (there is a picture on the falcon blog if you select it from the above link).  The next day we found out that 2 of the baby falcons had died due to the extreme weather.  A couple of days later, a third one died.  It was pretty sad viewing over that week, the parents seemed to pick the strongest chick and focused their attention on it, giving it extra food while the other survivor slowly faded away.  All because their instincts told them to do this.  As you can imagine, this gave me a renewed appreciation for raising a baby with the learned experiences of medical professionals, and generations that have gone before.  The advice is there for a reason, there are some scenarios that you can’t be prepared for, and a little extra guidance is needed, like what to do when a six-week premature baby can’t cope with food.  In a world where all we have are instincts, we wouldn’t have a baby and I wouldn’t writing this blog, chances are I wouldn’t have a wife now either!!  I take comfort in knowing that our instincts as parents have often been right, we have been able to give what Milly needed when she wanted it.  But it is also nice to know that we have that safety net behind us, just in case.