I Think I Would Prefer Being Dropped on My Head

November 14, 2007

One of my favorite things about my time in Kazakhstan so far has been living with a host family. After, all you can only so much learn so much about a culture or society through its art and literature, and being part of a Kazak family really brings those cultural lessons and seminars “home” so to speak. One of the most interesting thing about Kazak families I have seen is the way they raise children. In the United States it seems like every kid by the time they are five months old goes to day care, but in Kazakhstan parents take their kids everywhere, and if they do have to leave their child somewhere, they leave them with a relative or close family friend. Parents are also more often visibly affectionate with their children, even after the child is more or less grown-up. I know that in my Chamalgan family, both of my host parents still regularly hugged and kissed their 24 year-old son. In contrast, American parents often stop the PDAs with their kids by the time they are teenagers, or at least that is often the case between father’s and sons. Furthermore, I have seen that this difference in the way children are raised has a profound effect on children’s behavior. My friends and I have remarked several times that is rare to see a Kazak child have temper tantrum, and their classroom behavior is noticeably better than that of American children as well.

That said, I do not think that we need to follow every bit of Kazak parenting methodology. One of the stranger things I have done to their children is the way they put their infants to sleep. The oldest daughter in my new host family has a five month-old infant so I have gotten to see this first hand. Unlike in the States where when they put the baby to bed, they just put the child down under a blanket, in Kazakhstan they strap the child down so that she can hardly move except for her head. Also, they do not put the baby in a diaper when she is in the bed, instead there is a little wooden tube that goes from her crotch through the bottom of a bed and into a plastic bottle. I assume that this is some remnant of the not so distant nomadic past, of mothers strapping their children to their back while they are riding along the steppe or setting up the Yurt, and that it keeps her from falling out of bed during the night. Stillб I think I would prefer falling.