But names can also hurt them.

FIVE MONTHS AGO my third baby was born and within days of our coming home from the hospital, everyone from my maiden aunt to the milkman had asked me: "Is he a good baby?" My standing retort, in each case, was a polite-as-possible, "Well, just what do you mean by a good baby?"

For even before my firstborn arrived, I had learned to be wary of this line of questioning and the kind of thinking it engenders. I had seen how labels like "good," "bad," "naughty," "smart," and "stupid" can take possession of children and make them over in the least looked-for ways. Since labeling is such a prevalent practice (most of us got this treatment in large doses during our growing-up years) I can hardly blame my friends for popping the perennial "Good Baby" question. But I have been consistent in refusing thus to arbitrarily put any of my bairns in either the sheep or goats--good vs. bad--category. I firmly feel that the fewer names and random adjectives I attach to them, the freer they'll be to develop healthily--at their own pace, according to their own aptitudes, toward (eventually) self-chosen goals. And I see no reason why I shouldn't nip any name-calling tendencies in the bud, at the cradle level to be exact.

My mother's younger sister once asked her, with unconcealed admiration, "You're so lucky. All your babies were good. But take my Joel, now he's so naughty!" To which my mother replied, "But you know I found mine a handful too, at times." I was only six or seven at the time of this exchange, but I remember feeling good about Mother's comment. Perhaps at that point I was merely appreciating Mom's generosity in (indirectly) defending …