Today's Goal.

Some days, the goal, the only goal I have, is to make it through the morning hours until Simon’s naptime. I really don’t care how I make it to 1 p.m., what the kids and I do to get there, or how much effort, wear and tear, or scraping by it takes. Some days, like today, we all just need to calm down and get some more sleep before emotions flare and grumpiness takes hold and ruins a perfectly good day together.

Today started out as innocuous as any other day: Simon woke up, Taylor woke up, and we all sat and played splendidly on the living room floor. An hour later, after reading Dr. Seuss’s Go, Dog. Go! for the fifth time, shuffling through countless flashcards, and building numerous “puppy houses” out of large building blocks, the kids’ mood changed. They wanted out, “run and play,” as Taylor would say; and they wanted it in a bad way. It’s not that I was keeping them inside or forcing them to listen to me read book after book after book, it just happened that way, but the invisible switch had been turned and the combined weight of two 30 lbs. toddlers raged for green grass, hills, and sunshine.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Really! My darling children, so peacefully and adorably sitting by my side for over an hour, laughing, playing, and behaving like all children should transformed, within microseconds, into little monsters: pushing, pulling, taking each others toys, and, to my dismay and utter disgust, biting each others fingers and toes. What the hell happened!

I decided we’d better go to the park, fast. At least there they can run and play, swing, jump around, and dig in the sandbox with plenty of open space around and between themselves. What I forget, willfully or otherwise, was that it rained, torrentially, the night before. The park was a swamp. A buggy, stinky swamp.

I spent the first fifteen minutes at the park chasing them out and away from mush and mud, to no avail. Finally, more tired and frustrated than enlightened, I gave in and let them play. And play they did! They loved it! Within the shortest time imaginable they were covered from head to toe with the stickiest mulch muck mud one has ever smelt or tried to wipe off. Bad. Real bad. Just nasty.

To make matters worse, rather than the expected opposite, both kids fell asleep on the ride home from the park. Before putting them down for a nap I first had to carry them in from the car, wake them up, give them a bath, while they were, of course, screaming to be fed lunch, before laying them down for their afternoon nap.

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!

Thankfully they slept. There really isn’t anything more comforting and soothing to an at-home parent than a quiet house. Thank God for little engines running out of steam!

Chinese Bamboo Tree.

We could all learn a little from the story of the Chinese bamboo tree. After being planted, the tree seemingly does little growing for almost a full five years. For four years, if one were to scan the ground where the tree’s seed was planted, he or she would see nothing out of the ordinary. It would appear as if the seed had died and rotted in the very ground it was supposed to be growing in! But what one does not see, unless he or she was to dig and investigate, is that the seed, when it is well watered and fertilized, is silently growing. It’s growing down and out, establishing a strong and extensive root system in preparation for the fifth year. Sometime during the fifth year, the Chinese bamboo tree sprouts and grows nearly ninety feet in six weeks. Six weeks!

My kids are my bamboo trees. There are days that I reach and exceed my maximum patience levels, can barely foster the strength to take them outside one more time before bed, or explain, once again, for the twentieth time that morning, why one needs to share with his or her sibling and that grabbing a toy from another’s hand is not okay. These days, these times, I know, are the most important times of my children’s lives and, usually a few hours after my stress level drops back to normal, I thank God for graciously allowing me, not some stranger down the street with a childcare business, the benefit of being there for my kids; and granting me the good sense to recognize teachable moments instead of what they appear to be, disrespectful and selfish misbehavior. The daily toils– and believe me, sometimes they are slogging labors of love– do pay off in the long run. Simon, for instance, has had the most difficult time these last few weeks keeping his sticky fingers out and off everything in sight. For the life of me, I can’t seem to stop him from pushing every button he comes across or searches for– even after moving, covering, and baby-proofing all I can. Everyday I am resetting the air conditioner, turning the coffee machine back on, or waiting for the television cable box to restart because they have been shut off and need a few seconds or a minute to reset. Yet, when removed from these distractions and given blocks to build, rings to stack, Play Doh to push and squeeze and shape, or Busy Popin’ Pals to twist and turn, he goes bananas! He wants to learn. He wants to play. He wants to be big and have more control over his fine motor skills like his sister does. He is not misbehaving; he’s bored and he wants to play.

The day will come, soon enough, that my little bamboo trees will sprout. We’ll see then, first hand, not a glimpse, not a sneak peak, but a full panoramic view of the fruits of our labors. And what a proud day that will be for Adrianne and me.

Not Yet. Part II.

Last week I wrote that I would rather spend my time reading to my children than showing and praising them for pushing the correct buttons on my laptop as they play games, even word, color or counting games from reputable websites such as Sesame Street and BigFishGames. What I failed to mention is that the optimal time for very young children to sit and play video games is the same “best” time for them to be read to. It is the time they are most affectionate, willing to be held, and ready to learn. Why squander it?

Too often I have heard that online games help develop one’s social skills by allowing him or her to “communicate” with others because they can “chat” with several players at once. Those players, whom may be sitting next-door or halfway around the world, can, if they want to, “chat” back, too. It’s communication, right? I doubt it. That’s synonymous to saying it’s better for people to twitter than talk! The only real way to learn to have meaningful conversations is to converse, frequently, within a diverse community of garrulous souls. Talking. It’s a basic skill; and once learned, kids will have it forever.

Now I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself. A paragraph ago I was talking about very young children, my eldest age, that is. And in the space of one short paragraph, this one, once it’s finished, I’ll interchange my ideas about very young children with pre-teens and then with young adults. I am aware of this and have done so deliberately. See, the longer I am at-home the clearer it is to me that what I do right now, regularly, deliberately or not will have an everlasting effect on my children. I’m not alone on this thinking. Plenty of research has shown that kids are like sponges: they take in their environments, for better or worse, and memorize, mimic and continually learn new things everyday. It’s no wonder that most toddlers learn to operate the television and DVD remotes, telephone, and other sophisticated devices around the house before their third birthday. And I’ve said this before: parents have children; it’s not the other way around. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can by them and recognize that what we expose or allow our children to be exposed to will help shape their personalities.

I came across an interesting website the other afternoon: www.mediafamily.org. In a nutshell, the creator of the site, Dr. David Walsh, goes into detail about how 60-90 percent of the most popular video games are violent; how television and gaming violence has a stronger effect on young children than previously thought; and how any and all screen time, from the largest wide-screen television to the smallest hand-held video game, for young children will manipulate the wiring in his or her brain. It’s scary stuff.

We live in an information age. Technology is an integral part of life and every professional job, well … just about every profession job. That doesn’t mean, however, that just because one is able to comfortably sit in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day playing video games that he or she have a distinct advantage over non-game players. Simply sitting on one’s haunches is not a highly regarded skill in the workplace.

Kids really don’t know much about computers, anyways. Sure, they do know how to “do” certain things: find free music, download video to You Tube, and sign on and play games, but do they really know how to utilize that powerful CPU hidden under the up / down / spacebar keys used to move his or her character into or out of trouble? It’s like walking along the beach. One is close to the water, one can smell the water, and one may even touch the water from time to time, but besides helping one work on his or her tan, none of it will help him or her learn how to swim any better. Unless a child plans to become a professional video game tester or “fly” drone airplanes for the US Navy over some Middle East country in the near future, adroitly jockeying a joystick and pushing a series of button, no matter how far apart they are located on the keyboard, is not a very marketable skill.

I’m not sure when I am going to introduce my kids to our computer or computer games. I imagine they’ll get accustomed to using the computer by making digital photo albums or holiday cards at some point in time. And, they’ll probably start becoming hooked to video games around the same time they attend public school, but not today. For now, I’m going to shelter them from the evils of gaming and random online google searches until I’ve been able to put a little more thought into the subject.

From my lofty tower in the sky, six years from reality, where I do not have to make these contentious decisions right now and I can spew out my opinions without debate from either child, I say, “No. Not yet! Thank you very much.”

Not Yet. Part I

I had two interesting conversations with family members over the last few days. I’ll call the conversations interesting and politely refrain from calling them disturbing because I, like many new parents, have yet to struggle with how much and how often my kids are exposed to video games. I fear these days are coming sooner than I want them to and abhor the thought that I’ll probably give in to my son or daughter’s wishes to own and master the same shoot ‘em up / stab ‘em in the back type of video games I detest once they are mainstreamed into the local school system. But for now, I’m thankful that I can take the less trodden high road and in a loud whisper strike out against all forms of interactive video learning and games designed with luring children and young adults into the world of video gaming.

The first conversation I had centered on introducing my daughter to video learning games from websites like Sesame Street and BigFishGames. The second conversation also had to do with computers, but the emphasis of our talk focused on how proud the family member was at how long his / her child could sit and stare at a computer screen for hours upon hours playing a variety of games; and how he / she could “look up” all kinds of information on the Internet.

I’ve been fortunate to have my first child, a girl, take to being read to. Taylor loves books. One of her first words was “book.” From books, I feel, her vocabulary, among other things, has continually flourished from an early age. Simon, on the other hand, much to my distress at the time, would not sit still and be read to until he was about thirteen months old. Ironically, his useful vocabulary, when compared to his sister’s, lagged far behind hers at the same age. It was not until he accepted being read to that he started to speak; and now it seems like he is picking up a new word everyday. I would gander to say that he has learned more new words in the last two weeks than he’s know in the last fourteen months. It’s an amazing phenomenon to watch unfold!

With this first-hand, early and later book-loving empirical research staring me in the face I do not think it’s outlandish for me to deduce that the more that kids are exposed to reading the better their vocabulary will be. The better one’s vocabulary, as we all know, the easier it is for him or her to communicate. The easier it is for one to communicate the better one’s social skills will probably be. The better one’s social skills are the more desirable other people will find them, and on and on and on. Bottom line, I think it’s better that I spend my time reading to my children rather than showing them how to push buttons on my laptop and then praising them when they push those buttons, so that a computerized voice can tell them they, in fact, did push the correct button.

To be continued….

Stumbling.

I’ve been struggling to remind myself that just because one child has done something for the first time that it still is a big deal when the second child reaches the same milestone fifteen months later. I can distinctly remember taking thousands of digital pictures, from every possible angle, of Taylor walking, running, stacking blocks, and even looking at towering cumulous clouds in our backyard. We have digital video of her doing, or attempting to do just about everything one can imagine¬¬¬– from her first squeaky coo to her furrowed reactions of meeting her brother for the first time– we’ve got it all stored on our .mac’s hard drive. With Simon, however, too often I take his physical and cognitive achievements for granted. I have to constantly remind myself that, if I am doing my job correctly, he is learning or being exposed to something new all the time. For example, just the other day I was putting him to bed when he began alligator rolling out of my arms. Instinctively I plopped him in his crib to keep him from being flung to the ground. This infuriated him! He leapt at the sides of the crib like a little madman, screaming like a tyrant. I had no idea what he wanted or what he was doing. The following afternoon, when I brought him to bed for his nap, he did the same thing. This time, however, he wriggled so much I was forced to lay him down to the floor. As he was rolling and sliding down my leg, a split second before I was about to drop him, he scrambled on all fours to his sound machine, deftly turned on the volume, and sat back on his hunches, and, with a sense of pride gleaming in his eyes, his face lit was a smile. I can’t tell you the number of times I almost dropped Simon because of all his squirming before being put to bed. I can’t tell you the number of times he must have tried to show me his new self-taught skill of turning on his noise maker. And I can’t tell you how many other things he can do or wants to do that I’ve missed because I’ve already seen his sister do it before and have not taken the time to watch him show me what he intends to do.

This must stop.

It’s not that I willfully ignore my son. No one can. He’s beautiful. Perfect. He’s a gift from God. But I know, I just know, I’ve disappointed and frustrated him more than once because I’ve failed to heed the tell-tail signs that he wants to show me something he has learned to do.

In an attempt to right my missteps, I’ve decided to cease watching television after Adrianne takes Taylor to bed. Simon’s bedtime is about an hour later than Taylor’s and has been, traditionally, the only time I am able to sneak in my TV fix and find out what’s going on in the world outside of the walls of our home. Now, instead, I devote the hour singularly to Simon. We read, we play; we do anything and everything he wants to do. The bonding has been priceless. Like being a stay-at-home father, I will never regret the little I miss doing what is right for our children. The hell with the world!– for right now. I have my little slice of heaven right here in my own house that needs a little bit more attention.