Growing up on a farm and raising animals has helped me parent, at least as much as the volumes of parenting books and magazines I’ve perused in the last three years. 

The youngest of all the cousins on both sides of the family, I wasn’t around babies.  Living on a farm, neighbors with kids weren’t nearby.  I didn’t baby-sit.  I was never around kids younger than my sister, who is just 18 months my junior.  Yet I was surrounded by baby animals –cats, pigs, calves, rabbits, chickens and one spring, even a pair of orphaned raccoons.  From each experience, I learned things that have been of value in the first two years with my daughter.

From “helping” many dairy calves enter the world, I had an awareness of the birth process, signs of eminent birth and what can go wrong.  Knowing that, when I realized my breasts were leaking colostrum within a week of my daughter’s birth, I hoped the doctors would be wrong and she would come on the date we’d expected.  They were and she did.  

From feeding young dairy calves from the time I was six, I learned the necessity of hydration, frequent feedings to keep fluid levels high in the young.  Too sick and miserable to pump milk from the bucket, I’d work the nipple for them, waiting for it to trickle down their throats.

From mixing eggs into cow’s milk to feed orphaned baby pigs, I learned that the smaller the animal, the more protein it needs to survive.  With patience, I returned to the barn many times throughout the first days, coaxing the less-than-month-old pink piglets to drink from a tin pie pan. 

From handling fierce and fiery wild barn kittens, I learned gentleness and patience makes a loving, receptive creature.  Hours of lying on the barn floor twitching a straw brought curious kittens out to tussle with the toy and gradually submit to more and more petting and cuddling.

From breeding Chinchilla rabbits with California rabbits, I learned the flukes and variations of crossbreeding.  Their colors ranged from all white or all black to spotted, but never the mottled gray Chinchilla color.

From raising the raccoons, I learned that regardless of my beliefs, some traits are sex linked.  Although they were treated identically, the female raccoon became friendly and enjoyed playing with us, the male consistently bit anyone who handled him.  After they were released, only one came back to visit.

From watching white rats grow in a fifth-grade, I learned the value of nutrition.  The one fed milk, vegetables and fruits, with a few treats mixed in, grew big and sleek.  The one fed chips, candy, soda and other junk food (donated from school lunches) grew mean, angry, thin and ratty looking.

From the turtle my brother carved his name into in 1966, I learned most creatures stay close to home.  An outdoorsman brought the turtle back to visit, with the name and date still clearly evident, nearly 20 years later.  It had been found less than a mile away.

From my two Australian Shepherd dogs, I learned that the breed doesn’t make the dog and to be cautious of in-breeding.  One, a farm dog from a local family, was bright and sharp with many untapped skills.  The beautiful one, probably bred for her color, was sweet but an absolute dingbat, barely able to come when she was called.

From watching a friend teach my dog to roll over by feeding her chunks of apple pie, I learned the value of rewards to reinforce desired behaviors. 

From showing pigs in 4-H, I learned the value of hybridizing.  A pig with purebred parents of two different breeds won reserve grand champion, over 300 other pigs.  The judge described it as nearly perfect in conformation, just about ten pound overweight.  Later in a college class, I learned about the genetic superiority of crossbreeding, getting the best characteristics of both parents while leaving the undesirable characteristics behind.

Raising foals from Quarter Horse and part Arabian mares taught me that personality traits are, at least to some degree, inherited.  Though treated identically, never scared, injured or roughed up, the part Arabian stud colt fought, bucked, whirled and reared when mounted.  The Quarter Horse colt merely continued his stroll through his pasture with the rider up. 

From training a young Appaloosa as a teen, I learned attention spans are short.  A well-researched article proved true when I began a riding session by repeating old skills for about ten minutes, to introduce one new skill in the next ten, and then to practice for a few more minutes – and quit before either of us was too tired or too frustrated. 

From that same horse, I learned that correction must be immediate to have an effect.  Before working with a profession trainer, the gelding pretty much did whatever he wanted when my 14-year-old body was in his saddle.  At the time, I thought whips were cruel and I didn’t want to hurt him by pulling on his snaffle bit.  The trainer’s instruction never to ride without a whip served me well with him and all subsequent horses I’ve trained.  A whip is not to beat an animal, but simply to remind it of its manners, immediately (within three seconds) of its misbehaviors.  The more often it’s carried, the more seldom it’s needed.

Particularly from horses, dogs and cats, I learned the value – for me as much as for them – of talking openly.  They became more comfortable with me and better understood what I wanted or needed from them – as well as when my patience was thin.  When asked verbally to trot, my horse responded without any other aids.  When I apologized for leaving for the weekend, my cats seemed to accept it.

From all of the animals, I learned the comforting value of touch.  Grooming seems to bond horses to their riders.  Dogs show their obvious love of any kind of touch.  In 1996, I held my 15-year old part Siamese cat, in misery from the sudden onset of diabetes, as the vet injected him with an overdose of painkillers.  He fell asleep knowing he was loved.  He had used his soft warm body to comfort me through a very difficult decade and a half.

Now that my daughter is nearly two, she reflects the value in my carefully balanced prenatal diet.  The raves she receives about her vocabulary and other abilities seem to indicate the high-protein diet I forced myself to eat during the last trimester did help build brain cells, as promised.

Although it wasn’t modeled for me, I know cuddling, positive feedback and telling her that I love her daily is very important.  And in return, she is as snugly as my cats have ever been.

I occasionally catch myself being inconsistent in setting limits and think, “If she were a horse, she could kill me doing that.”  So, I return to the previous restriction and catch myself quicker the next time I vacillate.

And like rewarding a dog with treats to repeat a trick, I realize when I reward her with attention or affection, she will continue that behavior.  We used that to encourage singing the Barney song, counting to 15 at 21 months old, saying the alphabet, using good manners and more.

I know “punishment” must be immediate.  Going through a stage when she likes to pound her skull against my breastbone when I’m holding her, I thought about what she wants to get out of it (attention, usually when I’m reading or otherwise distracted) and what “punishment” would get it to stop.  The punishment is immediately putting her down off my lap.  She cries.  I know it’s made an impression, without damaging her self esteem, without causing me to do something I find inappropriate, without responding in like by hurting her.  The first few times after I realized the problem and the solution, I gave her a warning.  Inevitably she did it again, so I put her down.  Now, I know better than to issue a warning if it happens again.

As Tatiana began eating solid foods, she has maintained a balanced diet with plenty of protein while she’s growing quickly.  Also from the animals, I know that most creatures eat what they need, if food hasn’t become a punishment or reward or otherwise an emotionally linked experience.  So, on days she seems to eat primarily protein, I encourage some fruits and vegetables, but don’t worry unduly about it.  Now she gets tastes of everything we eat, but meals never include junk foods.  She’ll get enough of that when other kids begin to influence her eating habits.  She loves ice cream and yogurt, but seldom eats a whole cookie.

Recognizing her attention span is short, I fill a diaper bag with puzzles, books and small toys when we go out for dinner.  On long car rides, often eight hours, she looks at book after book from the huge stash behind the driver’s seat, when that wears out, Cheerios and raisins maintain the calm temporarily until sleep overcomes her.

When I see a mood coming on that isn’t prompted by hunger or tiredness, I pick her up, cuddle and change the scenery. 

From remembering that as a six-year-old, I was capable of measuring milk replacer and whisking it into the right temperature and amount of water before carrying two buckets to the calf shed, I hope that – like most American parents – I don’t underestimate my daughter’s abilities and expect little from her when she is capable of so much.

And to help ensure that, our family is moving to our own – albeit small and outside a large city where mom and dad will work – but a farm nonetheless, yet this year.