From our earliest days, people are overcome with urges that cause others to raise an eyebrow or shake their heads. As babies and toddlers, we instinctively and mindlessly twiddle our fingers, explore our surroundings, and discover our bodies. When adolescence sets in, we impulsively jump up to smack every doorframe we pass under. And when we become parents, something deep inside us yearns to playfully engage with our babies—sometimes in ways that raise concern.
Depuis nos tout premiers jours, on est traversés par des envies qui font lever les sourcils ou secouer la tête autour de nous. Bébés, puis tout-petits, on tripote nos doigts sans y penser, on explore tout ce qui nous entoure et on découvre notre corps. À l’adolescence, on saute sans réfléchir pour toucher chaque encadrement de porte qu’on croise. Et une fois devenus parents, on ressent au fond de nous une envie irrépressible de jouer avec notre bébé — parfois d’une façon qui inquiète un peu. (résumé en français en bas de ce page).
The urge to toss babies playfully is an outlier, as it runs antithetical to most parenting practices. Babies are securely buckled in car seats at the beginning of each road trip, even those just a couple of blocks in length, to pick up older siblings from school. They are gently cradled and strapped into chest carriers to keep them safe wherever we move about the house.
And yet, many parents at some point look their baby square in the eye, flash a big grin, employ their best baby babble voice, and gently give their baby a toss before making the catch and then asking some version of, “Wasn’t that fun?”
The most generous reading of this routine is that it’s related to the natural longing for rough-and-tumble play that kids grow to love. It’s the precursor to family wrestling matches in the living room and seemingly unending requests for grown-ups to launch their kids across the swimming pool.
“When I was looking forward to becoming a parent, one of the things I was most excited about was playing with my kids and making them laugh,” shared Jacob, a father of three young kids who admitted to tossing at least one of his babies without incident. “But babies aren’t interactive at first, and occasionally, I’d give my kid a little toss out of this desire to have a fun connective moment.”
But the adrenaline rush of the baby toss must inform our understanding of where this urge originates. Alex, whose son just turned 3, remembers the warm wave of excitement that came over him on the couple of occasions he gently tossed his son in the air.
“I wasn’t getting wild and crazy with the tosses. But I think so many aspects of life slowed down in the year after my son was born that the toss felt like a needed quick hit of stimulus,” he says.
There’s also an ornery side to the baby toss for many parents. They know it will garner a reaction from others—especially partners—making the practice a bid for connection. But, and this is the age-old question when humor is involved, is something truly funny if you’re the only one laughing?
“I actually don’t think I ever did a baby toss when my partner wasn’t in the room,” Alex recalls. “So yeah, part of it was knowing that my partner would freak out a little bit, and we’d have an interaction that, in hindsight, I probably viewed as funnier and much more playful than they did. Having an audience also probably upped the adrenaline factor.”
To be clear, the dirty looks, gasps, and even full-on freak-outs from worried parties are justified, especially concerning babies. Not only do people tend to overestimate their athletic prowess—in this case, their surehandedness under pressure—but babies are fragile. Perhaps one of the reasons the baby toss feels exciting is because, on a deep instinctual level, we know it’s risky.
“The younger the child, the more concerned I am,” says Christina Johns, M.D., a pediatric emergency physician and senior medical adviser at PM Pediatric Care. “We are always more worried about any kind of impact because the bones in their skull are more malleable, and the calcium in those bones isn’t as strong.”
A baby’s skull can take up to 18 months to fully close and solidify. The soft fontanelle membranes that pulse whenever babies get upset until their skull bones fuse together don’t offer much protection against falls and other mishaps.
And even for parents with quick reflexes who can clear the incredibly low bar of ensuring they don’t drop their child, Johns worries about what might happen if a child younger than two is caught awkwardly. Those scenarios can result in spiral fractures if there is any type of twisting action as the baby is caught, or the dreaded nursemaid’s elbow, which occurs when a ligament slips out of place and gets caught between two bones in the elbow joint.
That being said, Johns is sympathetic to the fact that parents enjoy physical play with their kids and that an eagerness to do so with babies can come from a healthy and affectionate place.
“Speaking just from personal experience, I have found that some parents tend to be more physical in their interactions,” she says. “My advice is to find physical activities you can engage in with your baby while staying low to the ground. It may be less exciting, but it’s an option that can help satiate one parent’s desire for that type of play without the other partner being like, ‘Are you crazy?’ and then both end up in a big ugly fight in my emergency department.”
Johns also suggests finding padded surfaces to play on when engaging in any sort of activity that involves movement in the air.
“There’s a respective spectrum when I worry less about. When a parent is lying on a soft bed mattress and holding the baby up, bouncing them gently, or throwing a baby up just a little teeny bit, you feel like that’s a less risky situation. Still, the risk of injury is certainly not eliminated,” she says.
And for those who would explain away the seemingly innocent baby toss with the notion that their baby is a tiny thrill-seeker whose smiles indicate approval of their passive role in the fun? Developmental psychology has some counterarguments that may slow your roll, as you’re likely projecting whatever fun you’re having onto your baby.
“Babies start smiling reflexively after a week or two, and socially in response to other people smiling at them after two or three months,” Johns says. “But that’s not really an ‘I’m having fun’ type of a smile. It could be more reflexive as a response to startle or surprise.”
Any way you slice it, the urge to toss babies is, at its core, primarily about fulfilling an unvoiced personal need that can be met in much safer ways. And the good news is that relatively speaking, you typically don’t have to wait all that long before your kid is developed enough for rowdy play.
Just make sure you enjoy calling the shots while it lasts because that preschooler you can go undefeated against in wrestling matches may soon grow big enough to flip the script and take that title belt from you with ease.
L’envie irrépressible de lancer son bébé (spoiler : … c’est pas l’idée du siècle)
Depuis tout petits, on a des envies un peu étranges qui font lever les sourcils autour de nous. Bébé, on tripote tout ce qu’on trouve. Ado, on saute pour taper les encadrements de porte. Et devenus parents, on se surprend parfois à avoir envie… de lancer son bébé en l’air. Doucement, hein. Mais quand même.
Ce réflexe va à l’encontre de tout ce qu’on fait pour protéger nos enfants : sièges-auto bien attachés, porte-bébés sécurisés, gestes doux. Et pourtant, à un moment ou un autre, pas mal de parents craquent : un petit sourire complice, une voix de bébé, et hop, un mini-lancer suivi d’un « C’était rigolo, non ? ».
Pourquoi on fait ça ? Peut-être parce que ça rappelle les jeux qu’on fera plus tard : les batailles de coussins, les sauts dans la piscine, les roulades dans le salon. Pour certains, c’est aussi un moyen de créer un moment fun et complice avec leur bébé – surtout au début, quand il ne réagit pas beaucoup.
Mais il y a aussi une montée d’adrénaline dans ce geste. Certains avouent que ça met un peu de piment dans un quotidien ralenti par l’arrivée d’un enfant. Et parfois, c’est une manière malicieuse de provoquer l’autre parent, histoire d’attirer l’attention ou de rire un bon coup (même si l’autre ne trouve pas ça drôle du tout…).
Le hic, c’est que ce n’est pas sans risque. Les bébés sont fragiles, leurs os ne sont pas encore solides, et une mauvaise réception peut vite devenir un passage par les urgences : fontanelles encore ouvertes, bras déplacés, ou pire. Même un lancer léger, sur un lit, reste risqué.
La pédiatre Christina Johns comprend bien l’envie des parents de jouer physiquement avec leurs enfants. Elle conseille de privilégier des jeux au sol, sur des surfaces molles, pour que tout le monde y trouve son compte – sans finir à l’hôpital.
Et non, un sourire de bébé ne veut pas forcément dire qu’il s’amuse. Il peut juste réagir à une surprise ou imiter un visage. En gros, c’est souvent nous, les adultes, qui projetons notre plaisir sur eux.
Bref : l’envie de lancer bébé vient plus de notre besoin à nous que du sien. Mais bonne nouvelle : les enfants grandissent vite, et très bientôt, ils seront prêts à jouer vraiment. Profitez-en tant que vous êtes encore plus fort qu’eux – ça ne durera pas !
Source: we have adapted this article from the original article by Christian Dashiell on fatherly.com
