Red herrings

At the parents gathering that I wrote about earlier, I noticed a couple sitting at the far end. She was heavily pregnant and both of them looked very very young. Early 20s perhaps. As I spoke, I thought she looked a bit stiff and bored and wondered if perhaps she did not agree with what I said.

Later after the talk, they came up to me and we chatted for a while. The couple was very sweet and very shy. The girl was from Hong Kong and English was not familiar to her - hence her stiff and frozen demeanour. She did not understand what I was going on about half the time! When we chatted, it was the young father who asked the questions and translated what I said.

They were due in three weeks time and from the questions they asked, they were absolutely clueless about what was ahead of them. For instance, they asked if they would be getting labour contractions for weeks before the baby came! They did not know what were the signs of impending labour and did not know what were contractions! I don't know if they have done any reading up at all. If anyone needed a crash course, it would have been them. Wish I had offered to just spend some time with them to prepare them. But given the little time ahead, given the language barrier, I wonder if this 'help' would have scared them more than helped them!

Lesson learnt for me though, is this: never assume that everyone understands what I am saying. I deserve a bonk over the head for underestimating this simple fact. And if someone seems to freeze up in class, very likely I have gone waaaay over their heads and have lost them somewhere along the line. And fear/nervousness/shyness can often be mistaken for standoffishness too! People do clam up when they are tense/anxious - how could I have forgotten this! *Boing!*

Ditto for couples who joke about in class, giggle to each other and who seem not to take things seriously, who seem reluctant to participate in activities, who prefer to keep to themselves. I have come across couples like this in my class and wonder how to reach them. I often suspect that they may have concerns or underlying fears that they are not addressing directly - and are using the flippant clown act to mask this. Well, these are challenges for me too - how to reach them, how to get them to open up, participate...

After all, while my job would be so much simpler if the couple were already well-informed, already knew what they wanted, why on earth would they need me? Like preaching to the choir right? Far harder but infinitely more rewarding I think, to reach out to couples who do not know, who are clueless, who are afraid.

Food for thought for a childbirth educator.