{"id":4605,"date":"2005-07-31T23:02:21","date_gmt":"2005-07-31T23:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html"},"modified":"2005-07-31T23:02:21","modified_gmt":"2005-07-31T23:02:21","slug":"so-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html","title":{"rendered":"So.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>why do <em>you<\/em> think the mouth is a baby&#8217;s primary sensory organ?<\/p>\n<p>I spend a lot of time thinking about that, which makes sense considering I spend a lot of time scouring the floor for small object and dried-out, rock hard toast crumbs. <\/p>\n<p>As I observe babies, I&#8217;m always trying to figure out, not just the how&#8217;s of their development, but the <em>why&#8217;s&#8230;<\/em>which are usually a whacky and probably unacceptable combination of theology and evolutionary theory. <\/p>\n<p>For example, I decided a long time ago that the reason human infants aren&#8217;t born so ready to rock and roll as other mammals is because God wants us to develop our abilities in relationship. He wants our eyes to strengthen and focus as we gaze upon and study other human faces. He wants us to learn to communicate in a give and take of listening and responding. He wants us to be taught, carefully and with patience, and He wants those who teach us to learn about sacrifice and patience.<\/p>\n<p>From the beginning, then, we know, not only that we are &quot;I,&quot; but that we are &quot;us,&quot; as well.<\/p>\n<p>But this oral thing has me stumped, because, it seems so unsafe, on the face of it. The only thing I can figure is that it ensures the baby will get some kind of food even if it&#8217;s neglected, as it shoves everything into its mouth. But that still doesn&#8217;t seem to compensate for the danger factor. <\/p>\n<p>Any ideas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>why do you think the mouth is a baby&#8217;s primary sensory organ? I spend a lot of time thinking about that, which makes sense considering I spend a lot of time scouring the floor for small object and dried-out, rock hard toast crumbs. As I observe babies, I&#8217;m always trying to figure out, not just&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>So.. - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"So.. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"why do you think the mouth is a baby&#8217;s primary sensory organ? I spend a lot of time thinking about that, which makes sense considering I spend a lot of time scouring the floor for small object and dried-out, rock hard toast crumbs. As I observe babies, I&#8217;m always trying to figure out, not just&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-07-31T23:02:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"So.. - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"So.. - Via Media","og_description":"why do you think the mouth is a baby&#8217;s primary sensory organ? I spend a lot of time thinking about that, which makes sense considering I spend a lot of time scouring the floor for small object and dried-out, rock hard toast crumbs. As I observe babies, I&#8217;m always trying to figure out, not just&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-07-31T23:02:21+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html","name":"So.. - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-07-31T23:02:21+00:00","dateModified":"2005-07-31T23:02:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/so-3.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"So.."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}