May 05, 2008
because your mother said so
5/6/08
By no means am I presenting the following list as remotely original, insightful or revolutionary... but we've been collecting a few thoughts about toddlerhood and I was wondering if any of you parents out there had noticed similar things about your little munchkin.
1. Their rules for English are better than English's rule for English. Beyond Lucy's "fourteen, fiveteen, sixteen" and "they relax, I relack", her everyday grammatical mistakes are always based on logical extrapolations from other "normal" words, which kinda makes us, the "good" English speakers, the foolish ones.
2. If you think putting a toddler to bed later makes them sleep later, you will both be exhausted in short order. That rule may work for us, but stretching bedtime into the night almost always pays diminishing returns. For Lucy, I think there's a sleep cycle that ends in the 4am to 5:30am region, and when she's able to cross that gap with another sleep cycle, she's able to saw toothpicks until 7:30am. If for some reason, she goes to bed late, that sleep cycle happens at 5:30 to 6am, and she's up for the day (but overtired and therefore absurd).
3. They do not come by their value judgments instinctively; they get them from you. In other words, if you make a big deal about the letter G and the letter J making the same sound, they will get slightly more confused, because it's apparent that you think it should be confusing. This can be expanded to much larger issues - I'm convinced that if we woke up one morning and either Hank or Ankle were floating at the top of their aquarium, I could simply say "they died - it's like going to sleep and never waking up" and that would be that. Lucy also seems unbothered by the fact that she loves and protects two fish and then eats other fish for lunch.
4. Birthdays are not about presents, they are about the possibility of cake.
Breakout™ - you needed the Atari paddle wheel
5. Parenting is more like the old video game Breakout than you might imagine. You can never stop your kid from doing what they really want to do, but if you're quick, you can deflect their wishes with a particularly edgy distraction. In doing so, they'll bounce off their 5-minute obsession en route to chaos somewhere else - but at least it's a chaos you suggested. For Lulu, when she used to get incredibly upset, Tessa used to leap up and say "let's go look at the lemon trees!" Now it's a little more complicated, like me inventing a quick story about some lost cats, but it'll still keep her from drawing on the couch with markers.
just after her first birthday - she'd already walked to me twice, which made it worse!
6. The real epiphany is not when they first walk, or say "mama" or any of that: it's the day they're first able to tell you what hurts. I think Lucy was 15 months or so when she told us one night "My ear hurts." And from that day forward, my friends, parenting gets a LOT easier.
.jpg)
I so agree with these! My 5 year old is learning about the different grades in his school and there is "kindergarten, first grade, twoth grade, third... We live in Indiana so we are all about Obama, Obama, Obama. He likes to talk about how we don't like George Bush because he "makes bad decisions". We are ok with that assessment! I seem to forget repeatedly about the distraction technique. We need more lemon trees in Indianapolis!
Since I forget where I was 15 minutes ago I can't provide a citation, but I recently heard a feature on the NPR series "The Infinite Mind" (or "All Things Considered", who knows?) about the logic of childhood.
What they said, IIRC, was that the logic of children is always rigorous, but when it goes awry it comes because there's so much they don't know. They also have the same incorrect intuitions that everyone has -- the world is flat, a ping pong ball falls slower than a bowling ball, you can know the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle...
It was such a relief for our family when Ben could tell us when something hurt and what that something was, until potty training. Now I hear "MOMMY!!!! My PENIS HUURTS!!!!" all the time, everywhere and especially when we are around blue-haired old ladies at the Harris Teeter. Joy.
I definitely agree with #2. Our pediatrician recommended one (and only one) book to us when Caroline, our oldest, was born -- Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. When I read that book for the first time, I thought the guy was certifiably crazy. As time went on, however, my wife and I discovered that virtually everything in that book turned out to be true; sleep begets sleep, routine is everything, put 'em down and leave the room, etc. What's even more amazing is that it works just as well with Wyatt, who is just about as different from his sister as you can get.
Ahh, toddlerhood. My youngest, Henry, will be 4 next month, and I suppose I should start calling him a preschooler. His toddler ways are quickly disappearing. I love that they have no filter, and just say whatever comes to mind!
In the past few weeks, he's dropped his nap. It was pretty gradual - every other day, then every 3-4 days, and finally, he's done. I'm feeling a little bit of a loss, because as you may notice, almost all of my posts are during nap time. So I really loved that free time to read the news, send and reply to emails, read this blog, etc...
Scott: Dr. Weissbluth is awesome. We give that book to our friends who become new parents.
For me.... knowing my children is knowing me and it gets split four ways ......yet i only have three kids.....what's the puzzle....what is the final dimension trying to tell... me.....you.....us.....I suppose it's a bit like the English language
At 4, my boy is categorizing the universe according to his rigid Aspergers logic. When my 300 lb, red-bearded ponytailed friend joined us in the truck one day, my son asked, "Dad, is Reid a boy or a girl?" I offered, "Eli, beard beats ponytail." That totally worked for him. He'll place out of PHIL21 fourteen years early.
My kids are 9 and 13. Birthdays are about presents, not the possibility of cake.
When my then 2 year old son heard me say "pain in the buttocks", you could just watch his face processing that - only to later hear him call his sister a "silly head-tocks". Same grammatical idea, just other end...
Your #1 is the backstory of the name of my blog, Upside Up.
When my older daughter was around two, she asked me if I was "razing". She knew that thing in my hand was a razor, and she had figured out that when you use a whatever-er, you're whatever-ing.