Let me open the door for you to the wonderful, unusual, fascinating world of the babies of Bali...
In Bali a child is believed to be a reincarnation of his deceased ancestors and is thus looked upon as a god. Offerings are made during pregnancy to ensure the upcoming god’s well-being and after birth the placenta and the umbilical cord (representing the child’s spirit guardian brothers) are buried in the family compound.
The smaller the child, the holier he is and the closer to heaven. Babies are not considered to be “human” until they are 210 days old at which time a ceremony is performed, along with the necessary offerings. Until then they are called
Idewa (”god”).
Balinese believe that anything below (including the ocean) carries negative connotations and is an evil matter. This conviction cause them not to permit children to crawl on all fours, and before a child is three months old he may not even touch the earth and is carried everywhere.
Once babies turn 210 days old, they are named individually. The full name of every Balinese not only indicates his caste but also his sequence of birth in a family. That is to say, the first four children to be born are called Wayan, Nyoman, Made and Ketut. After all these names are used up, the rotation starts all over again. Believe you me this was such a revelation for us… we finally solved the mystery of keeping on meeting “Wayans” and “Nyomans”…
To make matters worse, the parents’ names change after the birth of each child. They instantly become called “Father or Mother of X”. Astonishingly, in Bali people are identified by their descendants rather than by their ancestors to reflect that time flows from the present to the future rather than from the past to the present.
A child is never beaten as it is believed it will damage his tender soul or drive his soul from his body. He is not considered responsible for his actions because as they say “his mind is still undeveloped” and it is the god within him that acts through his body. At home there is no regular discipline and no pampering; the parents do not intimidate their child bur rather coax him into obedience as an equal. Nothing is hidden from children, they listen attentively to adult conversations and they know facts about which an adolescent in the West is totally ignorant. In line with this custom, babies are fed the Balinese peppery food as soon as they are weaned and will not touch food without spices.
From the time the child can walk, he is left to himself and falls in the care of other children. Small girls know how to take care of babies with the same proficiency as their mothers and it is common to see babies carried on the hips of girls only slightly older. The sight of child crying is extremely rare. He learns early to be self-sufficient and is free to wander all over the village and to do as he pleases. Frequently the father more demonstrative than the mother and it is common to see a man with his child in his arms, taking him everywhere and talking to him as if he were a grown-up. A boy assists his father in the work at home and in the fields and cares for the cattle. Little girls learn from their mothers to cook, weave, thresh rice and make offerings.
The independence and lack of pampering may explain the well-mannered seriousness and the self-sufficiency of these kids but if you are intrigued about the astonishingly well-behaved nature of Balinese children, I strongly recommend you to read The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. This researcher visited Bali in 1992 and compared her findings from the Yequana people (in Venezuela) with the Balinese customs.
Source: I learned so much partly thanks to Island of Bali, by Miguel Covarrubias, a highly recommended work that depicts in depth Balinese customs and traditions.
