"You Are Your Baby's Favorite Rock Star"

+ What I'm reading to my tweenager these days

Our dog used to hate driving in the car. On one early ride, Cupid started to tremble and whimper in distress. My six-year-old piped up from the backseat: “Try singing to him, Mom!”

So I began to hum “Baby Mine,” the lullaby I sang to my children every night for years. It’s what I sang when they woke up to thunder at 3 a.m. It’s what I sang when they were sick and needed soothing. As I sang to our distressed pup, he slowly settled.

In my forthcoming book Raising Awe-Seekers: How the Science of Wonder Helps Our Kids Thrive, one chapter focuses on the mysterious and healing power of music. In an interview with music educator Dr. Anita Collins, she told me: “Song is our very first language. It is an incredible mechanism to connect with babies and other human beings.”

Not a singer? “Your baby doesn’t care,” she said. “You are your baby’s favorite rock star.” In fact, a study on awe and children found that “six-month-old infants are transfixed more by their mother’s singing than by her speaking.”

When my kids were four and six, I asked them, “I wonder when you will stop wanting lullabies every night.” The six-year-old responded, “You can stop three days before my eighteenth birthday. I’ll need a few days to get used to it before I head to college, but it’ll be hard.” The four-year-old said simply, “When I’m forty.”

Okay, so it didn’t last quite that long. But I’m so grateful that my once-upon-a-time six-year-old kid, faced with a scared puppy, believed that his mother’s song was the answer. (Note: Cupid loves the car now, especially if it involves picking up his human kids from school)

What I’m Reading To My 11-Year-Old This Week

I may not sing as many lullabies now that I have a tween and teen, but I still read to my youngest every night. Right now, we are both so captivated by Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures that we read way past a respectable bedtime last night.

She’s built a magical, mythical world — and she also writes breathtaking poetic passages like these:

But Christopher didn't have the words, then, to explain what, nonetheless, he knew: that sometimes, if you are among the very lucky, a spark of understanding cuts like lightning across the space between two people.

It's a defibrillator for the heart. And it toughens you. It nourishes you. And the word we've chosen for it (which is an insufficient word for being so abruptly upended in a new and finer place) is friendship!

I’d love to know what you are reading (or singing) to your kids these days!

Cheers,

Deborah

P.S. If you know someone who might like to follow along, pretty please share my newsletter!

365 Days of Wonder: Week 3

In preparation for the release of “Raising Awe-Seekers” in May, I’m keeping a wonder journal: One tiny entry each day about something that caught my attention, that gave me goosebumps, that brought tears to my eyes, or that made me say, “Wow.” Join me!

Day 15:

This drawing.

Day 16:

I work as an advisor for the PBS KIDS show "Carl the Collector," and today I got to share my favorite behind-the-scenes video with someone new. Which was a good excuse to watch it again. For the 20th, 30th, 40th time? Goosebumps every single time.

Day 17:

Day 17: I have a complicated relationship with winter -- particularly mid-January. Seeing art that winter has inspired helps. Maurice Sendak's January poem is a core memory. Artist Katja Lang’s winter etchings are a new discovery.

Day 18:

Last night, I took my 11yo birthday boy to a Celtics game. Shortly after tip-off, a single piece of confetti tumbled down from the rafters and landed on his lap. He's keeping it—just in case it's a remnant from the Championship Game in June (which we did NOT attend).

Day 19:

Two things before breakfast that evoked an “oh!”The heart on this downy woodpecker (credite: rogerbooks.bsky.social) and this poem-for-a-cold-Sunday by Mary Oliver.

Day 20:

When we lose things around here, my oldest often says, “It must be in Narnia.” This morning, we woke up in a snowy Narnia. I like to remember that it’s a place where ordinary, lost people — with extraordinary courage and compassion —bring back spring.

Day 21:

The 13-year-old retreated to her room for hours. When I knocked and said, “Are you binging Gilmore Girls?” she opened the door and instead showed me this painting and the poem she had written to go along with her art.