just had some extended family move in (standard in thailand, you don’t “marry” a girl, you marry her whole family) on a temporary basis while they wait for their new job to start next week which provides accommodation.
anyway, one of my new guests is a normally outgoing 2 year old thai girl, (by all accounts, this is first time i’ve met her), problem is whenever she sees this big farang in the house she is very shy, hiding behind her mother/aunt/any other thai. i thought this would be a good time to experiment with Instant Female Magic and see if any of the positive calming effects i’ve experienced in mature women would provide the extra “comfortable” touch i needed in order to get some small amount of rapport with this baby (and maybe in the future her mother haha
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experiment begins on my way home from work, 1 full spray IFM to the back of my head, 1/2 spray to each side of my head. arriving home to find everyone sitting around watching tv and i am immediately spotted by the baby who then hides behind the nearest thai adult. i go to my room to change out of my work slacks and get ready to take the whole gang “chopping”. while everyone else was getting up to get ready to go, i made eye contact and smiled at her as often as i could considering that she had retreated to a very safe distance of about 20 feet away at all times.
i knew the car ride would be the important part of this test since the supermarket would provide much too much open space and as we were driving along (i’m driving) i feel a tug on my sleeve from behind and then i hear her giggling and this is the first contact she’s made with me for two days. two or three more tugs and we arrive at the store.
for those of you that have never been to asia, women do most of the work, run the households, checkbooks etc so once in the store, the girls (no men in this group apart from me) put the baby in the cart and off they go leaving me to wander while they shop. i stuck around and just walked the aisles with them, babies eyes are on me the entire time they shop. as the cart started to fill up, the baby had to walk and now she is walking within 3 or 4 feet of me the entire time, always looking at me but not scared and keeping major distance. now i seem to be her amusement of the moment and she pinches my leg and runs for cover behind her mother time after time. after a bit of this running around she is tired and begging for a ride, the cart is full so her mother carries her for a bit but lo and behold she puts her hands out to me and with an amazed expression on her face, her mother tentatively hands her over to me expecting a loud outburst as i pick her up only to be met with a smile and a pinch on my face.
less than a minute later she was asking to go back to her mother but the “wall” was now gone. before we left the store, she was riding on my shoulders giggling the entire time from her new perch and after the car ride home she sat in my lap as the women put the food away and made dinner, she reached to take my hand and walk with her wherever she wanted to go and when all was said and done and it was time to put her to bed, she left her mother and came running to me throwing her arms around me and kissing me on the cheek.
if you heard the comments from the women and saw their reactions to this you would know that it was completely unexpected, shocking and good all at the same time.
picture yourself in a completely different culture where you don’t speak any of the language (from the 2 year olds perspective dealing with me) and having never seen nor been even remotely close to a white man before and you can probably imagine that it was a very stressful situation for her that turned into a playful new friendship in less than 4 hours.
i just received a phone call from home saying that the baby keeps looking into my room to see if i am there and has asked for me several times. in less culturally different situations i believe i could have done the same thing over the period of two or three days without IFM simply by smiling, trying to be playful with them etc but i think under these circumstances, IFM certainly seemed to be an effective comforting and bonding tool.