Automated Baby Care Is So Wrong

That's the thing. I was raised as an only child and had no siblings or surrogates. My two close friends HARDLY count as sisters. I've never been responsible for the care of any child under the age of 6, so I wouldn't know what to do. I don't even want to hold an infant b/c I don't know how (not that I'd want to hold one anyway).

And you're right, my method only works with older kids who have capacity to reason and converse. You can't reason with a 3 year old.

In my family, kids were treated mostly like adults. My cousins never got a chance to be "just kids" so I was a bit luckier that way, but it's not like my mom really played with me. Not that she didn't do things like take me camping and to Canada's Wonderland and Marineland, but that's not quite the same as playing Lego or My Little Pony, either. Becuase most of my contact was with adults, I've always been able to converse with people 30 and older much better than anyone younger than that. I mean, on school trips I always hung around the adult and talked with them, because I couldn't relate to my peers.

The flipside of this is that from the time I was 4, we had cats in the home. I always considered our first cat my "brother" since we both literally grew up together. I can converse (body language or vocalisations) with cats relatively well. I know how to hold cats or kittens, and I know how to make the noises cats recognise as mommycat sounds. I kinda socialised myself more to relating to my cat than to other humans, so all the things I do NOT know how to do with a human child, I know full well how to do with felines. The oddest part is that I don't see that as a problem, either. lol