These ads that say "Never Shake a Baby" are very thought-provoking. What kinds of thoughts do they provoke in me? Thanks for asking!
For one thing, they seem like a missed opportunity. If the corporate world had any smarts, they wouldn't let the chance to "brand" these ads slip by them. Let me give you a for-instance:
You should Never Shake a Baby. You should Shake n' Bake a chicken!
Pretty good, huh? You guys at Shake n' Bake can have that one, free of charge. What need has a genius of money?
Also, I think about the fact that they always specify that it's babies you should never shake. Well, it follows then that a child must reach an age at which it's okay to shake them. So I got to wondering, after the last time I visited my sisters and her kids, what this age might be.
So I called a pediatrician, but they wouldn't tell me, and got very angry when I said I thought they weren't telling me because they didn't know. And you call yourself a doctor.
I didn't get a chance to explain this to the quack, but I think my reasons for seeking this information are pretty altruistic.
In our secularised society, we're woefully short on rites of passage. I for one think this is one of the reasons we have kids in college that act and think like they're ten-year-olds; nobody's told them that they're not!
Also, these ads are inadequate in that they fail to offer a practical alternative to infantishake. What do they tell you? Put it in it's crib and get away? What if it was already in it's crib, and you're the only adult around? What are you supposed to do, go down to the bar and hope it's quiet when you get back?
Here's my idea. When a child reaches the age of safe shaking, friends and relatives gather together for a celebration. They have a good meal, with beets on the side and jell-o for dessert, then they pass that kid around and give him or her a good shake.
I've even got a name for this sacrament: the Feast of Saint Vitus.
Think about it. With this tradition in place, shaking the baby is just a release deferred to a time when it will do no serious harm. So when the baby's pissing you off, you gently coo "Oh, you'll get yours at the Feast, don't worry". It will be so much easier to resist shaking when you know you'll have a chance later, am I right?
As a matter of fact, that could be part of the Feast activities. As various family and loved ones shake the kid, they could rattle off a litany of offenses for which the kid was almost shaken as an infant:
"I couldn't hear one word of Conan's monologue!"
"I couldn't hear the oven timer and burnt the french fries!"
"I was trying to get some with your babysitter and she kept having to get up and 'check on the baby', 'check on the baby'!"
"Look what you did to my tits!"
"Look what you did to her tits!"
Before you know it, everyone's laughing. Except maybe the kid. By the way, don't let him or her eat too much.