The difference between boys and girls

My toddler boy accompanies his toddler girl friend up to her bedroom to look at her toys.

The boy starts rummaging in her toy box, and the girl starts rummaging in her dresser drawers.

All is quiet.

At one point, the toddler girl's daddy goes up there to check on them, and notices that his daughter is standing in the middle of her room, stark naked. She is in the middle of changing her outfit (for the upteenth time that day).

Both kids look up to him.

The girl says "I'm changing my outfit".

The boy says "look, I found tractor".

Toddler safety schmafty

There are so many safety concerns these days to keep in mind that I sometimes just get confused, tired, fed-up or pissed-off.

Keeping an eye on a toddler at all times is an unpaid, full-time, 24/7 job that requires more energy than anything else I've ever done.

Yet sometimes, I just don't have the energy to stop the play and give him a lecture about safety.

So, I have been known to let him:

• play with long rope
• watch the 5-year old neighbour play with rope and then copy her ideas, like tying buckets to one end of the rope and the wrapping the rope around a tree to hang up the bucket
• climb onto his stroller without opening the cupholder thingy at the front
• play with the vacuum cleaner cables
• play with loose coins
• play in the bathtub with more than an inch of water in it by himself while I get a drink of water, a towel, the phone, etc.
• cross the street without holding my hand (although I speak incessantly about cars coming and not stopping to admire dog poop in the middle of the street and walking quickly to the sidewalk and not loitering, bladibla)
• climb into the driver's seat of the station wagon from the open trunk
• close the car door all by himself (along with a lecture about never putting fingers in certain locations)

There are probably other things that elude me right now which would likely make me cringe if I were to think about them too long.

But so far, he hasn't required any stiches, casts, or visits to the emerg. Although there was that one incident where daddy slammed the car door on the toddler's thumb....and where daddy and mommy got into a huge, useless fight about whether or not we should go to the emerg, ending with daddy stomping off after mommy insisted we wait and see, and mommy spending a sleepless night worrying about her baby's thumb having to be ambutated....

PS The thumb is fine. He wanted a bandaid on it, and fell asleep with some Montrin in his system.

Social lesson

So we're at Chapters the other day, because I wanted a Starbucks tall latte.

Near the kids section there was a big table set up full of Thomas the Tank Engine railroad toys.

Benjamin likes Thomas. It's one of few, branded toys he recognized and even has a shirt-pant set he likes to wear.

Anyway, he quietly starts playing with the trains. He's so relaxed and so gentle with the toys that I can actually venture about a bit and browse some of the book shelves.

After a while, I sit in a chair nearby and watch my toddler play. A girl of about 6 or 7 comes by and starts playing alongside with him, rather aggressively. At one point, Benjamin's train, which by this time is rather long, falls off the table and he sits down on the floor and tries to put it back together before putting it back on the table.

The girl skips over him and generally ignores him.

Ben is intrigued. He watches her with wide eyes and continues about his business.

I turn to my latte and my book and keep half an eye and half an ear on him.

Suddenly, through my peripheral vision, I see her grab one toy out of Ben's hands and start playing with it.

Ben stares at me and almost, but not quite, starts to cry. His huge brown eyes are filled with tears but he's very brave.

He doesn't reach back for the toy or show any aggression whatsoever.

I say very quietly to the girl, who is standing with her back to me about 3 feet away, "did you just take that toy out of his hand"?

She turns, gives me the most vile stare, and throws the toy back at Ben and runs off to find her mom.

All returns to normal.

A little while later a fat woman comes back carrying the same girl. She glances in my general direction, notices the size of the kid at the table, realizes he's only 2, and says loudly enough for the rest of us to hear that "we all have to share toys". Then she marches her fat self off carrying her vile girl with her.

This situation makes me reflect back on the zoo woman who snatched her son's bottle out of his hands. Did the girl at the Chapters take the toy from Ben because that is what her mother does to her? Or is it just because that is how she is, or how she was taught? That aggression gets you what you want?

At Ben's Montessori daycare they teach the children to not take materials away from each other, but to exercise patience and wait until the material has been put back in its original place. The teachers' prime responsibility there is to protect the engrossed child from such aggressive behaviour in order to encourage prime learning and concentration.

At home, we teach and make every effort to set examples in "my turn, your turn" exercises. We ask for help or encourage sharing.

It's not without challenge, but the kind of behaviour that girl at the store demonstrated is what scares me for Ben. Will this be what he will encounter on a regular basis as soon as he joins the 'public' system?

I hope to be able to keep him in the Montessori environment until he's old enough to start school. If not, well, we'll have to cross that bridge when it happens.

Interestingly, after the girl left the store, a mother and her 2 and a half year old boy showed up. The boy wanted to play with Benjamin's train set, and since Ben had managed to put almost all the trains together to form a really long one, I interrupted my relaxation pose and helped Ben share his train with the boy.

The boy wasn't interested in obtaining half of Ben's toys.

He wanted the one that Ben had.

His mother tried to talk to him and reason with him, but the boy started screaming, so she gave up right away.

I tried to show the two kids how to do an exchange, "you play with this one, he plays with that one, we'll take turns", and although Ben wasn't totally on board, he tolerated it, and even handed over his trains. The boy however was very loud, very obnoxious, and absolutely not interested in any sharing. The mother just laughed it off and wandered away....as if the entire ordeal wasn't her concern.

She was clearly frustrated at her boy's inability to listen to reason. She chalked it up to "boys will be boys", and "you know how toddlers are".

Well. My toddler wasn't behaving that way, and I was very proud of him. I told him that he was a good boy for sharing, or trying to share, even though the other kids weren't interested.

I praised him for being brave, not crying, and not making a fuss.

He certainly knows how to make a fuss, but so far he's exhibited that kind of behaviour mostly for our own benefit, in the comforts of our home/neighbourhood/family setting. Rarely in public.

Since it was impossible to do anything with the little boy, or his mother, and since Benjamin had spent more than half an hour playing by himself, I was able to distract him enough to wander over to the book shelf filled with truck books. And fire engine books. And tractor books.

We sat and looked at books for a good 15 minutes, then I had to pee.

That was the end of our day.

And probably a very interesting lesson for Ben, socially speaking.

Give it back!

I remember a situation I witnessed at the zoo that has me be more alert to similar situations at home.

There was a woman talking with another adult. While she was talking she wanted to take her about 8 year old son's bottle to take a swig.

I couldn't tell if the drink was the woman's bottle, or if it was the boy's bottle.

However, she asked him once to give it to her and he said no. She then continued talking with the other adult and simply used her size and force to tear the bottle out of the boy's hands.

The boy wasn't impressed, and shortly after that we moved on, so I don't know what happened next. I have a feeling the boy just gave up since it was obvious that he couldn't win this fight against a bigger and stronger person.

What made me think about this is how often I find myself in a similar situation with my toddler.

A toddler finds adult things very enticing (my glass with straw in it, scissors, small tools, felt pens, etc). Often, he may reach for it and proceed to play with it, and then I have to come up with a way to get the item back, particularly if it's a dangerous item for a toddler to have.

I could do what the woman did and just snatch it out of Benjamin's hands.
Or yell.
Or give a long-winded explanation that likely would just go over his head anyway.

But everytime this happens, I have a fleeting moment where I think of the woman at the zoo.

Kids copy adults, particularly adults whom they love and trust.

What are the odds that her 8 year old does the same thing his mother demonstrated to another child at school or the playground?

I want Benjamin to know the difference between what's mommy's or daddy's and what's not. Or what mommy and daddy consider safe to share with him. I also want him to understand about sharing, and "your turn, my turn".

It's not that hard, but it takes time and diligence to not use force and size to retrieve an item back from chubby hands.

I give short reasons like "no, this is mommy's drink", offer him another item "this is Ben's cup".
Or, "put mommy's drink on this table, thank you".
Or, "you can drink from mommy's straw if I hold it".

Sometimes I get close to taking the item away from him, particularly if it's scissors or a knife. But I never take it without a comment to him directly.

Even dangerous objects can be replaced with "Ben's scissors" or "here's a plastic knife", or, "where is your tool box, this is mommy's screwdriver".

But so far it has worked. He's accepted, sometimes with protest, which is ok, that certain items he simply can't have.

I hope to keep this in mind as he grows.

PS I have tolerated protests in various forms and volume, including temper tantrums. That's inevitable. How I deal with these is another post.

Fish can swim!

I think my toddler is on his way to becoming a fish!

I've been taking him to the pool since he was 6 months old, but mostly in the summer. Now he's just over two, and it's been about a year since he's been in a pool.

At first we walked in and used the shallow steps. We also walked up and down the ramp but the teenie lifeguard said that we can't do that anymore.

Didn't ask why.

I get irritated when young kids tell me what to do, or not to do, for so-called "safety" reasons. Safety issues have become a topic I shun because I happen to disagree with most, but that's another day's rant.

Yes, I realize they're qualified life guards but walking up the down the ramp with a toddler? What is unsafe about that?

Anyway. I'll rant about it another time.

Then we saw some boys we met at babyclub over a year ago, and they were jumping from the ledge into their mother's arms.

I kept waiting for some young lifeguard to say "can't do that" but they didn't, so I went over to say hi and Ben wanted to copy Aiden and Cooper. (sorry, ranted again)

He jumped and jumped and I was almost glad when the whistle went for everyone to get out and go home. Lugging pregnancy and toddler around is hard work!

But the jumping...it's cool! He dropped his apprehension and trusted me completely to catch him.

No wings.
No life vest.
Water in the eyes.
And up his nose.

No crying. Only "more" and "again"!

We'll see what the rest of the summer brings. I definitely want him to be a swimmer, so it looks like we're on our way.

Gifts and presents galore

It's like every special day throughout the school year (Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's day, Easter) - everyone gives presents to everyone. I'm so not used to this...

Today was Benjamin's last day of daycare. Not only did people bring presents for the teachers, but Ben's cubbyhole was filled with treats and toys and things from his playmates!

I prepared a basket of fresh, Ontario-grown strawberries and a thank-you card for the teachers. But I didn't go out and get gifts for the kids...

I'm astonished. It's like the birthday parties...almost all the kids who turned 2 or 3 in his class throughout the school year had an organized party event for which the classmates were invited to.

I thought this stuff would start happening in grade school.

Guess I was wrong.

* * * * *

The Montessori school where Ben attended this past year did some special things for the kids during their last week.

Yesterday they had a jumping castle.

Today they're having a "funky hair day". We gelled and spritzed his hair into spikes at the kitchen table and loh and behold, he didn't mind!

Now summer if officially here.

Short-term homeschooling

Contrary to what many might believe, not only devoted Christians with multiple children living in rural environments in America's Bible Belt consider homeschooling.

I certainly am none of the above, but have done a lot of reading about homeschooling.

Today, I found an article with a completely fresh perspective about this topic of homeschooling in this blog. It discusses short-term homeschooling.

Who would have thought that was possible?

I know of someone who does part-time homeschooling, not because that's her primary wish, but because she is not left with any other choice. The country where she lives prohibits people from homeschooling their children, and has been known to even throw the parents in jail for keeping their kids at home during the obligatory school days. And no, this is not a middle eastern country, nor a communist one. It is Germany.

To emphasize, I have not considered homeschooling my child(ren) at this time. Partly because I only have one, and he's only 2, and partly because I currently do not believe that I have what it takes to do it full-time. But the above article emphasizes something important to me: if your child learns to hate learning, if your child is hiding in closets to avoid homework, if your child is so extremely emotionally stressed out for social, peer or even abusive reasons, then at least there are options here (in Canada, or the USA for that matter).

The article talks about middle school being the worst part of an American child's educational time spent in the public school system.

Only time will tell how my child(ren) will handle that, or any part, of the public school system here in hogtown.

Jumping rope for 2-year olds

My 2-year old's daycare is promoting fitness in the name of rising obesity in children. It's sponsored by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and it encourages kids to participate in skipping rope for the cause.

I got the permission form and the pledge form to look over, sign and return.

The thing is, Ben is 2.

He can jump a tiny bit, he can walk further and longer than most kids in his age group, and activity is his middle name.

But jumping rope??

I'm confused.

I'm all for encouraging kids to be active, but these things start at home. I would think. Jumping rope may be fun and all, if you're 6, but maybe this is taking it just a tad too far.

Did I mention Ben is just barely 2? As in 25 months old??

What I don't know now is that if I don't return the form, will he feel left out? Or will he be allowed to try jumping rope just for the fun of it? Or will they keep the toddlers who don't participate apart? Or nearby to watch?

I could ask all these questions next time I see the director of the daycare.

But for now, I think I'll just ignore the pledge form.

Maybe this is bad. Maybe not. I'm going to go with my gut feeling here.

Ironically, a good friend just had an angioplasty done recently and he's not even 40 yet. Living a sedetary lifestyle combined with a bad diet was partly the cause (he's got bad genes too). If Ben was a bit older, I would probably sign the form and have him participate. To help out the friend.

But like I said, he's still a baby. An active baby, which is half the battle.