The Wink

My daughter and son fight.   Sometimes.   Sometimes they get along just fine, but you know what it’s like with siblings.   I mean, I don’t know what it’s like on account of being an only child, but I hear fighting is part of the package.

My children sleep in the same room and don’t like it when the other one is away for the night.   They get up in the morning and work together, playing different things, using their imagination.   But they irritate the mess out of each other.  My son is great at irritating his sister and she’s great at provoking him to do so.   My daughter has impressive skills in tattling on her brother while he’s good at pretending like he has no idea while she’s so upset.  

But on the whole, my son does get more in the way of corrections from us than my daughter does.   This is in large part because he can be aggressive when it’s not called for, doesn’t listen when we tell him things and gets distracted and off task and doesn’t get things done when they need to be without repeated reminders.

And he irritates his easily irritable sister.   She’s been dealing with trauma after trauma with the repeated loss of vision and the continual medical interventions so we give her a little break on things sometimes, but it’s still not fair to my son if the parenting is out of balance.

But I’ve found a way to give him an advantage sometimes.   To let him know he’s special to me and that we have our little secrets together.  All it takes is a wink.  

There are times when both children are with me and we’re talking about something.   My daughter wants to be the first to have a cookie or doesn’t want to tell my son about the plans for going out to dinner.   He will get ready to get upset but stops when he sees me wink at him and mouth, “I’ll get you one in a minute” or “I’ll tell you about dinner.”

I smile this big smile at him because it’s a secret he and I are sharing together.   And it makes him feel special.   He’s started doing it back to me now; little things his sister wouldn’t notice about if we kept quiet about it.   It’s very charming.   I love it when he gives me that knowing smile and winks at me.

The Big Boy Update:   My son has been doing homework every day this summer with the exception of one travel day.   That’s seven days a week.   He doesn’t really look forward to it, but he’s getting better at writing and reading as a result.   I found a mechanical pencil and he’s been enjoying using it, clicking it up, breaking the graphite stick (accidentally) and then explaining how it doesn’t work anymore.   I found replacement graphite in the back of a drawer, thankfully, so he could finish his homework tonight.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter found a caterpillar today.   She came downstairs with it carefully nestled in her hands.   I took some pictures of it for her while my husband drilled holes in the lid of a jar.   They made it a little environment of leaves and water in the jar.   We’ll see what he’s eaten tomorrow.