The Baby Dance: Love Dancing With Your Baby?

by tedgar | More from this Blogger

27 Oct 2009 09:44 AM

I am a crazy, crazy dancer. Now, in those first awkward elementary school dances, I was always the first person to flee to the wall. I remember an excruciatingly embarrassing moment when I was asked to do the Twist in front of my entire grade seven class. The horror. But when it comes to dancing with babies, I am the master.

You see, the year my daughter was a baby, the local radio station had a contest for the best 100 tunes of all time. The contest must have gone on for several months. I was bound to nap times and nursing times, and I didn't get out of the house much, except for our daily walk. While I was cooking, cleaning, and nursing my daughter, I listened to music. And we danced. Eventually, we even got good enough to dance while we were nursing!

We loved the Twist. We loved rap and hip hop. We loved In the Mood and we loved Let Your Backbone Slide. My daughter especially loved "Can't Touch This!". We moved, we twirled, we dipped, and we sang. Ok, I sang, and my daughter looked on in amusement, weariness, or perhaps slight embarrassment at having a mother who'd dance in front of the kitchen window.

I highly recommend dancing with your baby. For one, it's a great way to get back in shape. Dancing while you do housework, dancing with your baby on your back - it helps you move. Dancing is also a great way to connect with your baby. It's fun, it's silly, and it's a cool way to show the world's next best dancer those moves from the decades gone by. But the best reason to dance with your baby? It makes you both happy. I have yet to feel sad when I'm dancing, and believe me, I had some times in my daughter's first year when I could have been mighty, mighty sad. That is, if I hadn't been dancing.

Do you dance with your baby? Do you dance with your older children? What's your favorite tune?

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Tricia Edgar is a mom of one lovely daughter. Before her daughter was born, she decided to be guided by the needs of her child, and this led her to attachment parenting philosophies.

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