My Mom Told Me Never Laugh At Babies

  When I was about 4 or 5, my mother was babysitting my little nephew. He was sitting in his highchair and doing something stupidly funny that I don't recall what it was that he was doing that made me laugh. My mother told me not to laugh at what he was doing because it would encourage him to do it again. What was my mother thinking when she said that? So basically she said that when you laugh at what a baby does, the baby will repeat what he was doing. What my mom said made no sense to me whatsoever. I kind of just went along with it without thinking it over. Well now 16 years later, I thought of what my mom said was kind of stupid. I mean if you laugh at what a baby does, wouldn't that make the baby happy also? I think that when you laugh at a baby doing something funny, that makes the baby seem loved and that he did something cute. Come to think of the baby repeating what he did by me laughing at the baby would be a call for an encore. Of course babies have no concept of what an encore is. Just the thought of what my mother had said when I was 5 was really stupid. It still makes no sense today. I think that when a baby does something very funny, you should laugh at the baby's actions.