Mom, Now You’re Making Me Cry!

Some days I can handle my daughter’s loss of vision.   No, most days I can handle it; I can cope with the sadness and loss and frustration and worry—and then there are those few days when something happens that brings into focus just how severe her vision impairment is and I fall apart.  

If you’re thinking today was one of those days, you’d be close—it was yesterday.   We manage well at home and in familiar environments.   My daughter knows her environment well and can fool even all but the most observant of people into thinking she has more vision than she actually does.   She fools us, or perhaps we’re fooling ourselves, into seeing more than she’s seeing.

But take my child out of known environments and things can easily change from hopeful and positive into a reality check of how she functions in an unknown area.    Yesterday was one of those days.    We were walking home from a park and I was so happy my daughter had paid attention to the change in pavement color and hadn’t walked out into the street before listening for cars and waiting for us.   Then, she did a great job of seeing the yellow curb to step up onto the sidewalk.   As I was raising my hands to clap and praise her for seeing the curb, WHAM, she slammed her forehead into the stop sign post.

She was upset, but since I didn’t get overly worried, she recovered quickly and wanted to be put back down to walk.   We got home and about an hour later I saw my daughter with a cut on her face and blood across her cheek.    This was minor, but another bump from something she didn’t see.    Then, she couldn’t tell the grill tray was rotated out and in the line of the stairs and could have hit both her face and fallen down if things had gone differently.   Also, did she get close to touching the hot gas grill?   I couldn’t get information on that one, I think not, I think she could feel the heat, but she was figuring out where it was from what I could tell.

Three times my daughter ran into things—on her face and head in just a few hours.    Three times she needed an adult or someone else to help her navigate her world.    She is learning cane work, which will be the tool she needs (along with her hearing) to move through an environment independently and successfully, but she’s not there yet.   I want her to be able to see—at least enough to be safe.

I went into my room and broke down crying.   My daughter came in to find me a minute later.   I picked her up and she asked me why I was crying?   I told her I was sorry she hurt herself running into the pole today and that we always try to keep her safe.   I explained I was sad because I didn’t want her to be hurt.   Here’s the thing—my daughter was fine about the whole bump on the pole thing and the scratch on the face and the gas grill incident—but when she saw me crying, she immediately starting crying and said, “Mom, now you’re making me cry!”  

So I did what any parent would do in that situation, I pulled it together and told my daughter it was time to go do something fun and did she want to come with me?   Stopping crying, she said yes.

The Big Boy Update:  For no particular reason or discernible connection, my son said to Uncle Eric at breakfast. “the only metal that I like is elastic metal…and that’s it.”  It is now dinner time and to establish the veracity of this statement I just asked my son, “what is your favorite type of metal?”   Without pause he responded, “elastic”.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Today’s post wasn’t a particularly hopeful or positive one about my daughter’s vision.    I try to keep a positive attitude but I don’t succeed every day.   That doesn’t mean we’ve lost hope or that all hope is lost.

Crayons, Markers and Pencils, Oh My!

The first coloring implement children are typically given is crayons.   After a while you seem to be overflowing with crayons from restaurant four-packs that came home with any leftovers.   Crayons are clean, safe and not messy, making a great thing for young children to use.  

My children use colored pencils at school and prefer to use them at home for the most part.   They can make a mess on surfaces they’re not intended for, but with the proper expectations set, the mess is usually minimal.  

What the children really seem to like using is markers though, permanent markers are more exciting than washable ones.   The situation is compounded more when my daughter draws because she can’t see well and gets whatever she’s drawing all over her face in an effort to see what she’s drawing while she draws it.

This week I’m seeing if I can reintroduce crayons as a, “superior coloring tool”.   So far, my daughter hasn’t been too keen on crayons.

The Big Boy Update:   My son, upon hearing his cousin had three girlfriends coming over said in dismay, “What?  We already have two teenage girls, we don’t need three more of them!”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I think my daughter can see very, very little most days but some days I’m proven wrong.   She wanted a bandaid and I let her see the picture of the little girl on the front.   She held it within an inch of her eye and asked me who she was and I replied I couldn’t remember.    About six hours later my daughter was playing something on her iPad and suddenly said, “Mom, I know!  I know who it is on the bandaid—it’s the girl in this app.”   She was completely correct, making a connection across an app and some bandages I’d gotten on eBay—both of which were Strawberry Shortcake.     So she can see some things, the question is just what and how?

The Falcon Wing Experience

We have a car with unusual second row doors—they open upwards instead of outwards.  They’re called, “Falcon Wing Doors” instead of the traditional, “Gull Wing Doors” because they have a hinge point in the middle of the door, enabling them to open in more confined spaces by opening upwards first and then outwards once they’ve cleared any obstacles.

And while the doors are interesting and different, once you’re used to them it’s just another day getting in and out of your car to your family members.    What is different with our Tesla Model X is the novelty of the upward-opening doors combined with the hype Tesla Motors has gained in recent years, and we have a car people like to ask questions about.

Commonly, people want to know if it’s a Tesla and if so, how do we like it?   What model is it and how many different cars does Tesla make, is another question we get commonly.   “Can I look inside”,  (asked while we have the doors open to let the children out and it’s hard not to see inside).   “Do you love it?”, is one of my favorite questions.  

Provided I’m not late or have an issue with a child, I’m always happy to answer questions.   People generally understand you don’t have all day to talk when you have two young children, ready to run out into traffic at a moment’s notice, so conversations are usually short but positive, sometimes with pictures of the big screen or the falcon wing doors open—never with us in it, we’re strangers, people are more interested in the car.

It’s fun to build excitement about electric cars and talk to people.    Without the Falcon Wing doors I think our car would go largely unnoticed.  

The Big Boy Update:  My nephew, Kyle, has a girlfriend named Madison.   They have been together for quite some time and yet my son thinks he has a chance with her.    Earlier today when Madison was mention and described as, “Kyle’s girlfriend”, my son interrupted and said firmly, “no, she’s part Kyle’s girlfriend and part mine.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This morning I was asleep and the other people in the house were either asleep or were out.   My husband came back, having gone on a donut fetching expedition, to find my daughter eating potato chips at seven o’clock in the morning for breakfast.   When he asked her about them she said, “well, I’m in charge of the food since there are no grownups around.”




 

Supercharger Adventure

We’ve been planning our first long trip in our electric car with the children.   As of today, there needs to be a little more planning than we would have done with an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car like our minivan.   Gas stations are far more prevalent than EV chargers.   But times are changing and charging stations continue to multiply across the nation.

There are tools online to make planning a trip with an electric car easier.   The most comprehensive site is evtripplanner.com which takes into account things such as your car make, model, tire size, how much over the speed limit you plan on driving, the outside temperature, what temperature you intend to keep the interior of the car and elevation.  

After entering in all the specifics of your car and trip destination the site creates a suggested route, including which charging stations to stop at and how many minutes you need to charge at each station.   For our upcoming trip to visit family in New Jersey, we’ll be taking a different route than we have in past years.   We’re also going to take a ferry, which the children are excited about.

The total trip time is a little longer from the plan we’ve mapped out, but the route avoids all the large cities and their traffic, which has extended our drive by multiple hours before.   The other thing we’ve had to factor in is our departure time.  The Tesla Superchargers are in specific locations, typically beside food and other retail.    We picked departure time so that we would arrive at a charging stop at or around lunch time.   My husband looked at the ferry times so we could coordinate with ferry departure times.

We can easily make the trip with three charge stops, two at fifteen minutes and one long charge at thirty-nine minutes (which we’ll use for our lunch stop).    We’ll know soon how it goes; the whole family is excited about taking a long trip in our “flying car”.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is very excited about going to visit his cousins.    Every morning they want it to be the day we leave.    This morning my son came to the edge of our bed at six-thirty and simply said, “I’m ready”.   I knew exactly what he was ready for.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Update on the nighttime underpants—success.   My daughter has been in underwear now for about two weeks.   Only one night did she have an accident and that was because we missed waking her up around midnight to go to the bathroom.   Soon I don’t think she’ll need to be woken up.   She’s made the transition easily.

The Right Words

I’ve talked about my son recently including his anxiety, low self-esteem and penmanship challenges.   We are fortunate to be working with some skilled and knowledgeable professionals who are helping us work with him.    The news is there is good news—things are improving, and improving quickly.

Dhruti, our play therapist, said we would be able to see significant changes in only a few months.   Some of what needed to happen was to help my son learn how to work within his mind to organize it and understand what emotions he was experiencing.   But the more and more we work through what’s happening, the more I realize the large part of the burden is on us, as parents, to change how we interact with him.

For instance, we have a calendar to help him understand what’s happening in the coming month.   We review in advance each day’s schedule with him and we give him choices in specific ways, using certain phrases, while not letting him (or expecting him more specifically) to make other choices.   We’ve been helping him understand collaborative play and how to identify emotions and be aware of how emotions affect his behavior.  

The thing that’s been more impactful than anything though is the words we’re using when we talk to him.    My son seemed to always be getting in trouble, trying to do the wrong thing, pushing to get something more or something he shouldn’t have.   He was in what seemed to be a perpetual state of being corrected.    The interesting thing is, all that correcting, saying no, telling him he’s doing the wrong thing and removing privileges was not helping, in fact, it was causing the problem in the first place.

I’m starting to understand my son and I’m able to work with him, using slightly different words and tone than I had before.   The result is he’s starting to feel understood himself and the result on his end is he’s not pushing, not acting out, not intentionally doing the wrong thing.    He’s turning into a kind, generous person who says nice things instead of insults—and it’s largely in part because of the words we’re using.

Now that I have a better idea what’s going on, I’ve started seeing things from his perspective.   For example, tonight at dinner he was eating spaghetti at a restaurant.    He was using his fork, but his hand was involved to help get the buttery spaghetti into his mouth.   He was leaning over the plate, but not one hundred percent of the time so some got in his lap.   He was using his napkin, but only sporadically.     What did he hear from the adults though?   About fifteen times he was told he wasn’t doing something right or well.  

And yes, he wasn’t doing it perfectly, but if I were in his place, the message I would have gotten was I couldn’t do anything right, so why bother.   My heart was breaking for the little guy and I added positive and supportive comments and gave him a big secret smile from down the table.  

I’m still learning about which words are the right words to use in a situation.   In the above example, what words are better for encouraging a child to lean over the plate, use the napkin and don’t make a mess?   We, as parents, want a certain result and we do expect children to work towards improving their skills as well as behaving appropriately.    I feel if I could have the right words in every situation, he would be a much happier child.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son was offered some calamari at dinner tonight.   I don’t think he really wanted to try it because he told Grandpa, “if I hold it I’ll throw it in your face, and I don’t want to throw it in your face.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter and husband have some game called, “The Tickle Game” that I have yet to see.   Someday I’m going to peek around the corner to see how it’s played out because the amount of laughter that happens is pretty impressive.

The Tooth

My daughter has a tooth that wasn’t formed normally.   We were told by her dentist it was going to be a concern for a cavity and as such we’ve been working hard on the brushing and flossing.    Ay daughter is an expert in flossing—she will tell you exactly how many teeth she has on the top and bottom every night.   It is important to note the numbers never match and they change from night to night.   Asking, “are you sure?” is always met with an affirmative response from my daughter.

A week or so ago my daughter started talking about the tooth, saying it hurt.   She flossed it for so long one night last week her gums were bleeding.   So we made an appointment with her dentist and today she went for tooth repairs.

She got a special gas mask and then had some, “silly jelly” to put on the area around the tooth.   After that was the needle, which she didn’t like, but hey, who does.    After that the dentist looked at the tooth and said the decay was extensive.   She recommended a crown.  

I can tell you this, I am not thrilled about my four-year-old having a crown.   We’ve been trying to have good dental hygiene with the children, but be that as it may, she had a decayed tooth that was hurting her.

She has a, “princess crown” or a, “fairy tooth” now.   It was bothering her a bit this afternoon but hopefully she’ll be fine in the morning.

The Big Boy Update:  I try to let my children do the talking when we’re in the car.  This morning as we were driving to camp my son suddenly said, “guess who is my number one friend?  Ryuichi.   And my number two friend is Yukina.”   After he finished, my daughter who is in the middle of the “me too” said they were her number one and number two friends too.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter started twirling her hair around her ear as a stress reaction after losing her vision.   It went on for months and then, apparently it stopped.   I had forgotten all about it until last night when I watched her putting some errant hair behind her ear to get it out of the way.

Right Handed

My son saw his occupational therapist, Bethany, today.  I’d mentioned last week how we’d been doing some tests to see which hand was his dominant or more skilled hand to determine which hand he should write with.   Bethany agreed the results didn’t indicate a strong reason to move from his left hand to his right and sometimes it seemed better to leave things as they are but she would see how the session went today.

When she came out she told me he was switching hands frequently in the activities (painting, scooping, drawing) and said the reason was his hand was getting tired.   Bethany asked him which hand he preferred using and he told her his right hand.   She asked him several more times in various ways and he always said he wanted to use his right hand.

They spent the rest of the session with him using his right hand.   Frequently, when he would start to switch hands, Bethany would remind him he wanted to use his right hand and give him some tips on how to stretch and shake his hand while taking a quick break so his hand would be refreshed.

So as of today, we’re moving forward with a right-handed son instead of a left-handed one.   I’ll report back in a few weeks and tell you how it’s going.

The Big Boy Update:  My son created a “love spot” in the corner of their play room.  For the longest time the children weren’t that interested in stuffed animals but now they’re in high demand.   My son piled all of the stuffed animals into this one corner and flouncing on it told us, “this is my love spot.”  He also told us he has a sad spot and an angry spot, but right then he was all about the love spot.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has discovered how to lock the doors in our house.   Not the outside doors, the inside ones with the little button on the them to keep people out of your bedroom.   She’s been very interested in which doors have locks and which don’t.   She didn’t understand why there wasn’t a lock on the inside of her closet door for example.    This afternoon marked the first time she locked herself in somewhere (the potty) because she wanted some privacy.   When she was done, she opened the door and came right out.

Add Mommy to the Shopping List

I’ve mentioned our Amazon Echo, otherwise known as, “Alexa” here multiple times.   She—I think of it as a she—has grown in popularity as well as usefulness in our home since my husband got her in the early release program.   She plays music, answers questions and manages our shopping list among other things for our family.   Over time, people who come to our house have learned to take advantage of her features from observing how we talk to her.

For example, Edna, who cleans our house knows instead of leaving us a note for supplies she’s run out of, she can just say, “Alexa, add Windex to the shopping list” and the next time she comes back a the Windex will be replenished.   My children have learned to ask Alexa to play all sorts of songs they like.   Recently it was “Cannonball” by Miley Cyrus, currently it’s “Drag Me Down” by One Direction (a favorite of their friend Ryuichi who visited recently).

The latest thing the children have gotten the hang of is using the shopping list.   If they hear me tell them strawberries aren’t available for snack because we ate the last ones at lunch one of the children will pipe up and say, “Alexa, add strawberries to the shopping list.”   From time to time though, Alexa doesn’t understand what we’re asking for when we add something to the list.   Typically, the thing she adds in mistake is funny as it relates in no way to a grocery item.    Today, the children, along with one of our neighbors decided to intentionally add non-grocery items to the list.   They spent about a half-hour talking to Alexa, laughing at her responses and running to find me to tell me what they’d put on our list.  

When I checked later, we had seventy-four items on our shopping list, including:

• Mommy
• worm cake
• Morgan (their sitter)
• fufu zoom
• India
• Seattle city
• underwear
• poop
• refrigerator
• Tesla (personally, I liked this one)
• wasabi
• one hundred toothbrushes
• thunderstorms
• poopie butt
• ghostbusters
• Olivia (their cousin)
• dirty towels

The Big Boy Update:  Our cousin Olivia came over with her parents today to celebrate her birthday with us.   My son was very excited to see her and his aunt and uncle, running around in a manic state, showing off everything.  After saying our hello’s, we sang the birthday song and all joined around the table to have cake and ice cream (although my son had ice cream only, reminding us he doesn’t like icing).  Conversation was happening when suddenly my son said out loud, “who likes ballet?” 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   This morning I asked my daughter if she wanted to watch one of the shows she likes on her iPad.   She said she couldn’t because the app wasn’t working.   Thinking maybe she’d logged out of Netflix I told her I’d be glad to take a look at it and see if I could fix the problem.  Not wanting to relinquish the iPad she’d just been given she replied, “It doesn’t work on Sundays, it works on the other days of the week.”

Anxiety

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about my son and what’s going on with him for some time now.   The post hasn’t happened and at this point I’m going to have to break it up into several posts somewhat like chapters.   So let’s call today’s post, Chapter One: Anxiety.  (My son’s anxiety, mine is an altogether different topic.)

To start, there isn’t anything wrong with my son.   He’s going through some challenging times, perhaps based on the changes in our family due to his sister’s vision impairment, or maybe it’s because of our parenting style or it could just be because his brain is developing in some ways faster while in other ways slower.   It’s probably a combination of all three plus some other reasons I haven’t thought of.

My son is exhibiting what I would have called defiance or control issues a few months ago.   But after working with his therapist, we’ve come to realize it’s almost the complete opposite situation manifesting in what looks like controlling behavior.  

My son doesn’t have the executive function skills for manipulation and control yet, so in a situation where he feels out of control and his anxiety spikes, he tries to control his surroundings in an attempt to get his anxiety back under control.   Here’s an example:  my son came up late from bruising his teeth.   He saw the story book open in my lap and his sister in her bed and thought I’d started reading without him.   He got very upset and demanded he be allowed to wear his dinosaur slippers to bed.   He’s never wanted to wear slippers to bed and it was an almost palpable change in his demeanor as his demands and pleas to get the slippers got more extreme.  His complaints went on so long he almost lost the chance to hear a story (what he’d wanted in the first place).

This looked like a control issue as in him wanting to control what we allowed as parents.   Had I understood then what I do now, I could have handled the situation differently and I think the result would have been a quicker resolution and he would have felt better as well.   I didn’t let him have the slippers, but I didn’t validate how he was feeling and reassure him.   I should have told him I could see he was upset, but I didn’t start reading without him.  We were waiting for him and when he was in his bed and quiet, the story would begin.   I also could have told him, “the slippers won’t make you feel better” because he doesn’t really understand what he’s doing when he’s trying to control his environment and then reassure him we were waiting for him.

The above “better response” was what his therapist suggested when I talked to her about it and gave me more details on types of situations that might cause similar anxiety.   She said he has a need to be validated has a big fear of being rejected.   Dovetail that in with his low self-esteem and he can easily get thrown off and get into high-anxiety mode.

On the positive side from the observations from his therapist, my son had good impulse control, excellent problem solving abilities and wants to please people and make them happy.   He doesn’t always succeed in the pleasing people and making them happy because of other things in play, but underlying his anxiety, that’s how he really feels.

The Big Boy Update:   My son was watching clips from the Avengers movie with my husband this afternoon.   There are lots of superheroes in the movie and my son was watching with rapt attention.   When one video had finished he turned to my husband and said, “I love it when they pose.”   I’d never thought about it before, but superheroes do indeed do a lot of posing.   If posing skills are important to becoming a superhero, my son’s leveled posing to at least level ten in our living room alone.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to tell my husband and me a joke this morning.   Let me let you guess if she made it up herself:  “Why did the pig go to market?  Because he wanted to pick up a doughnut!”   <Insert laughing and giggling on the part of the joke teller here>

Calendar Blind Spots

I have a mental thing going on.   I don’t know if it’s excessive compartmentalization or a memory thing but once I put something on my calendar, I forget about it.   So let’s say next week is your birthday.   I likely have forgotten your birthday is even in July, let alone what day it is.   I find out, and am pleasantly surprised you’ve gotten a year older, when my calendar lets me know.

This poses a problem for friends, relatives and children’s birthday parties when I need to know the birthday is coming up days before the event so I can do something such as get a fun train set from Amazon in time to be shipped and be put in a colorful bag before we depart for the party at the bounce house place.   In comes the calendar again to save me.   Whenever I put an entry on the calendar for Little Teddy’s birthday party I also add an entry for five days before to buy him a present.

Are we having dinner together next week on Thursday?  I really don’t know.   If you saw me and said, “see you on Thursday” I might even say, “see you then” followed by a quick calendar check after you’ve left the scene to find out exactly why I might be seeing you that day.  

So is this some sort of mental filling system error on the part of my brain or is it more like not remembering where you parked your car three weeks ago at the office because it wasn’t something that was put into the, “I need to remember this long-term so I’d better make a serious note of it”, type of thing?

Suffice it to say, I have a system that works well as long as I make calendar or date-based reminders when I find out about the item/event, so later I’m alerted at the proper time.   Over the years, I think I’ve become more dependent on the calendar and less-dependent on my brain for these kinds of things.   When the “brain training” fad rolled around a few years ago I had fun playing some of the little skill games and did fairly well at them, but how that translated to remembering things once they’ve been “calendarized” I’m not sure.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had fun participating in my daughter’s music therapy lesson today.   One of the things they typically do in the session is sing emotion-based songs.   This evening he told me he enjoyed singing the mad song, the happy song, the sad song and the silly song.   Chelsea told me he was having fun but the best part was during each song he would suddenly yell out, “ATTACK!” and jump around the room doing his “moves”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After school today I told my children I had gotten blackberries and raspberries at the store if they wanted them for snack.   While I was cleaning up the lunch boxes I heard my daughter ask, “why are these so soft?”  I looked over and couldn’t help laughing to see her with five raspberries, one on each finger.

Blog Post Lurker

I usually come downstairs to write my blog posts after the children have gone to bed.  Sometimes I manage to get to the task earlier in the day, but for the most part I like to wait until the end of the day to make a decision about what to write.  Today I was at my computer earlier and was about to start writing this here post when I realized I was being watched.

Our basement is a “walk out” basement meaning it’s half underground and half at grade.   We have windows and doors on the East side and a poured concrete foundation wall on the West side of the basement.   My office desk looks out into the back yard through two windows and it was through one of those windows I realized I was being watched.

There was this little black head that was peeping into the window, looking at me and then dropping out of sight.   I got up and went outside to get a picture to show my children because they are friends to all animals:



He (or she) was a black snake and is quite harmless.   They’re not typically bothered or startled by humans and move at a slow pace.  The snake looked at me inquisitively for a few seconds and then went back to exploring the window.

I was looking forward to showing the picture to my son tonight and wasn’t disappointed in his excitement when he zoomed in on the picture and asked me questions.    He and his sister are both interested in animals, but they also know wild animals aren’t to be approached or touched unless an adult is with you and guiding the experience.   Their school has done a fantastic job of instilling a love as well as a healthy respect of animals in both children.

The Big Boy Update:  Did I write about the roly-poly?  Speaking of respect for animals, my son and daughter learned all about these little creatures in camp earlier this summer.  My son has now found multiple on the ground, letting us know each time, “they’re not animals, they’re crustaceans.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This morning my daughter came down about fifteen minutes before we get up for breakfast.   She climbed in the bed and about two minutes later said to me, “Mom, why don’t you have earplugs so you don’t have to hear daddy snoring?”

Raconteur

My husband and I were in a conversation yesterday and somehow the word, “charisma” came up in relation to one of the people we were talking about.   We did what typically happens in this internet-connected, wireless enabled society these days—we looked up the word online.  

As I was looking up the definition of “charisma”, the Word of the Day popped up.   I said to my husband, “hey, do you think I’m a raconteur?”   I didn’t know the definition of the word and my notion of what it might mean was entirely wrong.   a raconteur is “a person who tells anecdotes in a skillful and amusing way.”

My husband said he thought I qualified as a raconteur on account of this here blog and my enjoyment of telling stories in general.   But I’m not sure.   I mean yes, I love telling stories.   Sometimes it’s getting me to stop telling stories that’s the problem.   But being able to tell a story skillfully or in an amusing way is more challenging.    For the blog here, most days I feel the posts would rate a solid Mundane score.    For those steadfast readers who are still with me, mundane posts and all, thanks.   I’ll work on becoming a raconteur.

The Big Boy Update:   I heard this from around the corner and could hardly keep from laughing out loud.   We’d been at the pool late to celebrate the swim team’s division victory.   My husband had gotten the two children into the shower and was getting them cleaned as quickly as possible while I got their clothes ready.   I heard my husband say to my son, “it’s not a called a ‘weiner', it’s a penis; you have one too”, to which my son replied, “yeah, but yours looks horriblier.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter helped make muffins today.   She is very good at cracking eggs and getting them into the bowl without breaking any of the shell off.    We made blueberry muffins for the swim team celebration tonight and she was proud to have helped.

Fort Death

Our fort died today.   When our friends from Jakarta were here we worked on a cardboard box fort as a team which involved many children, lots of duct tape, a menagerie of stickers a smattering of colored markers and a variety of colored papers and tape.    When the “fort was completed it ran from nearly one end of the room to the other and included windows, doors, roofs, and fast-food delivery openings.   It was fun to look at, even for me as an adult.

We moved the long, taped box structure into the bonus room and it’s been a source of fun for our children and their friends since its creation last week.   It was showing signs of wear though due to the heavy use and general heavy-handedness of children.  

Today I came upstairs after five children had been happily running around for a few hours to discover a toppled and partially squashed fort on the floor.    It was beyond salvaging so I spent some time removing the tape and other non-recyclable items and then putting it in our recycling bin outside.  

The fort lived a good life and made many children happy.    There will be more forts in the future if the number of boxes from Amazon we get regularly from Amazon is any indicator.

The Big Boy Update:  My son knows every piece of every toy he has.   It’s uncanny how he not only knows what pieces go with what toys—he knows where the missing pieces are.   This includes knowing exactly what goes together with toys he hasn’t seen in a year that have been sitting in a box somewhere in storage.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter doesn’t always settle down to go to sleep at night when we go to their room to read a story before bed—unless the story is one of the Winnie the Pooh stories.   She loves to hear about Pooh, Christopher Robin and his friends, but she just can’t manage to stay awake to hear the end of one of their adventures.

Leftover Victory

We had ten people in our house last week.   This consisted of family members and some who weren’t technically family but are so close we like to think of them as family as well.    Good times were had which included good food, much of which resulted in leftovers from meals out and remainders from meals cooked at home.    When the dust cleared and we were back to just the four of us, we had a refrigerator of food to sustain ourselves on.

From a previous post you might remember I’m not a fan of leftovers.   And while it’s true I don’t find comfort in a refrigerator filled with food that needs to get consumed before it goes bad, for some reason I find a need to be sure the food does in fact get eaten and doesn’t go to waste.  

Today marks the full reset, the total finishing of those leftovers.   Some of them were challenging, such as the daikon radish we typically don’t use in cooking here.   And yet it was good on my salad.   The pasta…well, that’s never an issue in our house, the vat of pasta was finished up yesterday by my children and husband.   The restaurant styrofoam containers were heated up and served to my children as choices and pieces of their meal.  

We’re now back to about a fifty-percent full refrigerator, anal-retentedly organized into tidy categories of victuals and beverages.   And while I’m enjoying the cleaned out refrigerator, I am missing our family who have departed more.  

The Big Boy Update:  I told my son this morning that Lucy, our dog, wasn’t going to be with us much longer as she was old and not well.   He seemed to take this news somberly but then brightened, saying, “It’s Lucy’s birthday today!”   Why not, I thought, it’s as good a day as any, so I told my son we would have to celebrate after camp.   He wanted to make her a cake, which my children did with my husband, including Biscoff icing and some candles.   They wanted to invite their friends to join in the singing and cake eating so after dinner we all gathered around to sing to our dog to celebrate her birthday.   Then we got to see just how fast a little dog can eat a (tiny) slice of cake.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We built a large cardboard box house with our friends from Indonesia last week.   It’s still standing, although a bit worse for the wear, in our bonus room and is heavily used by the children and their friends.   My daughter and I spent her “special time” in there yesterday.   When we got inside the fort my daughter said, “we’re in Kingdom Come”.    It appears they’ve named the fort, I just wish I knew where they got the name from.

Fitness Update:  Did I even mention I ran ten miles this weekend?   I haven’t written a fitness update section in so long (my running buddy pointed out it’s been two months) I clean near forgot about it.  I did remember how to run.   I also remembered how unpleasant it is to run in the hot, humid summers of the south.  

Have They Gone Too Far?

From time to time we’ve gone “around the block” with our children.   Initially, it was in a stroller when they were babies—a time when they just went along for the ride.   When they got older, we did walks around the block and more recently we’ve gone on bike rides with them.

For the latter two of those treks we would commonly have to turn back (it’s about a half-mile) because the children were tired and wanted to go home.   If we had made it half-way around already, the remainder of the trip typically involved a lot of comments such as, “I’m tired” and “carry me”.

More recently they’ve been interested in riding their bikes—our blind child has good peripheral vision and can navigate quite well.   Mostly though they like to ride up and down on our short street consisting of eleven houses, ending in a cul-de-sac.   Because traffic is low and almost all the families  on our street have two or more children, it’s relatively safe for our children to spend time out front unattended or loosely monitored by adults.

Yesterday I was inside and heard Keira, who is almost nine-years-old and quite responsible, calling out for me.   By the time I got to the front to find out what they wanted the children had managed to get their bikes out of the garage and their helmets on without adult assistance.   My children still choose to use their balance bikes as their pedal bikes are a bit tall for them.   That, and they love their balance bikes, not being bothered by the additional work it takes from them to propel themselves along.

I told the three of them to be careful and have fun and if they needed anything to let me know.    About a half-hour later they came into the house, hot and sweaty, and informed me Morgan wasn’t home because she didn’t answer her door when they knocked.  

I masked my surprise, saying them their favorite sitter, Morgan, had left for the lake this morning.   What had they just done?  They’d gone half-way around the block by themselves to get to Morgan’s house.   Finding her absent, they came back home.   They did the trip with ease and apparently without complaint (Morgan has a dog and two cats they had wanted to play with.)

Historically, I’ve told many, many people that we don’t worry if our children are out of sight, because there are only two places they have interest in going: the house next door to play with Madison and Whitaker or the house behind ours to play with Rayan and Keira.    It seems now they have a third place they might go, which changes the situation.

I’m going to have a conversation with them about going to visit Morgan and her brother Tristan (another favorite sitter) without talking to us about it first.    They are careful to look and listen for cars before crossing the street and Morgan’s house is only about five houses away if they walk between houses, but I do think it should be something planned out and facilitated by adults at this age.

The Big Boy Update:  We’re working on an understanding of money with my son.   He commonly asks me to look up on my iPad, “Name of Thing He’s Currently Obsessed With” so he can look for toys related to it to put on his wish list.   He has a knack for finding the things that are the biggest and therefore the most expensive.   He seems to really like things costing $149.99 or higher.    Today he asked me about two expensive things and then came back with something only $14.99.   I told him that was reasonable to put on his wish list and did he want to count out the money he’s earned for helping around the house.    I spent some time with him counting coins and me tallying up totals.   He’s got $5.71 and now has more incentive to help for money.   He asked me if the dishes needed putting up yet?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is upstairs making me a necklace.   She has a firm length of plastic cording and some very large beads with big holes to string onto it.   She isn’t frustrated but I can tell you I would be if it took me as long to find the bead hole as it does her.   Mostly she does it by feel, as we think her close vision is very poor.    It’s hard to tell what’s good and what’s bad visually with her, but she’s still trying and doing the best with the vision she has.

Flash Floods

We went to dinner with some good friends tonight to celebrate two birthdays.   We went to a restaurant downtown and had a long, leisurely meal in which we shared food family style.  Conversations were had, laughing was frequent and inevitably the main meal was over and it was time for birthday cake.

While we were digging into our slices of cake a storm started.   We had already gotten flash flood warnings on our phone—an interesting thing in a restaurant because your phone, along with the phones around you are all making that squawking sound at the same time.   We didn’t pay much attention at the time but some time later after the bill had been paid, we realized we were in downpour trouble.

Radar apps have colors with things like red and orange being bigger, stronger and badder versions of the weather situation.    In our case, we were right in the middle of a big orange/red zone that might take an hour to pass.   We waited it out for a while, looking for a break in which we could send people to bring the cars up to the door of the restaurant to pick us up.

When we did get into the car the first thing we experienced was a flash flood warning again, this time from four individual cell phones as well as over-the car’s speakers.    It’s a good thing we live on a rise.  

Getting to our house was the trick though; we were re-routed two times due to that flash flooding warning we’d all been silencing for the past three hours.   It’s not common to have flash floods to the extent traffic is detoured and emergency personnel involved, but this was indeed some heavy rain coming down tonight.

The Big Boy Update:   Two times today I pulled my son over, in private and talked quietly to him about something he did that was rude or not wanted behavior.   In this quiet setting with no one else around, he can reflect and does know the appropriate behavior.   He’s still got a lot of challenges on how to get to those better behaviors though.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Our sitter told me when we got home tonight that my daughter wanted me to come up to her bed and give her the secret handshake when I got home.   Don’t tell her I told you, but the secret handshake is: shake, fist bump, shooting fingers, pinky shake

Left or Right or Left

We’ve done some investigation today to find out which hand is my son’s dominant hand and the results are interesting on multiple fronts.   He is displaying right-hand dominance in many things but when it comes to holding something like tongs, tweezers or a pencil, he prefers his left hand.  

We tested, ahem, played games with him that would give us information on thirteen different ways he might display hand dominance.  Of those thirteen, six of them showed right-hand dominance with the other seven demonstrating left-hand dominance.   The left-hand ones included those including or close to writing activities, the right-handed ones included bigger motions such as throwing a ball or unscrewing a lid.

But what does this mean?   I’d like to know myself because I’m left-handed and I tested myself along with him, having the same results in each and every test.    Am I left-handed but would have been better suited as a right-handed writer?

We will find out more and because I know you simply can’t wait to know the results of this riveting situation, I’ll update you as I get some professional guidance from Bethany.

The Big Boy Update:  My son jumped off the diving board today at the pool.   I didn’t know what to write about him today so I asked my daughter to tell me something interesting about my son I could write about.   She said sure and then too me about the diving board.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is watching me type this blog post so I asked her if she’d like to say anything or tell a story.   This is what she said, verbatim:  “Hello, Aunt Rebecca.  I hope I see you soon.  Bye.  And mom, could you give her a smiley face too?”

Left or Right?

My son had his first occupational therapy session on Monday.   It’s been a long wait to get to this first working session but we’re glad we’re able to start over the summer before school begins in the fall.    At the start of the session my son happily went with Bethany and forty-five minutes later, she came out with some paperwork and a few questions for me.    Typically with the play therapy sessions, we don’t discuss what happened in the session in front of the child, but the nature of these sessions is different.

It didn’t matter in any case because my son paid no attention to us as, “hey, television in the corner playing Scooby Doo!"  (Or so that’s how I translated my son’s thoughts as he was ensnared by the video on the screen.)

Bethany asked if we were wedded to my son being left-handed.   I told her we had no preference and that what worked best for him we would support.   My son (and daughter) have always preferred their left hand for things like eating and drawing, but Bethany saw some behaviors which indicated right-hand dominance.   We’ve never suggested or corrected him in any way, so we’ve just gone with the left-handed preference so far.

We’ve been given a list of activities to do with my son with over the next two weeks to get some data to take back to her.   He won’t know we’re testing him as we’re just observing and documenting what he does.   Here are some examples of what we’ll have him doing:

• Screwing lids on and off jars
• Assembling nuts and bolts
• Using tongs and tweezers
• Using a hammer and screwdriver
• Scooping beans into a container
• Playing ball
• Putting stickers onto a page
• Tearing paper

What we’ll be watching in each of the above for which hand is being used in a more skilled manner.   For instance, with tearing paper, one hand typically holds the paper while the other hand does the tearing.   For screwing a nut onto a bolt, one hand screws while the other hand holds.   When Bethany had my son do the nut and bolt activity she noticed he used his right hand to screw the nut onto the bolt.   She had him switch the bolt to his right hand and instead of now screwing with the left hand, he rotated the bolt with his right hand.   

I’ll know more in a week or two and let you know what we discover.   I’m interested to see how I do some of the above activities myself too.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is very, very sad our family friends from Jakarta have left.   He has friends and he likes other children, but this has hit him harder than we expected.  Not once, but three times today he’s told me, “I’m not going to be happy until I forget about Ryuichi and Yukina.”   The first time he said it he also said, “and I’m not going to forget about them tomorrow.”   He wants them to come back, wants to go to New York (where they are today) and wants to go to Jakarta to visit them immediately.    I think he made some true friends.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to play a game today.   “A blocks game” she told me.    We pulled out the alphabet blocks Aunt A sent for Christmas several years ago and discovered another “era” of play with them.   My daughter now wants to find all the letter sounds and categorize the blocks into stacks.   We not only made letter towers, we practiced our letter sounds at the same time.   We also found out there were more “R” letters on the faces than any other letter.

I’m Sorry

We had dinner last night with our friends from Jakarta, Handoko and Maromi.   We talked about many things, but the most common topic of conversation was children.    We shared our philosophies on raising children, giving each other advice on how we handled certain situations.   One of the things that came up in the conversation was children saying, “I’m sorry” to another child when they’ve injured or hurt their feelings, even if it was an accident.

In the past, based on how our school works with the children during the school day, we have not specifically asked our children to say they’re sorry.   The rationale behind this is that commonly, children are not sorry and many times they did whatever it was with intention or even malice.   Forcing a child to say they’re sorry is hypocritical and can be a response given in anger, possibly even making the situation worse.

What the school does with children who have had an incident or conflict is bring the two children together to discuss what happened.   The teacher facilitates conversation and helps the children through conflict resolution, helping them come to a peaceful conclusion.   If a child intentionally hurt another child they are required to ask the other child, “are you okay?”  If the child says they aren’t, the other child asks the child what they can do to help, such as getting an ice pack or a band aid.  This is the consequence the inciting child has as a result of their negative behavior as opposed to just saying, “I’m sorry” and then moving on.

We’ve been going with this model for some time, but after last night I had a discussion with my husband saying I thought our children were old enough now to understand it is a custom in society to tell someone you are sorry, regardless of the circumstances.    We’re still going to expect our children to address the situation and work on conflict resolution, but now we’re going to add in the expectation of an apology at the end.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has learned from a classmate that there are places on a lady that he can get a reaction from if he touches.   Whenever my son is around this other child (whom I like very much) I’ve noticed sudden changes.   I’ve had my butt slapped and my front poked.   Today my son grabbed both of my breasts, all in the hopes of looking for a reaction.   He very well knows it’s not appropriate as was evidenced by the answers he gave me when we had a calm, quiet conversation in the closet, away from other people.   I didn’t give him the reaction he was hoping for (hopefully) and hopefully the behavior will be short-lived.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter hates doing eye drops.   For almost ten months now we’ve had to do drops up to four times per day with more than one medication.   They sting and she hates them.   We hate we have to do them, but it’s a necessary thing.  For the last two days I’ve asked her if she’d like to do her own eye drops.   She’s only so-so at getting the drops in, but she likes the independence it gives her so I’m going to continue to give her the option.

Make Me Proud

The Big Boy Special Time Update:   We’re doing “special time” with our children every day now: a fifteen minute time in which the children can do whatever they want with us as parents (*safety and other restrictions apply).   My son wanted very much to play the video game Ryuichi had been doing during the day on the large television in the basement.   My son flatly refused to do special time until he suddenly thought  playing the game with me would be how he’d like to spend his time.

We started the game and my son died in short order.   His second life was ended almost as quickly and his third life lasted not much longer.   I was left alone, trying to “save the humans” in the hope we’d earn an extra life so he could rejoin the game.    As my son watched me play alone he said, “make me proud, mom.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to have a popsicle after lunch this afternoon.  She decided the front porch was where she wanted to eat her popsicle and left the rest of us inside where we were much cooler given the hot, humid temperature.     About two minutes later she opened the door and called for my husband.   She told him, “dad, I hear popping sounds in my tummy.”  My husband had a conversation with her about burps which must have made her feel better about the popping sounds because she went back outside to finish her popsicle afterwards.

Stick Bomb

Our friends from Indonesia were talking to us about games children play.   We mentioned many things, one of which was dominoes, specifically the kind you set up in a long chain and knock down.   They were familiar with them and then asked if we knew of “Stick Bomb”, saying it was popular in their family.

I didn’t know what it was and after a brief Internet search that didn’t show what they were talking about we dropped the subject and I planned to look it up in more detail later.   Stick Bomb is the interleaving of tongue depressors in a woven pattern such that when you release the first one, they all pop, causing a wave of popsicle sticks to go flying across the room.

Two days later and we’re shopping in Five Below, looking through the game section when Maromi came over to me with a box saying, “this is it, this is Stick Bomb!”   It wasn’t called stick bomb, but that’s exactly what it was.    We bought it and after dinner their son set up the seventy-five sticks and let them fly.  

It was impressive, considering they were only tongue depressors.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son had his first appointment with the occupational therapist today.   She asked me afterwards if we were firm about him being left-handed.   I told her we didn’t care either way, he should do what works best for him.   We have homework to observe some things he does to see what his mainly dominant hand is.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:    In the process of all getting organized to watch the Stick Bomb go off tonight, my daughter stepped right in the middle of the run, causing it to go off prematurely.  Thankfully, Ryuichi was willing to set it up for us again.   The second time we all watched it pop together.

Wrecking Ball Children

There’s a Miley Cyrus song, “Wrecking Ball” my children are fond of hearing.   We listen to it in the car and they ask Alexa to play it in our kitchen.   One day I think they asked Alexa to play it ten times in a row.   I could hear my daughter belting out the chorus from all the way downstairs as I sat at my computer.   While the song is catchy, it also has a second meaning to me as a mother of young children: children are little wrecking balls.

They don’t mean to be, they just are.   They don’t have a need for a tidy house (unlike some blog posters I won’t mention).   They like to play with toys and when they do, they like to take them places such as around the house, the yard, the neighborhood and to friends houses.   Getting things back to their original places is an exercise which feels fairly sisyphean most days.  

We have an expectation out children clean up after themselves, which includes putting toys and other things back in their places, but that expectation has to be tempered by an understanding that children need to play with toys to have fun.   After several years of working with them, they almost always help clean up without complaint and sometimes clean up without being asked or reminded.

And yet, “wrecking ball” is still a good description of what it feels like’s happened at the house some days.   Today we have our two children, two visiting children from out of town, two neighbor children to our left, two neighbor children to the right and four neighborhood children who have all been in our house at one point or another.   That’s lots of little mess makers and for some reason, with more children the mess doesn’t increase linearly, it increases by a factor of about 1.47 per child, this being a number I just made up.

Today a house/fort was made with eight large cardboard boxes.   Duct tape was employed, stickers were applied, drawing was done, paper was taped onto the walls and much merriment was had by all. There was not one speck of mess made during the entire process…not.

But children need to make a mess to have fun and today they had fun, all of my little wrecking ball friends together.  Also, I can’t get the “Wrecking Ball” song out of my head, but that’s another issue.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was having a hard time connecting socially today.   He was doing it in all the wrong ways such as trying to take Nana’s shirt off, wanting to talk about “boobs”, yelling loudly to get attention and getting into people’s personal spaces when they clearly didn’t want to.   Throughout all of this he was told no again and again.   What was the message?  It was that he was behaving poorly, but he was trying, he just didn’t know how.   I forced him to sit on my lap until he calmed down; when he was more relaxed he offered (as opposed to shoved) me a potato chip and said he wanted to feed me.   I happily accepted with a smile.   He then went around our entire table and offered chips to the other people, moving on when they said they didn’t want a chip.   It was a positive and successful interaction for him which I hope helped his low self-esteem as opposed to the earlier behavior when he was only being told he was not behaving appropriately.   The mental change in him was remarkable to see.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter likes to cry and cry loudly about things.   Some times the crying is because she’s injured, but mostly it’s because she’s upset at some injustice—possibly something she’s brought on herself by her actions towards her brother.   We’ve been careful to not over react just because the volume and intensity of her crying makes us think something big, awful or terrible has happened to her.  

Upside Down Stuck

I’ve been having pills and food get stuck in my throat for some time now.   I had multiple tests done including a scope and found out there wasn’t anything wrong, my esophagus just wasn’t straight.   It is likely due to the hardware in my neck from the spinal fusion.   Regardless of why, it’s there and I’m stuck with it.

I’ve tried to find a way to successfully get something stuck, unstuck including heavy drinking (not the alcoholic kind),  manipulating my throat with my hand while I swallow and eating something different—none of which worked.  It happens frequently enough that it’s frustrating, but there’s not much I can do other than to keep trying to find a solution.

Yesterday during my singing lesson my instructor had me lean over at the waist, relax my arms and sing to work on some diaphram techniques.  I had sang about two lines when suddenly I had a piece of food rising up into the back of my throat—food I didn’t know had been stuck in my esophagus.

This was not a technique I’d employed before, but if it works, I’m going to be looking silly frequently as I try to dislodge stuck food in the future.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I for some reason got into a discussion about McDonalds characters the other day.  I had mentioned Ronald McDonald and then told him about the other characters which weren’t really featured any more such as the Hamburgler.  After a bit I realized my son had no idea what I was talking about because he asked me, “what’s the new guy on the box with the arms?”   I then remembered the McPlay logo is just a red Happy Meal box with a big smile.   It’s the only McDonald’s character he’s ever known.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My children argue and physically address the situation with each other through minor acts of violence from time to time (okay, daily).   Usually my son is the more aggressive one but today I heard my daughter verbally warn my son with, “do I have to pinch you?”

Tracking is Hard to Do

Our Play Therapist, Dhruti, said when we spend, “special time” with our son we had a specific assignment.   She told us to “track” what he does.    This means simply describing what we see him doing such as, “I see you’re lining up the trucks” and then, “you’re driving the cars fast around the track”.

This might sound easy, but it isn’t—at least it isn’t if you’re me.  It was hard not making suggestions like, “those cars don’t fit on the track but these over here do”.   It was hard not interacting as a peer in the play or “game”.    You just sit there with your child and describe what he’s doing, and when you remember, use the word, “choose” to describe what he chose to do such as, “you chose to put the cars under the blanket”.

That last sentence is all I should say.   I shouldn’t follow it up with, “were they cold?” or “why did you put them under the blanket?”  Just track.   That’s all, unless you’re asked to do something to participate.

You’d think this would be boring to a child who knows they’re having their fifteen minutes of special time with you for the day.    But it’s the exact opposite; my son was very happy to have our special time today and for the entire fifteen minutes I watched him play with cars.   He told me what he was doing and how some cars were leaders while other cars were in a specific leader’s army.

Special time with my son tonight was happy for him, even though the only way I played with him was to watch and describe what he was doing.   Again, I don’t understand the minds of children, but it was interesting to see how much he enjoyed just being with me and playing his own game while I watched.

The Big Boy Update:  Yesterday I was organizing toys and told the children they weren’t invited into the bonus room unless an adult was with them.   Today when my son got home from school he asked me if I could go to the bonus room so he could pick out some toys.   I told him I was done organizing and he could go without me.   He ran straight upstairs.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter likes to be careful.   She was excited about the sparklers over the Fourth-of-July and giggled and laughed while it was lit in her hand.   When she was done she said, ”I do not want to do that again.”   I asked her if she didn’t like the sparklers.   She said, “I did like it but I don’t want to do it again.”

Choose

Remember when I wrote the post about the word, “okay” and how by adding that single word to the end of a sentence such as, “you need to get your shoes on now, okay?” it confused things for my son?   I was using the word to mean, “can you confirm you heard me?” but he interpreted it as “do you agree?”   My son likes to have control of his environment and that simple “okay” at the end of the sentence was causing problems.   He would decide that no, he didn’t want to put on his shoes.   When I would tell him that he actually had to put on his shoes and he didn’t get to choose, it frustrated him and made him feel out of control.

Frustration would then ensue on both the adult and child side.   But if I had said, “it’s time to put on your shoes now” he was fine.   It’s important to give children choices (which we do) but my phrasing was giving him too many choices and when he made a choice and then had it immediately taken away from him it was causing him to want to control his environment even more.

So that’s fixed, I don’t use “okay” as a sentence terminator any more.    Yesterday I found out I was doing another thing related to control and decision making opposite of what I should be doing with him.   Let me take a quick aside here and say all of this doesn’t apply to my daughter.   She is a different little human being and she doesn’t have the same rigidity he does so phrasing isn’t an issue with her.   She likes to please, help and do the right thing.   She appreciates advice and gladly comply without complaint.

Let me give an example of what I did wrong this morning and you’ll see what I mean:  my son came downstairs dressed in jeans this morning.   It’s going to be over ninety degrees today and he’ll be spending time outside at camp.   I said, “let me give you some advice: it’s going to be very hot today, I would suggest you put on shorts instead of jeans so you won’t be as hot today.”   This advice was wholly rejected by my son who got angry even at the suggestion.

I did the proverbial slap on the forehead, forgetting what our play therapist had said just the day before.   I waited until he’d finished eating breakfast and tried again using these words:  “I see you’ve chosen to wear jeans.   It is going to be very hot today; if you’d like to be cooler you can choose to wear shorts to camp.”   Without any objection he told me he would go change as soon as he finished with what he was doing.

What’s the difference between the two?  In the first case I made the decision for him and told him what he had to do but in the second on he was given a choice and told the how his choice would affect him.  Because he wants to have control, the second gave him a choice and control.

Have I mentioned children are complicated little creatures?   In the two situations above, for some things I need to not let my son make a choice while in other situations I need to make sure he gets to make the choice himself.   What Dhruti said was that my son wants to be in control and letting him make choices and decisions where we can will help center him and make him feel in control as opposed to out of control.

The “choose” word extends even further though into behavioral modification.   For instance, “I see you’re stirring the paint so that it out on the table.   When you spill the paint you’re choosing to be finished with the painting work.  If you stir slowly then you’re choosing to keep painting.”

I’m a work in progress.   What is amazing is how just with a few changes in words how he reacts so differently.   Most of the work to help my son reduce his anxiety is going to be in how we, as parents, communicate with him.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son was very hot the other day and wanted something to drink while we were out.   I told him we’d get him something to drink as soon as we could.   He registered his complaint by saying, “soon I’m gonna be dehydrated!”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter said the other day, “when I grow up I want to be a tooth fairy.”

Trashed Swords

I have some telescoping plastic swords in the bonus room.  They’ve been used by children and adults alike for years.   They’ve survived many years and since they’re still fun, I’ve continued to keep them.

I got them at the Dollar Store a long time ago.   I was thinking back this afternoon remembering when I got them and I realized it was five houses ago, which puts them being bought sometime before 1997.   I think there were six of them initially but over the years through the repeated banging via aggressive sword fights some of them were broken, or rather parts of them were damaged.    But since each sword comes apart into six pieces, the broken ones were scavenged so that the remaining swords were still useable.

They look a little bit like this, minus the LED light-up part:  

Today I’ve been going through the children’s things and I’ve been helped by our sitter who in addition to being adored by our children, happens to be excellent at organizing things.    She also gave me some good suggestions on things we could do as we rearranged things.  As the time drew near for me to get the children at summer camp, I left her with instructions to go through the closet in the bonus room and make some decisions on where things should be sorted.

She left a short while later after saying hello to the children who were stuffing blueberries into their mouths after returning home.    I went back up to the bonus room to finish up for the day and was about to bring down the big garbage bag of trash when I noticed a green plastic piece through the side of the bag.   I realized it was one of the sword pieces which had been taken apart by the children at some point.

I went through the bag and pulled out all the segments, restoring the three-and-a-half remaining swords, employing tape where needed.    They’re old and somehow they’ve become special to me.  Thankfully, they’ll be around for additional sword fights in the future.

The Big Boy Update:  The children are in “Bug Camp” this week at school.   They are exploring bugs and learning to respect and understand them.   This morning before going to camp we prepared to put sunscreen and bug spray on the children.   My son got very upset and was absolutely not having bug spray put on him—because he didn’t want to hurt the bugs.    It took some convincing but he finally understood the bug spray was to keep them from biting him, not to kill them.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  There was a game of super heroes happening this afternoon.   Each child had their own super power.   My daughter’s super power was rather special—so special that Keira asked her to tell me what it was.    She had decided she had the power of “Sticky Elephant”.

Pieces Parts

It’s that time again—time to find all the parts to all the toys, games and children items and put them back together.   Children like to move things around as they play with them and commonly they don’t all get returned to their starting place.   I feel like this needs to happen on the same frequency as the “go through the pile of papers on the desk” work or “clean out my inbox” job people do.    It starts out clean and organized but over time things just pile up.

The last time I started this process was when my mother was in town and then I began again when with my husband to clear out some toys my children had aged out of.   Neither time did I finish the job completely, even though I made good progress on the overall project.    Last week I got mentally annoyed with the disarray of children’s accouterments all over the house and made a mental note to start over with renewed enthusiasm once the holiday weekend was over.

I asked our sitter if she wanted to help some and she told me she loves organizing and would be glad to help.   I got a good start today, going through some of the smaller areas in the house, taking piles of “this needs to be sorted” up to the bonus room for work through the remainder of the week.   To do the job thoroughly, I’ve been looking at things and deciding what needs to be removed as well, such as taking baby blankets and other things that no longer have a place in the children’s bedroom to free up space for other things like Transformer character collections which would make better use of the available shelf space.

Hopefully I’ll get the job done completely this go round.   Then…I can start on the attic, which is an entire other area that needs attention.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son and husband did their first night of fifteen minutes of “special time” together tonight.   My son wanted to put a Lego together with him.  They picked something small and were able to get a nice model done together.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I spent fifteen minutes together tonight playing a game she’s been asking for recently that I couldn’t locate until I started organizing the toys today.   We played a hamburger game given to us by her cousin Olivia.   She had her own rules which didn’t involve anyone really winning.   Many burger patties were flipped and we were both imaginary “full” by the end.

Fifteen Minutes Each Day

We have had a delightful three days visiting with my husband’s family friends who are visiting from Jakarta.  They are from Japan but have been living in Indonesia for over four years now.   They speak English very well and their two children have been a big source of fun for our two children.   We found out during our three days together we have much in common, even though our cultures and countries are different.

One thing we discussed on more than one occasion was children and parenting.   Their children are older and were so well behaved.   They were kind and understanding of our children, who were wild and crazy in comparison from what it seemed to me at times.  

This evening Maromi and I were talking about children again and her husband and mine came over to join the conversation.   She and her husband had a suggestion they’d implemented some time ago they said made a big difference in their family.   They said it was a way to strengthen their connection with each of their children.

Each night at the same time for fifteen minutes, you spend special time with one child.   What happens in that fifteen minutes is up to the child—the child is the kind.   The important thing is to have fun doing something with just that child.   The other child/children aren’t invited to be involved and afterwards, you don’t tell what happened, although if the other child wants to tell, that’s up to them.

In their case, they had two children so each child had special time with a parent each night alternating nights.   Certainly there would be times that were exceptions, but make time, no matter how tired you are.   And when the fifteen minutes is up, it’s over.   Tell the child you’re looking forward to tomorrow night’s special time.  There might be complaints initially, but after they understand, they don’t mind because they know there will be tomorrow and the next day.

Maromi told us they weren’t seeing results initially by their friend who was a Play Therapist that gave them the suggestion.    It was then that I mentioned how helpful the suggestions from our play therapist have been and we both agreed, much of what happens with children behaviorally can be addressed by changing the behavior of the parents.  

Different cultures, different countries, different languages and yet children are largely the same the world over.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a sparkler this evening.   He was swinging it around so we suggested he could knight all the girls princesses and the boys princes.   He must have thought this a good idea because a minute later he cried out, “all the girls are princesses and all the boys are girls!”

The Tiny Girl Update:   My daughter may or may not see better with her glasses.   It’s very hard to get clear information.   In preparation to go see fireworks tonight she was in a talkative mood about what she could see so we asked her if she could see her iPad better with her glasses on or off.   She said, “off” without any hesitation.   She further told us she could see things farther away with her glasses on based on our next question.   As I was making a note of this I mentioned to her she didn’t have to wear her glasses when she looked at her iPad if she saw better without them.   Oh no, she said, the glasses helped her see when she looked at the iPad.   What about distance vision?   She said she saw better without the glasses, only she saw better with them…except for the trees which she sometimes sees.    So there you have it folks, one hundred percent ambiguity.  

I Don’t Play Chess

It seems like anyone who’s got any brain at all knows how to play chess.   It shows up in television shows all the time where one of the main characters just happens to be a master in chess and casually beats someone which gives the good guys some advantage they need to beat the bad guys and save the day.

I’m not sure how I missed the chess boat when I was a child, but no one I was around played.   We did other things like building exciting forts and tree house escape routes, but sitting at a table playing chess was never on our list of fun activities for our minds.

And yet just like people who are successful in business but have a residual level of shame because they never got a college degree, I feel I’m somewhat of a less-intelligent, less-accomplished human being because I don’t play chess.  

If this is the case, why haven’t I taken the time to learn chess though?   Ever since the first Nintendo system when I was in high school, there have been chess games.   I could download a dozen free on my iPad tonight and get some good lessons in game play and strategy—and yet I’ve never made the effort.

Chess doesn’t seem interesting to me.   Is it because I know how challenging the game is and to be reasonably proficient at the game I’d need to invest significant time learning game play strategies?  

I just saw a ten-year-old play chess with his mother this evening, which prompted this post.   Should I be teaching my children chess?   Is it an important skill or is it simply a game that builds critical thinking skills?

The Big Boy Update:   We went to a zoo today.   The children were all looking at the pigs together when my son said out loud to one of them, “thank you for the bacon this morning.”   We have told him bacon comes from pigs, but we have not been specific about how.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told me, “when I grow up I want to be a tooth fairy.”

Foreign Exchange Student Reunion

My husband’s family hosted a foreign exchange student at their home when he was in high school.   That year their family had many good times with her and their memories have been retold  to me so I feel I know her myself.   Since high school though, my husband hasn’t seen her.   His parents went to Japan to attend her wedding and the two families have always kept in touch.

Yesterday her family arrived from Jakarta via London and were not surprisingly tired from long hours of travel.   Today, we’re all acquainted and we feel like old friends already.   Maromi’s two children are older than our children, but they’ve become fast friends.    They all speak excellent English, but I hope to learn some Japanese words perhaps before they leave.

They’re here for two weeks and we’re looking forwards to many fun times and new memories from their visit.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Slippery Slide Update:   My in-laws took us to a new pool in their town today that has a big slide with twists and turns that exits out into the pool at the bottom.   At our pool children have to pass a swimming test in order to use the slide.   Both children  are working on being able to swim unassisted across the pool to complete the test but for now, they got a preview at Nana and Papa’s pool on how much fun the big slide can be.    They both went down about twenty times and loved it.

Twelve Years

I’m a little in shock right now.   One of our friends has been in court for the last several days.   We found out about it last night when his brother-in-law, one of our closest friends, called to ask if we could come sit in the courtroom as a sign of support for closing arguments this morning.   My husband went and I stayed at home with the children.

The charge was rape, but the situation wasn’t straightforward.   Three-and-a-half years ago our friend was at a party.   There was alcohol, there was marijuana, and there was partying.   Our friend stayed over that night and had sex with someone who lived there.   He says everything about it was consensual.

The girl had broken up with her boyfriend that day or the day before.  The boyfriend was in the house during the party and that night.  The next day though she suddenly says she’s been raped.   Our friend contends it was to save face with her boyfriend, which she had made up with.   A rape kit was taken and yes, they had had sex.   All sorts of legal things followed, which led up to today.

My husband heard some of the details from today and the entire situation seemed to be two people in a room, having sex, with breaks in which she could have gotten up and left the room easily.   She wasn’t being threatened or treated aggressively.   There were text chains before and afterwards, some deleted later on her side but kept on our friend’s phone that were shown in his defense.

I could go on, but since I wasn’t there I don’t really know.    If, what our friend says is true: that the girl said she was raped to save face with her boyfriend, then that lie started a chain of events which  culminated today with our friend being found guilty and sentenced to twelve years in prison.

Was it a lie that was too difficult to get out of once started?   There are too many components of the trial running through my mind that make no sense if she was a victim.   If she was raped, then today she got justice.   If she wasn’t, she has to live with knowing she sent a young, innocent man to jail.

I believe my friend.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has anxiety issues, Dhruti told me today.   This, I knew, but she said it’s something we need to work on.   He worries about something bad happening in a movie, show or even book so much he doesn’t want to keep watching/reading to find out what happens next.    Dhruti says we can help him work with this kind of anxiety with some strategies.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told our sitter while at the pool this morning she’d like to go to lifeguard class so she could “be the littlest life guard to ever exist”.