When your child first starts to eat food sitting up with a spoon you're just thrilled when some of it goes down their throat instead of dribbling off their chin into their lap. You don't care if they're a mess--you expect them to be a mess.
Later, you expect them to be able to eat with you, out with other people, in a social situation and be able to deal with a variety of situations. Oh, and you want them to be neat and not make a mess and eat everything you put in front of them while using, "please" and "thank you." They patiently wait until the adults are done eating and never act bored. Also, you're living in a dream land because that's not how children work. Or at least that's not how mine work. I have yet to meet that perfect baby.
But we do have high expectations. We work on one thing at a time and once that's integrated and they understand and can meet our expectations, we move on to the next thing. At this point they do eat well at mostly any restaurant or cuisine. On occasion, we have to pull one outside for a few minutes to calm down, but that's usually a, "food is taking an awful long time to arrive and I just can't hold it together anymore" type of thing.
They can eat food that we put in front of them, although they have preferences for certain foods over others and there are some things they just don't have any interest in right now and that's something we need to work on as well, but that's not our next task.
At this point, we've decided table manners are the next goal. My daughter is younger, but we're going to push her along with her brother because it's easier to enforce a rule when it's consistent and the same for both children. There are a lot of points to this table manners regime we're trying to implement as being messy is so much easier than being neat.
We're working on keeping food on the plate, keeping the plate on the table, using the utensils for eating your food as opposed to playing or banging with them, not using your cup as a toy, not putting food intentionally over the edge of the table or just straight on the floor, and lastly, successfully using the utensils for their intended use.
That utensil one is hard. They can both use utensils, but not for everything and eventually they give up and just go for the hands. I think it's going to be a while before we get it down. Meals at home have been frustrating to the children as they're having to adjust to new expectations. The big question is, will my husband and I make it through without losing our tempers too often.
The Big Boy Update: Tractor Trailer. I've been working on the difference between a, "dump truck" and any other large vehicle on the road for a while now. We go to school each weekday morning and he points out things on our way. We see lots of dump trucks in our neighborhood, but not many tractor trailers. I've explained that the front part is the tractor part and the back is a trailer. He's never repeated it or even acted like he cared, but tonight he was making something with his linking logs and said, "It's a tractor trailer."
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: The Language Lab Studies. I've taken her twice before to a language lab to help out in their studies of how children develop language as they grow. This time was our third visit and we got to do more than just listen to bird sounds. I read her a book that was filled with pictures of children expressing all sorts of emotions. She was filmed and they'll study her reactions to happy faces, angry faces, sad faces among others. Hopefully her data will be helpful towards their studies.
Fitness Update: Back to the gym and today I think was our best day yet. I wasn't dragging from the long run on Sunday and we were able to do more exercises before he tapped us out for the day. I wonder how sore I'll be in the morning? We're hoping for a run.
Someone Once Said: If there is anything stupider than flogging yourself over something you can’t help, I’ve yet to meet it.
No comments:
Post a Comment