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I have found that one of the best ways to bond
with my 2.5 year-old children is to share the things
I love with them. The strongest example of this
is my love of animals. I believe a love for animals
is immensely valuable because it not only helps
us learn and treat animals with respect, but it
gives us an appreciation that we humans are not
the only living beings on this earth. There are
other animals, different from us, who also live
here and share our world. It was something I started
learning as a child and I hoped my children would
feel the same way. I never considered that by sharing
my love with them, we would build a stronger connection
together.
One of my favorite things to do, when I had a free
day all by myself, was to go to a zoo or aquarium
and spend the day watching animals. I have learned
and seen quite a bit about animals over the years,
but every single time I visit a zoo, I always see
or hear something special, something I have never
experienced before, which always serves to increase
my sense of awe at a world of animals we rarely
get to experience firsthand.
Ironically, when my wife and I met she wasn't really
that interested in animals. But when I am talking
about or looking at wild animals, I have a childlike
enthusiasm that my wife found incredibly infectious.
Now, in almost every room of our home, you'll find
figurines of animals such as birds or dolphins,
and especially elephants - her favorite. When my
wife got pregnant, I began to wonder what it would
be like to share this passion of mine with my children.
Without even trying, almost from the moment of
conception, our children became intertwined with
our love of animals. Within a couple of weeks of
finding out my wife was pregnant, we went to the
Bronx Zoo with her family. Since we had found out,
both my wife and I had been struggling with how
to refer to the little being growing inside of her
(yes, at the time we thought there was only one
baby inside of her). We didn't want to say "he"
or "she" and certainly didn't want to
say "it." Yet, since we didn't know the
gender, we hadn't come up with a name for our baby.
With this problem percolating in our minds, we
walked around the zoo. Every time we came across
a four-legged deer-looking animal, my wife would
call it an Okapi. Neither of us really knew what
an Okapi looked like, but she liked the sound of
the word and kept repeating it. At the time, the
Bronx Zoo had recently opened up their Congo exhibit
and we hadn't seen it yet. For the first time the
line wasn't long and we got to go in. As we walked
through, thoroughly enjoying the utterly different
environment they created there, we suddenly found
ourselves face-to-face with a real-life Okapi. We
were absolutely amazed. I had never seen anything
like it in my life. It is a large animal, about
six feet tall at its body and another two-to-three
feet taller to its head. Its hind legs are striped
black-and-white like a zebra, but it has the head
and tongue like a giraffe (it is actually a member
of the giraffe family). It is a strange looking
animal, but incredibly unique and beautiful. It
just stood there, out in the open, staring at us
as we stared at it, neither one of us wanting to
be the first to move. Finally, it broke contact
and hid itself in the bushes and trees as people
walked behind us, with no idea what they had just
missed. That night my wife started referring to
our baby as “Okapi” and the name stuck.
Four weeks later when we saw the sonogram and learned
it wasn't a shadow, but another baby inside my wife,
we started calling them Okapis and two-and-half
years later we still do.
Because animals were a huge part of our lives we
gave them a prominent role in the lives of our children.
Their crib set was Noah's Ark (they came two by
two as our babies did). Their sippy cups had ducks
and lions on them. We bought them clothes that had
elephants and dinosaurs on them. We decorated their
room with a giraffe mask and an elephant sketching.
The books we read our children at night almost
always had some animals in them. Whether it was
hippos going berserk, giving a mouse a cookie, the
cow jumping over the moon, a mother bunny or explaining
that our love is stronger than seven mighty lions,
the message was clear; animals are a part of our
daily life and we love them. By the time they were
ready to talk, they had already heard us mention
the names of so many animals multiple times. It
was no surprise that the first word spoken by our
little girl, Jordyn, was "duck," most
likely because of the sippy cup with ducks she always
drank from.
As their imagination began to develop, we bought
them some animal figures and stuffed animals they
could play with, interact with. A couple friend
of ours even found two Okapi figurines and bought
them for our children. This opened up a whole new
way for them to experience animals, and for us to
experience them together. This gave them control
over what the animals did and how they interacted
instead of just passively listening or watching.
I realize now it helped both of my children develop
a personal relationship with specific animals. Jordyn
became fascinated with the Panda stuffed animal
and figurine. She would talk to it, cuddle with
it, and for a couple of months even wanted it in
her crib when she went to sleep at night. They began
to feel a sense of comfort from their animals. When
they each went through a difficult stretch going
to sleep at night, we piled their favorite stuffed
animals into their cribs and it seemed as if they
felt less alone and more able to fall asleep.
Incredibly, after everything we had learned and
experienced together about animals, I failed to
understand one vital element that became crystal
clear to me when we went to the Bronx Zoo last summer.
It had been a rainy morning, but had turned into
a pretty nice afternoon, and the zoo was relatively
empty. We were having such a wonderful time. They
had seen so many animals up close that they had
only seen in books or on videos and they were in
awe.
When we got to the giraffes, Jordyn's favorite
animal, we were delighted to see four of them running
around, something I had never even seen before.
I was holding Jordyn and pointing out the giraffes
to her, commenting on how long their necks and legs
were and how funny they looked while they were running.
But she didn't say anything. Normally, she is quite
talkative, asking a lot of questions, but she remained
still in my arms, watching. At first I thought something
was wrong, that maybe she was scared of them or
something. But there was an element to her expression
that gave me pause. She actually looked overwhelmed,
like her brain was working so hard to comprehend
what she was seeing.
And then it hit me.
Every single animal she had ever seen in her life
had been exactly what she thought it was, part of
a book or a video or a toy. While I completely understand
that those animals were representations of the real
live animals, she of course never knew that. She
never knew that a picture of a giraffe is not a
giraffe. She thought that the picture was the giraffe.
But sitting in my arms, seeing them run around in
real life, her brain began the process of understanding
that this was real and those pictures were not.
I was watching her brain expand and process that
thought and I was not only awed by the giraffes
running, but by my little girl as well. I gave her
a hug and when we separated she was smiling at me.
I found myself smiling, because once again while
at the zoo, I got to experience something incredibly
amazing.
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