Lessons from a duck pond
Published in The First Years: Ngā Tau Tuatahi. New Zealand Journal of Infant and Toddler Education. 8(2), 2006.
The magical science that is child development can be viewed through many lenses and admired from various vantage points. What follows is a description of my own daughter’s adventures in duck-feeding, and the lessons she has learned and taught.
Down the road from my house is a duck pond. The locals call it a lagoon, and its waters rise and fall in response to tides and rainfall. It is home to a community of ducks, an extended family of pūkeko, and the occasional visiting heron or swan.
I have visited this duck pond countless times in the two and a half years that I’ve been parenting in this place, and my daughter’s interactions with pond and inhabitants have provided a fine example of one of many ways learning can be watched and measured.
This occurred to me relatively recently, when Brooke was in the depths of managing the power struggles that seem to pass like clouds in front of her toddler sunshine. While the adults in her life all provide ample opportunities to make choices and otherwise do our darndest to empower her, she is still a 3ft high child in a 5-or-6ft person’s world. For every meaningful opportunity for decision making, she has a dozen decisions made for her. Much of this is about keeping her safe, but this rationale seldom soothes.
What soothed, at such a time, was twenty minutes at the duck pond - and a few slices of Vogels. With bread in hand, I watched my daughter become an Empress. With flick of wrist this way or that, she altered traffic patterns. By tossing fragments on water or shore, she could demand splashes or waddles. She even chose which species to support, visibly delighting in, and recoiling from, the rapid approach of the most aggressive pukeko, his long red legs moving as though in fast-forward.
During this phase, feeding the ducks became less about efficient distribution of resources en route to the park, and more of an event in itself. Our time spent at the pond doubled, and she seemed happy to abandon the physical contact she had craved before, and wasn’t yet seeking the conversation she now enjoys. She was a solo operator, the keeper of bread and owner of opposable digit. She decided what happened for which bird at what time, and she basked in it. She loved to substitute pebbles for bread when we ran out, drunk on the power of being able to make the ducks swim after something entirely inedible.
With this awareness of Brooke’s use of duck-feeding as power play, I thought about the many phases of her exploration, from the baby in her stroller to the active bread-bag holder. There were months where she ate the bread while I chucked it, searching amongst the mouldy bits for something she could mouth. And there have been many lessons in negotiating terrain safely: a pond bank made slippery by rain or frost is a place to crouch, rather than stand.
The duck pond provides tangible lessons about the changing seasons: the weeping willow that overhangs transforms from winter bare to summer abundance, and the springtime parades that emerge from the bulrushes are a cute-fest of downy ducklings and fluffy pukeko chicks.
In return, that lagoon has witnessed the development of Brooke’s throwing arm, and her bread-tearing finger skills. She has sung to those ducks (from “Waddley Archer” to our variation on the theme from Batman: “di-di-di-di-di-di-di-di DUCK BREAD”) and she has practiced a variety of duck calls. “Duck” was one of her first half-dozen words, and now she addresses each duck personally, (like the pale-feathered one we so creatively call “Blondie”) urging them forward to take her offerings.
Her emerging love of dramatic play is evident as she assigns voices to individual ducks, and explains the event to her baby dolls. Likewise, her commentary and directives around the inevitable duck fights reflect her growing awareness of justice. Even as I write this, Brooke moves into the wonderful world of “Why?”, heralding a new level of understanding and wonder.
The escapades of neighbourhood children would suggest that we have many years of duck feeding ahead of us, and it is with an appreciative eye that I will watch the next chapters unfold. Quack.