My kid and notes from Year 4.11
February 17, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $521.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Behavioral challenges
We just got through a really rough patch with JB just being the smallest unit of the most concentrated contrariness ever. I found myself holding my breath and counting off deep breaths A LOT. But then we randomly zipped out of that like coming down a slip and slide into a period of attentiveness, cooperative spirits and unexpected eloquence instead of immediate tears and tantrums when they hear something they doesn’t like:
Us: This won’t fit in your backpack.
JB: Could we try it, just to see?
* What kind of monster says no to reasonable request for scientific inquiry?
PiC in the morning: Today has to be a short dropoff, I have to get to a meeting.
JB 3o minutes later at daycare: Ok daddy, you should go. You need to get to your meeting.
*They were LISTENING? And they acted on the information??
Naturally this means that there’s a spike in not great behavior at school: not listening to the teacher’s instructions, pushing to get to the front of the line, following classmates into bad decisions.
Our teacher / parent friend shared that their experienced educator mentor advised them to always be aware that it’s common to have this teeter-totter of behavior: if they’re terrible at home, they may be great at school, and vice versa. It doesn’t make me feel a lot better though.
Raising JB with minimal technology
JB is coming up on 5 years old very rapidly and we still enforce pretty strict boundaries around technology. They have a fake VTech cell phone (gift from a friend who likes to torment me), and no access to phones, tablets, or TVs at home. Well, no free access. They know how to turn on and off the one television, how to use the camera on my phone but also knows better than to EVER turn on the TV without express permission and they certainly never get free rein on my phone. They may borrow it to enjoy a music video once in a while but from the age of 2, they knew the rule: after the song what happens?
*Emphatic hands* “Give it back to Mommy!”
This isn’t to say they are meant to be a Luddite. They have lots of access to computers and tablets at school, they can play a computer game at the library once in a while, and they has gamer aunties and uncles who share their love of video games. They have plenty of access in the big picture. I want to take this foundational period and foster their love of books and crafts and sports and games and just the plain ability to find a way to entertain yourself before letting them zombie out into games and television. We are addictive personality people, it’s easy to get sucked into tv and never come up for air.
I push them, on our mommy-child days, to do that when I have to work. They will go rustle up a craft, or a coloring book, or a pile of books and sit at my feet “reading” and drawing and the like. I much prefer that to the reflexive flipping on of the television.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with tv, we enjoy shows and movies together, but I want their world to be as interesting and creative as they can make it be before getting addicted to the screen.
What this looks like is sometimes I get irritated because they hang about my desk asking “what can I dooooooo” before figuring out what to do because I refuse to give a concrete answer: figure it out!
Or sometimes in the car they ask to watch a video, get flatly denied, and we end up “mixing salad” in my hat using markers for ingredients and it makes me wonder what they think is food: please add cornstarch, now pepper, now green leaves. Now add purple leaves. Ok now lettuce. Now bell peppers. Now more cornstarch.
It takes more effort to press them to think and they don’t always like it, but I see it bearing occasional fruit where they don’t pester me constantly for ideas, they come up with their own. Like deciding to be art director and hanging art on my pristine refrigerator while I work. Or organizing my to be gifted books in the office. Or cleaning the table off.
Precious Moments
I contain multitudes
JB outside after being scolded: you’re the meanest! Mommy is the meanest!
Me: Yep. Yep I am.
JB that same day, wanting me to snuggle when I’m so exhausted I’m about to drop and refusing PiC in my place: I want to snuggle, but not YOU. Mommy is the BEST!
Me: Yep. Yep I am.
Passive aggressive, much?
JB: Who is this card for?
Me: I don’t know yet.
JB: I know! Auntie M!
Me: Maybe.
JB: Well, you don’t HAVE to do it. I’m not making you. You’re the grown-up.
Soliloquies
*dolefully* I was the last one to wake upppppppp. *perks up* Daddy was the first, Mommy was the second, and I was the last! That’s how a family works! Uhhh blood.
Empathy
JB: Mommy, are you washing your hair today?
Me: No honey, my hair doesn’t like being washed everyday. It feels bad. So I wash it every other day. When I was little like you, I washed it every day though.
JB: *thoughtful silence* I’m sorry it hurts when you wash it every day.
We want to follow a similar rule when it comes to screens. Though our exception is when Baby AF is sick: then Disney+ comes on and he gets to watch movies while he suffers through the icky.
Still, we have noticed on occasion that he points to the TV and begs for it. Going to be a struggle for a while until he learns the rule.
So glad to see your parenting is bearing good fruit! We see the teeter totter in action, too: he is apparently an angel at school who never disobeys. Mrs. Done by Forty and I are always shocked when they tell us this. You mean OUR child?
Yeah the TV allure is going to be different for every kid so you work with the kid you have. It does take a lot more work to distract them from wanting the TV than giving in and that’s always going to be a bit tempting. But we do what we can. š
hmmm, no I don’t remember my kindergarten or preschool teachers at all! Sad. I do remember my first grade classroom and the name/appearance of my first grade teacher and onward, though.
JB sounds like an interesting character!
I don’t know WHY I remember any of my earliest teachers considering I don’t remember learning anything from them.
I remember thinking my kindergarten teacher wasn’t very bright. But there was a really good aide. And a third grader would come in once a week to teach me math.
What made you think that about your kinder teacher?