last week I gave another phone interview to a journalist for a baby/family magazine here in New Zealand.  During the course of our conversation, I found myself charging off on tangents and creating analogies for my analogies.

At the risk of further cementing my status as The Crazy Yak Lady, I do want to tell you what I think those hairy mammals have to teach these hairy mammals (*leg wax due, oK?) about parenting and community.

I watched a documentary a while back: might have been from our BBC Earth box set (thanks David Attenborough!).  ANYway, there was a particular scene that made my eyes a tad leaky.  It was a herd of yaks in the snow,  long snowy dreadlocks dangling like so many icicles. 

They stood together, their bodies forming a wall against the icy wind, working as a team to preserve the wellbeing of their precious baby yaks, who sheltered behind.  They pulled together for the health and protection of their young.

You see, if that was us, we’d quite possibly have a freezing mother trying to protect her baby all by herself. 

If she’s really lucky, she’s got a partner and some extended family, friends & whanau who would lay their hairy bodies on the line to help her protect her young. 

But I fear that our species is so messed up that instead of having all yaks on deck to help her, she’d have to figure out which yaks were just trying to sell her stuff, convincing her that their yakly services were necessary (when they’re probably not). 

She’d have to contend with a bunch of yaks who didn’t understand that the survival of her baby was about the survival of the species: the yaks who figure that if this momma was foolhardy enough to breed, she should figure it out on her own.  They were busy.  

And in our example, there would quite possibly be family feuds and other personality clashes getting in the way of the all-important work of raising babies.  Not the case in yak world, though. 

Here’s a quick smattering of links, then I might treat myself to a yoga class before returning to my computer.   Need to follow up from last week’s presentation, plan for this week’s, and take care of a couple of writing jobs.  Good times!

Here is a great new blog I’ve just found, all about breastfeeding.   This is a lovely template from Zero to Three to encourage communication between multiple carers, to better strive for continuity in the way look after those human babies. 

This is an article from the journal Pediatrics about fathers, parenting styles, & depression, and here is a great issue from the journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry with tons of juicy brainiac articles. 

FInally, for no good reason, an article about anger and meditation ... I love a bit of a twisty thought from time to time.