Art for Sonny's sake

It doesn't make sense, really - but maybe that's the point.

Mum's been hoarding her spare minutes to spend on her latest project: An alphabet board for Sonny. Thing is, we could easily have bought an ABC poster for less than it's cost her in cardboard, markers and glue.

We might try to justify the effort by explaining how our ABC board is special. Notice the little doors (one for each letter) that open to reveal pictures of relevant objects. Thanks to our engineering genius, the pictures can be switched out for fresh replacements, to quickly ratchet up Sonny's vocabulary.

To be honest, however, we could probably have bought something like that at the shops too. It's just that Mum wants to do it herself. Put a bit more of her own sweat and imagination into the materials from which a happily-developing, livelier-thinking baby can be moulded.

This do-it-yourself spirit is what animated the absurd white elephant that consumed Mum's spare hours over several months. This time, the founding thought was that it would be nice for Sonny to have a warm blanket. Having never done any quilting before, Mum enrolled herself in a class and picked a design of such humongous scale that the result - as became clear about half-way through - was far too large for Sonny: It would have as likely suffocated him as kept him toasty.

Charming the penguins might have been, and the colours vibrant, but the end product is now stashed away in a cupboard while we work out how best to make use of it. It's just another trivial example of how parents - for all their good intentions - don't always slave away in a way that end up benefiting the child. More insidiously, of course, we have parents who spoil their children rotten, point them in the wrong ethical directions or simply set inappropriate examples.

And Mum? She's going strong. When she's completed the alphabet board, she plans to come up with something that will boost Sonny's counting skills.

No penguins are expected to be involved.