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parenting

Teaching to Share

Wednesday 10 February 2010

We've been teaching the Girl to share. With no siblings, she's fairly accustomed to having all her toys all to herself. Yet sharing is not something you can force or even teach like tying a shoe. It's something in which she needs to see the intrinsic value herself. And the only way to convey that -- the joy of sharing, you could call it -- is to model it.

"Here, Mama. Would you like some of my cake?" I ask K. She has a slice herself, but she gladly accepts. We smile, but they're genuine smiles: it's amusing, the whole process, and it's difficult to do it with a straight face.

L is beginning to catch on. The other day, she brought me a bit of candy she'd tried, saying, "Tata, I'm sharing this with you. I don't like it."

Babcia’s Coming

Friday 06 November 2009

In a little over a month, Babcia will arrive for a several-week visit. It will be the first time in a year and a half that we’ve seen her; L has gone from being virtually an infant to being something more than a toddler.

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L is excited about the arrival. She mentions it every now and then, and every time an airplane flies over our house, L points and asks, “Is that Babcia?”

It will be a time of linguistic development for L. She understands Polish perfectly, and she even mixes a few Polish words into her English vocabulary. She doesn’t speak more than these occasionally mixed up words. When Babcia arrives, though, it will be time to start speaking Polish.

Only recently it occurred to me that this might be almost as difficult as learning to speak English. Her initial instinct will be to speak English, and knowing L’s stubbornness, she is likely initially to refuse even to try. Babcia has a secret weapon, though: fluent Russian. She might turn the tables on L.

Normal

Sunday 01 November 2009

A couple of weeks after our wedding, K and I went for a walk in the fields of Lipnica Wielka, the village in southern Poland that was my home for seven years, our home for one. We'd returned home from our honeymoon at Balaton, moved her stuff to our small apartment, and begun the process of settling down.

My Wife
Lipnica Wielka, Poland (August 29, 2004)

The day after I took this picture, I wrote in my journal,

Finally everything seems to have settled down a bit. [K] and I have moved into the apartment; we've done some decorating; we've had dinner here; we've gone to [K's] folks' house for Sunday lunch already. And here it is, just before seven, and I'm writing in my journal. Everything's back to "normal" in other words, but that "normal" isn't quite like it ever was before.

It's odd how one's sense of "normal" changes so easily. For several years, we had a "normal" newlywed life: traveling, having parties, meeting friends for dinner, staying up.

Burping
January 7, 2007

Then L came along, and for a while, getting no real sleep and always having an infant in our arms was "normal." Getting up multiple times in one night became an expected routine, and it often had its own pleasantness: there is an unparalleled intimacy involved in helping an infant -- getting a bottle, changing a diaper, calming a nightmare -- when the rest of the city is asleep.

Now "normal" is "No!" and "No, no, no!" It's "I want it!" and tantrums. It's dealing with independence in a still-dependent little girl. It can be more frustrating than getting up for the fourth time with an infant.

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Soon enough, I know "normal" will be something entirely different, and it occurs to me, as it has to many through the millenia, that perhaps a static normal is not normal.

Outsourcing

Tuesday 13 October 2009

For the first several months of L’s life, K and I could be fairly sure that everything she knew was something we’d taught her, directly or indirectly. Sometimes she would imitate us with prompting, sometimes without. There were few moments that prompted comments of “Where’d she get that?” and the like.

When she started spending time with other kids and adults at daycare, the gradual shift began. Slowly she picked up as much at daycare as at home; then, daycare overtook us.

Now she comes home with songs we’ve never heard:

Twinkle, twinkle traffic light…
Red means stop
Green means go
Yellow means very, very slow

She comes home with skills we haven’t touched on: tracing numbers and letters is the most recent.

These things come from the teacher, who told K this morning during the first of many parent-teacher conferences, that L is a “good old-fashioned girl” with good manners and a strong sense of right and wrong.

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Other things come from friends. Brooke taught her how to swing by herself.

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She’s growing more and more independent.

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Now, she knows she can get her information from other sources, that she’s not dependent on us mentally any more than she is physically.

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Which, in reality, is still quite comforting: still many years to go. It comes in mercifully slow steps.

Propriety

Monday 21 September 2009

Pre-teaching
Kupa is Polish for "poo-poo", and it's pronounced, "koo-pa." Siusiu is Polish for "wee-wee", and it's pronounced "shoo-shoo."

When you're nearly three years old, everything has a proper method. There is no gray area; there are no acts or activities that don't have strict rules, regulations, and expectations.

Rituals abound, and often, the adults don't even realize there is a ritual for this or that, let alone what the various elements of a given ritual are.

L's morning rituals are set. We wake Her Highness up, and the first stop is the kitchen bar. We get out the milk; she opens it. We bring her the cocoa mix; she opens it. We pour the milk; she adds the cocoa. She stirs and tastes; we stir and taste. She closes the sippy cup; we check that it's tightly screwed on.

Any violation of these sacrosanct rituals is troubling. Try to open the milk and L cries, "I do it! I do it!" Try to screw on the sippy cup lid before she has a chance and she cries, "I do it! I do it!" It has become so problematic that we introduced a ritual of our own: "L's Magnificent Mornings." It's a sticker-bribery system, basically. It works, but it has only added one more ritual to our ritualistic lives.

Most of the rituals appear without warning. A new ceremony concerns entering the bathtub. It is not to be done at one end or the other, but precisely in the middle. Galaxies collide and gravity dissipates otherwise.

Occasionally, we get to watch a ritual being born. Slowly, it develops and moves from the status of "occasional addition to an existing activity" to full-blown sacrament.

This afternoon, I might have witnessed it.

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20 sec, f/8.0, 55 mm

L came to me asking for help in the bathroom. This can only mean that baby wipes will be necessary. After L created her "awful smell" (as she once referred to it), I suggested that we flush it down.

"No, I need to siusiu," she replied solemnly.

"Well, we can flush and then you can siusiu," I suggested.

She shook her head. "No, no! Kupa needs to swim!"

I suggested that kupa might have more room in the big potty and she reluctantly agreed. If I were to place a wager on it, though, I suspect it won't be the last time L tries to protect kupa's right to exercise.

Nap

Saturday 29 August 2009

Occasionally, K and I are envious. Most often, we have too much to do at this time of day.

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Dry

Wednesday 08 July 2009

Six mornings in a row the Girl has had a completely dry diaper. We attribute this to four nights of waking up around midnight, hearing L crying out for the potty.

The new ritual is well established now. I stumble to the guest bathroom for the potty chair as quickly as I can while half asleep: I don’t want L to wake up any more than she has to. The real adventure begins in her room, for she’s often still partially or completely asleep. And she can fall back asleep at several points in the process. She has dozed off while

  • I take her out of the crib;
  • I lean her against me to take off her diaper;
  • she sits on the potty;
  • I put her diaper back on; and,
  • I put her back in the crib.

One night last week, she drifted off during four out of those five times.

“It’s time to start planning the final step of potty training,” I say to K over breakfast. There are the obvious things: a switch to training pants; a re-make of the crib; several nights of helping L get out of the bed and trundle off to the potty. There is an enormous potential pitfall, too, and a very literal one at that: our guest bathroom is just at the top of a short flight of stairs down to the kitchen.

Now that all the gates and barriers in the house are long gone, it’s time to start thinking about putting up new ones, which is sort of what parenting is all about: creating boundaries that (ideally) keep little hands safe but not restricted. Those gates will soon be much less literal, though.

Drawing on the Drive

Monday 22 June 2009

All this time we’ve had the chalk and yet, to my memory, we’ve never used it for what it’s intended.

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Sure, one can make the argument that chalk was invented for chalk boards.

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As a teacher in Poland, I made my fair use of the chalkboard, coming back to the teachers’ room with my hands covered with chalk. Chalk dust on my clothes, on my shoes, everywhere.

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Yet I never understood that Edward J. Chalkster (or whoever the inventor) really intended chalk for entertainment, not pedagogy.

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Had I known, I certainly would have lodged a protest: chalk abuse. Chalk misuse.

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“It’s for outside use only!” I might have protested.

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“It is, above all else, intended for one, single, aerobic function.”

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Hop-scotch.

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Now we all know. I don’t think it will be the last time. This week.

Drawing with Mama

Saturday 02 May 2009

Snack

Tuesday 28 April 2009

Often, when L and I arrive home, we take a snack together. An eternal favorite is apple slices with a light spread of peanut butter and a shared glass of milk.

I don't know how we began sitting on the floor, but we do now consistently -- even when it's a Saturday afternoon snack.

I hold the apple; L spreads the peanut butter. The cooperation is a blessing: she often insists on doing everything herself, and that can lead to frustration.

She also cleans up messes. Occasionally, the mess is bigger after she completes the task, but in the case of peanut butter on a finger, she does a thorough job.