Selective Learning

The lesson:

Kids will learn anything that interests them far faster than what you wish they would learn.

The story:

It took my kids a week to learn not to climb on to the window seat in the living room. We have still not mastered "do not hit your sister" or "do not take toys from your sister," but it only took my two year old about two minutes to master the basics of Halloween. I only had to tell her what it was all about once and now, when questioned about it she will enthusiastically tell you, "I be a pink Minnie Mouse, baby be a red Minnie Mouse. Peoples give me candy." Now if only Portugal training were this easy.

Copycat

The lesson: children copy everything.

The story: I took my 2 year old daughter Lily to go potty. She pulled down her pants and undies and just stood there, hands clasped in front of her, concentrating, instead of sitting down like normal. I told her she needed to sit and go potty. She said she was going potty. I was confused, and again told her to sit and go potty. She said ok and leaned over her little blue kiddie potty and went pee. Thank goodness she still had her pull up on, so there was no mess when she peed standing up. So we cleaned up and after a moment of wondering why my little girl had done that, something clicked, and I asked my dear hubby if Lily had recently walked in on him in the bathroom. He said yes she had. My darling daughter was trying to pee standing up like how she had seen her daddy do it, proving that children will copy anything. We had a good chuckle (I was very glad that I had kept my patience through my daughter's baffling behavior) and kindly suggested that maybe he should lock the door from now on.

I want what you have

The Lessons:

1) If you give two kids identical toys they will still not be happy. Inevitably one or the other will decide that the toy the other has is better (even though it is identical) or one kid will decide she needs both toys.
2) No matter how brilliant you think your solution to a problem is, your kids can ruin it.

The Story:

One of my girls' favorite toys is a set of $5 Bruin Stacking Cups. They love to stack them up and knock them down. I even used them to teach my oldest girl her colors in about 30 minutes one day while playing with her. I finally got tired of the fight that ensued whenever Lily tried to play with them. Her sister would want to play too, but Lily wasn't having none of that. And to be honest, Mickey got in the way of Lily's more structured use of the cups when she knocked them over, threw them, chewed on them, etc. So when I caught sight of Mickey actually stacking the cups I decided to buy a second set so they could each have their own. I envisioned two sisters happily playing side by side, and figured my sanity was well worth $5.

Yeah, that worked for all of 2 minutes. And then Mickey gets frustrated trying to stack her cups and spies her sister's nice, neat, tall stack and knocks them over. Que screaming fit of enraged 2 year old who wanted to knock it over herself. So I seperate them and sort their cups back into two sets. All is well for another 2 minutes. Then Lily decides she needs ALL the cups because she is convinced that she should be able to stack both sets of cups into one large tower (it doesn't work, but you can't convince her of that). So que crying fit of enraged 1 year old who wants her cups back.

So instead of my vision of happily playing sisters and a few minutes of peace and quiet, I spent the time refereeing squabbles. Different squables from when we only had 1 stack of cups, but not quite the peace I had hoped for.

Start of a new blog

Today is the start of a new blog. If you have found your way here, I hope you come back. But right now it is a work in progress. I hope to have everything up and running very soon. Thank you for visiting.