It's All in the Details

Briana got a set of magnifying glasses for Christmas, and ever since she has spent some time every day looking closely at everything in the house.  Abigail is right now fixated on the idea of “investigating” so all day long she wants to investigate.  Why not go with the flow?

This week we were working on paying attention – to Mommy and Daddy, and to our surroundings. 

I read recently (I wish I could remember where!) that our world is changing from a world where big picture thinkers are valued to a world where detail is of the utmost importance in success.  I thought about it, and that makes total sense.  Think about the 80s where a big idea was thought to be all you needed to become an instant millionaire versus now where even a missed dot in a url or one wrong character in an email address can derail your ability to find the site you are looking for or send your email to the right person. The other example that came to mind of a shift to detail orientation is this – in my parent’s generation, having a college degree, any degree, could get you a job doing pretty much anything you wanted to do.  Now so many people get degrees, and advanced degrees at that, so employers have to look for minutiae to differentiate between candidates, be it extra curricular activities, GPA, or whatever else.  The big picture item of ‘did you get a degree or not’ is no longer the deciding criteria.  As such, even big picture thinkers need to take the time to learn to cope in a detail-oriented world.

What do we see?

Basically, we get those magnifying glasses out and everything is fair game.  We go outside and look at the grass.  The kids are disappointed not to see caterpillars in the dirt.  They love a song called “Caterpillar Caterpillar”.  I told them that it was too cold out for caterpillars.

We also looked at everything that the kids thought had any kind of detail on it, from the side table on the deck, to the retaining wall that goes around the house.  We also looked at plants, the swingset, and pretty much everything else.

We did the same inside.  We looked at Barbies, and tables, and games, and the floor – everything.

  

The key thing though is not that we looked at everything.  That’s just the beginning.

While it’s fun just to take the time to observe everything, we went one step further and worked to do something with what we had learned. 

For example:

-Did you know that there is a pattern on your woven blanket?  We looked at the colors of the strands and then talked about what the colors were and how they were repeated to identify the pattern.  We also talked about how the straight lines in the pattern actually got together to make a square (4 lines = 1 square).  For my Briana, who loves anything to do with clothing right now, we also had to talk about how to sew different strands together to make the pattern you want, and that lead us to examine, jeans and tweed, so off we went.

-How closely have you ever looked at your Disney princesses and Barbies?  We discovered that of our 11 dolls, 2 had blue eyeshadow, 7 had pink, and 2 had purple.  Also 5 had curly lashes and 6 had straight eyelashes.

This was such a great opportunity for us to do a little bit of math (counting and adding and pattern recognition) and also work on our colors and shapes.

What do we hear?

The other thing that we have been doing to focus on the details is to listen to sounds in the house.  I had never taken the time to sit and think about how many things make sounds in the house.  Of course when the dishwasher or the washing machine are running they make noise, but the kids identified the sound of a light about to burn out in the basement, the refrigerator, the garage door opening, and a lot of other white noise that I have learned to tune out.  It was a fun game to let them hear a sound and then “investigate” to see where the sound was coming from. 

I started the game by turning on the television in the basement and waiting to see if they could find where the sound was coming from.  Once I did that they were off on their own, trying to trick each other and Mommy.  Apparently Abby has started to play this at school as well, today talking her classmates into seeking out errant sounds to “investigate”.

What did we say?

Abigail is 2.  Contrary to what you hear all of the time, 2-year olds are great.  They are creative and energetic.  They can finally really tell you what they are thinking and wanting.  They are loving and happy to see their parents and siblings, most of the time.  The only thing that I have found to be terrible about two-year-olds is that they realize that they can choose whether they want to act on what they hear, and they can choose how to respond to the resultant consequences.  I am not going to even begin to pretend that I have any idea on how to get a 2-year-old to do what you tell them to – though if you have it figured out, please share!  But while Abby is interested in investigating sounds, I figured that I could reinforce that I know she hears me and then we can work on what to do about that. 

I have to tell this story because it will tell you everything you need to know about Abigail’s personality and my current challenge:

One night, while my husband and I are downstairs watching tv after putting the kids to bed, we hear a ruckus on the baby monitors.  We run upstairs to find Abigail, covered head to foot (and sheet and blanket and floor… you get the picture) in toothpaste.  Yep, she snuck into the bathroom and then went back to her room and proceeded to toothpaste the place.  We asked her why and she replied, “It was fun.”  Abby’s prized privilege is being able to have her door opened at night so that she can get out in the morning when she is ready.  For getting out of her bed when she is not supposed to, she loses her open door and she's back to being child-locked in her room.  Abby just nods and says "Yeah. That's right, Daddy.  And I think no presents too, from Santa. I should not have done that."  She was totally matter of fact about the whole thing.

Now, try to discipline a child who accepts her punishments so matter of factly!  She’s always like that.  Time out is no big deal and she will usually weigh the punishment with the deed and pick one, telling us that she knows she’s going to get a timeout, but chooses to do it anyway.  On the plus side, she rarely fights a punishment and will sit in timeout until her time is up.

I took this a while ago, but I love this picture of my baby because it’s just so her…

But I digress.  The point is that this week every time Abby pretends not to hear me when I say, “Clean up” or “Put that down” or whatever else, I simply remind her.  “Abigail, I know that you hear me.” And then repeat what it is that I want.  At least now we can have a conversation about the task (ie. “But I don’t want to clean up.”  “Well, if you don’t clean up you might lose one of your puzzle pieces and then we could never play puzzle again.”  “I like playing puzzle!”  “Then pick up the pieces for next time.”  “Ok.”).  It’s a lot more tedious and involves a lot more negotiating, but I’d take negotiations over ignoring and then a lot of screaming any day.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife