My daughter has a standing meeting outside with her friend, Keira, after school at 4:00 each day. They do social distancing things and both are very conscientious about adhering to distancing guidelines. Today, when I went outside to find them, she was on her bicycle, as was Keira. They were pedaling around while Rayan was in the neighbor's driveway yelling something when they came around to him each time. I didn't catch the game's intent before going back in.
There were balls all over the yard. My daughter wants to play fetch with the dog and is making progress towards that goal. The dog will play fetch with me, but only because I won't take the ball until she's dropped it. My daughter and son want to try to get the ball from her, which she thinks is a game. My daughter is now waiting for her to drop the ball, only there's a little problem in that the dog doesn't get right at her hands when she drops the ball and my daughter doesn't know where it is. When she's searching for the ball the dog grabs it back, thinking its part of the game.
If I'm standing by my daughter, the game works very well, but we're trying to get the dog to understand the new rules. I love our dog very much and wouldn't want her any other way, so when I tell you this, know that it's not a mean thing, it's just the truth. The dog is not very smart. Loveable and wonderful, yes, but slow to learn things. She also doesn't pick up on cues well and doesn't realize things until many repetitions have happened.
She doesn't get the need to drop the ball right at my daughter's feet, and that's going to take some time. The other thing the dog does is get distracted by the smells in the yard next door where we throw the ball. It's the only direction we can throw the ball for any distance. Often, after a few runs, she smells something, drops the ball and the game is over. My daughter can't know when that's happened. She loves playing with her though so it doesn't bother much.
But back to bike riding. Later, I came out and my daughter was alone. She asked me if I knew how to ride my bike without holding onto the handlebars? I shuddered internally but said yes. She said Keira and Rayan could and she was working on it. Not one minute later she'd fallen over. I told her to take it slowly until she had built up her skill. She's working on one-handed to start, she said.
Note to self: make sure she's wearing her watch each and every day. At some point, that watch is going to pay for itself in worry saved.
The Big Boy Update: We had a blowout last night about screen time with my son. It wasn't that he was having some, it was that when it was time to stop, he became enraged at first his father and then me. It was a long and sordid tale of a conversation in which he was furious to no end with us, tried to change the argument to his advantage twenty times at least by redirection, and then just wanted to go to bed—something he was fighting at the outset of the discussion. In the end, we told him we weren't taking away screens for today, what we wanted was for him to decide how he wanted the time managed. Did he want us to set a timer? Because he was unhappy when we told him time was up, yelling and saying we didn't warn him (trust me, a warning wouldn't have changed things.). Alternately, did he want to manage his own time? He had until this morning to decide and he went with managing his own time. Tonight we reminded him to figure out how he was going to know when to stop because he wasn't getting one minute over and we'd hate for him to lose his progress. And he did it. We're going to try this method going forward to see if it will keep working.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: It was release day for the snails, slug, and earthworms. My daughter liked having them, but not so much taking care of them. This is a little unlike her, but in this case, I think it was hard to know what to do for them without overdoing it so she just kept the terrarium watered. She wanted to get more immediately, but I told her we needed to give the terrarium a week's rest. We'll see if she remembers them in a week or if she's moved on.
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