Posts Tagged "The Boy"
Independent Thinker
In the car in the preschool parking lot, Rain tells me he doesn’t want to go to school. He fakes sleeping in his carseat. He tells me that he’s sleepy and can’t go to school. I distract him and get him unbuckled. The day before he told me he was sick and couldn’t go. But there are no tears, no theatrics. He marches confidently down the hall, past the door to his class, trying another stalling tactic. When he sees me waiting at the door, he moseys back. Once through the door, he doesn’t hesitate. He takes off his coat, finds a hook, turns to kiss me goodbye, and tells me he is going to make some art. I watch him go. He heads straight for the back corner, then veers in a wide arc round back to the shelves of toys by the coat hooks. He looks up at me as he reaches for a large wooden tray filled with coloured blocks, dowels and cards with patterns, and informs me “This is new.” I follow him to the table. “How come you decided not to do art?” “There were too many kids,” he explains as he sits at an empty table. “So what do you do with this new toy?” I ask him. The preschool director sees us and comes to sit with Rain. “There are a few things you can do with this,” she begins. Rain already has two dowels and has started to fit them into holes on the tray. “I’m going to do this.” He ignores the pattern cards and starts loading all of the square blocks on the first dowel. The director laughs, “Of course you are.” and looking up at me, says, “We’ve got an independent thinker here.” I laugh too. “We’re certainly not worried about that.” Talking to Rain again, she says “You like to do things your way.” Turning her attention back to me, she tells me: “You’re going to get a call from the Kindergarten teacher.” She ruffles Rain’s hair to make him feel included – we’re not talking about you; we’re talking with you. “Sometimes you have to do things the way the teacher asks you,” she goes on. She smiles when she sees he’s got the whole dowel filled with just square blocks, leaving the round and rectangular blocks on the tray. “Wow. Can you tell me what you’ve done here?” she asks. Rain says “I put all the squares on.” I kiss him and take my leave. On the drive home, I’m even more convinced that public school is a bad idea. ————————————— There are a couple of things going on here. (Okay, more than a couple so I am going to do several posts and only focus on one at a time.) It concerns me that Rain is increasingly reluctant about school. Is it the number of kids? The structure? Something else? Is it totally normal? I really truly believe that kids love to learn and that school should be set up to facilitate that. Getting to the bottom of Rain’s reluctance about school could make all the difference in whether he retains his love of learning into adulthood. With Kindergarten looming, I am beginning to worry about how this will play out for him. Especially as a spirited, independent thinker. I recently read Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka and found it incredibly helpful in working with Rain at home. We discovered what we already knew about him being slow to adapt to change, but also that he is perceptive (“often accused of not listening”) and energetic. The book has a chapter on Success in School and it begins with this quote: I didn’t want him to be “discussed.” I wanted him to be treasured. This chapter raised some flags for me about how Rain’s personality will likely be met in Kindergarten. A boy who is loud, full of ideas, talks a lot, moves a lot, dislikes changing from one activity to another. This is the boy that will be disrupting the Kindergarten....
Read MoreNagging or Something Noble
Last week, I posted another one of my son’s witticisms whereby he gave me a back-handed compliment for my nagging. I had praised Rain for having picked up the bath toys and he responded, “And I’m proud of you for asking and asking until I did it.” Truthfully, that is how it had all gone down. I had asked him several times to empty the tub. First he ignored me. Then he flat out refused. I pulled out my this-is-serious voice and told him he had to do it or else it was straight to bed. Leave it to a four-year-old to tell you he is proud of you for nagging and threatening. Essentially, Rain was jokingly pointing out that he hadn’t willfully done anything for me to be proud of. But I was proud of him. He had done a really good job despite not wanting to do it in the first place. I called the post Pride in a Job Well Done and later, I got to thinking about the whole dialogue. You know, beyond how funny it was. It occurred to me that the joke was all in whether or not I believed Rain was being sarcastic or sincere. As Aaron put it: “Either he doesn’t know what the word ‘proud’ means or else he was lying.” Maybe he wasn’t lying or joking. Maybe he was being sincere. Maybe he was telling me that I too had done my job well. Because really, if we look past the odious nature of my nagging and threatening, isn’t that my job as a parent: to ask and ask until my child learns? It’s easy to get worn down by the repetitive nature of parenting, of trying to get through to our kids, of attempting to be consistent and to follow through. Our kids are meant to learn by pushing boundaries and testing their limits. They are continually checking to see what they can get away with. I often get frustrated and I’m pretty sure I’m not the first mom to utter “You should know better!” in exasperation. My sister has pointed out to me a few times that the problem is in my expectations that it should be different. All we can really do as parents is to keep working at it: Keep reminding our kids about what is acceptable (and what isn’t) and hope that by the time our babies go out into this world they will have learned some of what we have tried to teach them. My job is just to keep showing them the way, modelling the behaviour we hope for, redirecting, and yes, asking and asking. You know the cliche about our children being our teachers? I wonder if this was another one of those cases where my son, my four-year-old, had the wisdom to see the truth in the situation. The truth that it is his job to see how far he can go and that it is my job to show him the way. I would have been happier if the whole story had involved less nagging and admittedly, a little less of me losing my temper. A couple of days later, I said to Rain “It would make me happy if you drained the tub and put the toys away” and he did it right away. I only had to ask once. Maybe we both learned a little something last week. How about you? Learned any great parenting lessons from your kids this...
Read MoreThoughts on Weaning
I consider myself lucky. In this culture of formula and inadequate support and work pressures, so many women seem to struggle with breastfeeding. For me, the struggle was actually weaning. Breastfeeding came easy. My babies latched well and I had a bigger issue with oversupply than with not producing enough. I had great support from my midwives and family, and I was lucky to have a whole year of Canadian maternity leave. My children were both enthusiastic nursers and as a result, weaning was a very long gradual process. I had initially intended to nurse my firstborn for 18 months. We did manage to night-wean him at 15 months when I got a part-time job but his day-time nursing made up for it. There was no chance he’d be weaned at 18 months. I didn’t want to stop breastfeeding before my son was ready. I wanted very much for the process of weaning to be loving and gentle and to move at a pace dictated largely by my son, with some encouragement from me. In that sense, I wouldn’t say it was truly child-led weaning as I definitely played an encouraging (or discouraging) role. I employed the oft-cited tactics like “Don’t offer, don’t refuse” and distraction or offering alternatives. Eventually, I would decline a request to nurse whenever I thought I could get away with it. I will be honest. Sometimes it felt like I would never get my body back. Sometimes I felt touched out and resented having to nurse again. Sometimes I felt that weaning gradually was too difficult, too slow. By the time Rain was two years old, he was only nursing before and after sleeps and when hurt or upset. A month after his second birthday, I got pregnant again. Nursing quickly became uncomfortable and I wasn’t sure I was interested in tandem nursing. I knew that the next 9 months held Rain’s weaning. We gradually got him into a bedtime routine that involved reading books, a cup of milk and some a lot of cuddles. By January 2008, he was only nursing once a day, before his nap. One day—was it January? February?—he was playing with his cousins in the house. They had the camping gear out and were pretending that the rolled blue foam sleeping pads were horses. They would sit on them and pretend to ride. Rain brought one back to the bus at lunch time. He asked to sleep with his horse during nap time. We laid down together on the bed in the back. I remember the light peeking through the curtains. I remember him putting his arm around Rose, his trusty horse and curling his body round the blue foam pad. I remember tucking his blanket around him. I remember how I stroked his hair and how he drifted off, forgetting to ask for a nurse. I don’t remember the day before, the day we nursed as we always did. I don’t remember the way he looked or what the light was like the last time we nursed. But I remember the day he didn’t nurse. I remember this day as the day he weaned. He did nurse again after that day: occasionally to sleep, when he fell and got hurt, after his sister was born and he would watch her nurse, curious and remembering how he had loved to nurse. By the time Noa was born, he would only latch, suck once or twice, grow bored and wander off to do something else. I remember the day with the blue foam horse named Rose because this was the first day he didn’t nurse. This was the real weaning: the day nursing was no longer a daily affair, no longer a part of the rhythm of our lives. I have many many memories of breastfeeding Rain. I remember the early days learning together, sitting up alone with him at night by the light shining through the closet door, listening to Aaron and the dog snore, listening to Rain’s sleepy swallows. I remember the toddler acrobatics as he nursed while...
Read MorePride in a Job Well Done
Last night, I tucked Rain in and went around the quiet house tidying up the stray blocks and lone socks. On a trip into the bathroom to hang a discarded towel I noticed how neatly all the bath toys were stacked on the side of the tub. I went back to Rain’s room and said, “Rain, I just wanted to say ‘thank you’ for picking up all the bath toys and draining the tub. You did a really nice job and I’m proud of you for tidying up the bathroom after your bath.” He replied, “And I’m proud of you for asking and asking until I did it.”
Read MoreWhen I Grow Up…
Some of the interesting and amusing future occupations of the fabulous Mr. Rain Wild: Midwife Inventor Santa “Mailman who helps other mailmen who have sore legs or broken legs” Surfer Diver That’s my boy! Do you know how happy and proud I am that this list doesn’t have anything lame like fireman* on it? I’m sure there are more to come. I will definitely update this post as I hear them. *No disrespect to firemen – it’s just not very original.
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