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
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