We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
2007-03-06 - 17:44
OK, so maybe we went too far �.
I mentioned in a recent post that Jack and I had been making paper snow flakes and hanging them in all the windows to try to call winter in. We Smiths love cold weather and snow!
Well, needless to say, our plan worked.
For several weeks we had temperatures near -23C with plenty of snow and cold. The weather moderated again for a while, but it's still plenty cold. We've been enjoying it, but I have to admit that the rest of the world seems a bit less thrilled. When the east coast was pretty much shut down by the cold weather, I suspected that perhaps Jack and I may have gone a touch too far. Oops.
Rod and Jack did, however, use the minor thaw to teach other how to build a snow man. Well�more of a snow mound, but � well, what do you think?
Amazing find for conquering the flu
Our friend, Nerida, put us on to elderberry extract tonic (http://www.sambucol.com/) to keep colds and other viruses under control in the winter. Since Jack started taking it every morning, he has had a day or two of sniffles and the occasional cough, but finally he doesn't get terribly sick every time we take him out to play with other kids! At the first sign of sniffles, we raise his dose from preventive to therapeutic and the sniffles are gone by the end of the day. Amazing stuff.
In case you're curious
You can, of course, still click on Jack's picture over in the left column to go to an album of his most recent photos. I have taken to keeping that cleaned up, so it's usually less than 50 photos.
But there were often photos that told a story, though they didn't show Jack, necessarily. I was never sure what to do with those, so now we have also started a gallery for our photo essays.
You can see one photo essay (a roundup of the whole family) here:
Toileting�
There is something moderately strange about discussing toilet training with your almost four year old � using an internet messenger.
But that's exactly what I did this morning.
Rod and I try to keep messenger running in the background much of the day. It started as a way for Rod and I to court when he was in Australia, and we continued as a way for me not to miss too much of Jack's infancy when I went back to work. We chat some during the day, but mainly it's just there � an ethereal thread between us.
This morning, Rod and I were discussing something minor when Jack told Rod that he wanted to type to me.
Here's the conversation :
11:19 AM Jack: HI mamma I don't want to be 4
me: Why don't you want to be four, Jack?
Jack: because I don't want anything to change
me: Awww
I understand, Jack
But change has to happen
we can't stop it
Are you worried?
Jack: yes
me: what are you worried about, sweetheart?
Maybe Mamma and Dad can help.
Jack: I don't know why
me: Are you worried that Dad and Mamma might not take care of
you if you get big?
Jack: yes
me: Jack, Dad and I love you completely and we will love you
forever -- even when you're big like TJ and Mike, we will love you!
And we will take care of you as long as you need us and want us to.
Even when you don't need diapers anymore, we'll take care of you.
Jack: thank you, bye mamma
me: bye budgie!
So, there is the crux of the toileting problem.
You see, the unspoken but understood current running through this conversation is that Jack announced months ago that he would use the toilet when he was four. We agreed that we would change his diapers until May 7. After that, he wears underpants and uses the toilet. Four seemed forever away to him when he made the proclamation and he didn't seem concerned about our firm agreement, but he has started to get concerned about it again since the calendar flipped to March.
My theory about what this means?
I think Jack is afraid that he'll be big, like TJ, Mike, Corey, and Joel before he's ready and that he'll be expected to live far, far from Mamma and Dad like his big brothers do before he's ready.
And then, there's the more immediate fear of failing in the whole toileting challenge. He has resisted so long that I'll bet that there's a certain amount of fear based on the "I haven't, so maybe I can't" thing.
Rod and I have agreed that once May 7 rolls around, we will only do a diaper at night (maybe. Turns out Rod is for no diaper at all).
Other than that, Jack is in underpants. We won't push the issue � the floors aren't carpeted downstairs, so while cleaning up messes won't be fun, it won't be a big smelly deal, either. Jack is fastidious enough that he won't have a lot of patience with wet trousers, so I think it'll go pretty fast once he's sure we can't be convinced to change our minds. When he resisted at two, I wasn't concerned. When he resisted at three, I got annoyed, but with toileting, the owner of the bladder is in the power position and I couldn't see anything good coming from a battle. But four is old enough. Rod and I still don't see the value of turning it into a battle, but we agree that we are done. So, whether he uses the toilet or not will be Jack's decision � but he can change his own trousers. At some point not being toileted is bound to have a negative impact on Jack's self-esteem, and evidently we were always going to have to force the issue eventually.
Cooking with Chef Jack
I have mentioned our use of the Continuum parenting style often here, but in conversations with people about it, I keep getting the impression that some people think that I mean that I "let Jack help" � that is, I make busy work for him nearby while I get on with serious business. Not at all. We are careful to size jobs to Jack's current abilities, but what he is doing is real participation.
Jack can wash dishes, though we're careful to keep the knives and glasses aside. He can load and unload the dishwasher, he can put the clean laundry into a basket for folding, he can set the table, assist in tidying a room, vacuum the rug, and he can read recipes, get ingredients out, wash and chop vegetables, stir pots, mix batters (until they get too thick) or pots and just generally act as a junior chef when we cook.
That's the point to the continuum.
Children need to be contributing members of their families to grow up an abiding sense of their own competence and their place in the world. Busy work that doesn't actually help much doesn't enhance a child's sense of competence � kids are smart; they know when they're being condescended to and it gives them the impression that they're not very talented.
Jack didn't start out with full-blown chores, though. Kids are naturally interested in what adults are doing and when he showed an interest, I gave him a subset of what I was doing that he was capable of doing on his own. At first, he took clothes from me and tossed them (more or less) into the dryer or he poured the ingredients I'd measured (more or less) into bowls. In the beginning he rarely lasted the durations of the project, he did a little and then he ran off to play. That was fine � at that stage, it was a lot more work for him to help since it meant that some of the clothes didn't make it into the dryer and some of the flour inevitabley ended up on the countertops. But as he got older, and his part of the chores got more involved, he also developed the attention span to stick with it. These days, he actually is a big help. Here's a photo-essay of Jack making a salad. There are even some movies:
The Dancing Man
Jack has a new obsession. (Doesn't he always?)
A few months ago, someone sent me one of those chain letters with a link to a cute site I just had to visit. Jack was in the room when I opened this: and he demanded that I play it over, and over, and over again. He has insisted on my playing "the dancing man" for him every day since then for an hour at a time. He's not just watching, though. Jack is carefully working out the moves and teaching himself to dance! He's getting pretty good, too.
I wanted to try to catch a movie of it, but while Jack is quite intent
on learning these dance moves, he gets self-conscious if he catches us
watching. Unless, of course, I am dancing with him.
Of course, while Jack was working on his dance moves, I was evicted
from my computer. And it was time for Jack to revisit Starfall.com
(the site he used to teach himself to read this time last year) to
take his reading to the next level. But that also meant me being
evicted from my computer. He has his own computer, but last time he
was hooked into the internet, he insisted on following every link he
saw and that took him to some pretty inappropriate places.
Rod and I discussed getting some sort of "net nanny", but when Rod
looked into them, he found that they just weren't designed to do what
we wanted to do. They were written to keep the users of the "nannied"
computer from investigating certain very specific topics. They even
encouraged the kids to visit some of the very sites we wanted to block
access to while blocking sites to which we had no objection. (At
least not yet.)
Then Rod posted his question to a home-schooling list and came up with
the perfect solution:
Advised for the very young, and only really useful if you have a
committed computer for your child, or if you are prepared to change
your proxy settings whenever your child uses the computer.
In your favorite browser, locate the "proxy" settings. These will be
in the options/preferences menu, usually under "network" or
"connections" or "advanced". It works well on Firefox, I haven't made
it work properly on IE5.5 (and I really haven't tried too hard to make
it work)
If your proxy settings have an advanced option, select it.
Select the "manual" option for proxy setting.
Locate http and ssl protocols and enter a word, like "prohibited" or
anything except a URL.
Set the port to 80.
You can do this for all protocols if you like.
Locate the "no proxy required" list and enter the domain names
(eg-starfall.com) for every site you wish to allow. The browser will
tell you want punctuation to use between domain names.
The only domains your browser can visit are on that list. You would be
wise to set your default "open" page to one of those domains, and I
use the bookmark toolbar in Firefox to give single-click access to the
sites I have allowed.
To disable other browsers, use the above settings and don't include
any domains in the last step.
Any browser can be completely reactivated by returning to your regular
(usually automatic) proxy settings. This makes it a poor choice for
software savvy older kids.
By the time Jack is old enough to be able get around this, I hope I
can trust him to surf safely. The one thing I insist on, though, is
that he is not looking while I change these settings. He has a
phenomenal memory and can repeat quite complex tasks if he has seen
them a few times.
Perhaps related to Jack's obsession with the dancing man, and perhaps
not, was his reaction to the Mother-Son Dance I took him to the week
after Valentine's Day. I thought that he would have fun! We love to
dance together in the parlour and I figured this would be the same
only louder.
For some bizarre reason, they scheduled it at 6pm on a Thursday night,
so I flew home from work early to get my boy and then tore like mad
across town to get there. We made it about 10 minutes late, but we
were still the first to arrive. It was held at the local high school,
and if Jack was as disoriented by the place as I was, that could
explain his reaction to the dance, though he seemed fine at that
point. The school was huge and felt as warm and inviting as an
airport.
The dance itself was held in a wide open area that was sort of out in
the hall, though it had cafeteria-like tables and benches and a lot of
vending machines, so it might have been a cafeteria. The lights had
been dimmed and there were flashing dance lights in blue and white and
a small disco ball.
Jack spent the entire two hours standing on the edge of the dance
floor watching.
Sometimes I stayed with him and sometimes I went back to sit by our
coats; it didn't seem to matter to Jack, he was in his own little
world. At first, I tried to get him on the dance floor � but he
demurred. When a slow song started, I picked him up and tried to
dance with him, but he buried his face in my neck and whimpered. That
was my first clue that there was more going on than simple
observation.
After that, I squatted down where I could see his face and instead of
watching the dancers (boys from ages 2 to about 10 or 12 and their
mothers), I watched Jack. He was watching them intently with huge
tears in his eyes. I asked whether he wanted to leave � but he
didn't. He really, really didn't want to leave. But he didn't want
to dance, either. I was confused. I am confused. It's as though he
deeply wanted to participate but somehow felt that he couldn't.
He later told me that it was the lights he didn't like � but I'm not
so sure what that means. He also asked if we could try the dance
again when he's four. I agreed that we could certainly go again when
he's four. I wonder whether he'll want to next year. Certainly, I
won't be pressuring him to go. It's heartbreaking to watch your
little boy stand watching the fun with tears in his eyes � it's
painful enough to be on the outside looking in yourself, but when it
happens to your sweet little child, it's almost unbearable.
Did this happen to TJ and Corey? Yes. But some things you never get
used to.
Total Internet Control
By Dad
Mother �Son Dance
