parenting

Kiki is a reader. The only way I could get her to stop reading would be to remove all printed matter from the house and then she’d be off at the neighbors begging for books. This is a good thing.

Link is just beginning to learn to read. His road to reading fluency is not going to be as easy as Kiki’s was. In an effort to make reading something Link wants to do, I’ve insituted a reading incentive program. In the interests of avoiding whining, I’ve included Kiki.

Link and Kiki each get to pick an Item they want to earn, a toy, or a game, basically whatever shiny thing currently has their eye. Then based on the price of the item we set up a chart with check boxes to mark off points. Each point is worth roughly 10 cents, so a $10 item is 100 points. Link gets one point for each 8 page phonics reader book he reads. Kiki gets one point for each 25 pages of a chapter book that she reads.

So far so good. My goal for both children is literacy and that can be gained by being read to, as well as by reading. Unfortunately finding time to sit down and read to Link or Kiki is very difficult. Invariably Gleek comes along and plops in the middle of the story. Then she gets bored because there are no pictures. Then she begins climbing the back of the couch and doing acrobatics over our heads. This always ends in her landing on us and somebody crying. Patches ends reading sessions even more quickly by climbing into the middle of the snuggle and then grabbing the book.

But tonight I had a brilliant idea. Tonight I turned to Kiki and told her she’d get triple points on anything that she read to Link. And I turned to Link and told him that however many points Kiki got, he’d get the same number. They both lit up and ran off to go read. It’s educational Judo! I have them teaching each other! I love it when I can manage stuff like this.

This morning as I was doing some housework I entertained myself by listening to my children pretending to be Pokemon trainers. I started thinking about the significant role that video games have played in my children’s lives. I know that many parents are of the “video games are evil” school of thought. Link’s kindergarten teacher certainly was. She told me that video games have no value whatsoever and she repeatedly expressed concern over Link’s “obsession” with video games because he was constantly drawing Mario and Luigi on his school papers.

I don’t agree with Link’s teacher. Video games DO have value and more than just entertainment value. People laughingly make jokes about hand-eye co-ordination in reference to video games. But in truth that hand-eye co-ordination is critical in any number of daily tasks as is the fine motor co-ordination that is necessary to push lots of little buttons in odd combinations. Puzzle games can teach thinking skills and problem solving skills which have applications in all sorts of other endeavors. Video games frequently provide opportunities for parents to teach kids how to handle frustration and competition. Many games teach lessons about resource management, you have to manage your life levels and money and any number of other things. First Person Shooter games can teach how to react and respond to threats. Those are not skills I care for my children to have, so we don’t allow FPS games at our house. Video games actually involve children in thinking and responding, unlike television which induces a hypnotic state. I’m sure I’ve missed other things, but you get the point.

Perhaps all of the above is merely my way of reasoning away the guilt when I encourage video game play in order to get the kids out of my hair (every parent needs some sanity time). But I don’t really think so. I’ve seen the benefit my children get. The biggest benefit has been in their imaginary worlds. For every hour they spend tied to a screen playing a video game, they spend two or three away from the screen playing imaginary games involving Pokemon, or Mario Kart, or Kirby, or any number of other characters and worlds to which they’ve been introduced.

There are definitely times where I feel like they’ve been spending too much time playing video games. Then as a parent I need to step in and encourage other behaviors. I’ve discovered that video games tend to go in cycles. There will be a week or so where it seems like they do nothing else and then there will be a week where the games hardly get turned on at all.

I guess my point is that like almost any other experience which life offers, video games can be an extremely useful parenting tool if managed correctly.

Since We’re three weeks into summer vacation and into the New World Order (I talk about it a few entries back, I don’t know how to link to it.) I thought it would be good to take a moment and reflect on how well, or how poorly it is going.

I think it is going well. The kids have stopped complaining about the amount of stuff they have to get done in the mornings and they’re getting it done fairly quickly. Not a single item belonging to Link or Kiki has ended up in jail, and most of the time I don’t even have to remind them to pick up. Big success there.

Unfortunately the Jail box is filling up with Gleek’s toys. I’ll say “Uh oh, your barbie is going to jail if you don’t put her away.” Gleek will respond with no distress whatsoever “I want her to go to jail.” She has yet to want something out of jail enough to do an actual chore. There have been a couple of occasions where she has scrambled to put a special toy away, but mostly she’s content, happy almost, to see them imprisoned. I think this means she has too many toys. I figure I’ll stick to the system, eventually we’ll get down to the toys she really cares about and she’ll keep them picked up.

Or she’ll start playing with everyone else’s toys.

Hmm. This could be a serious problem. Already a major source of contention is when Gleek sneaks into the room belonging to Link and Kiki and “borrows” things sans permission.

I’m not going to borrow trouble. In the spirit of saving energy (or maybe just flat out denial) I’m going to Wait And See.

After my last three entries chronicling one unbelievable day I had a friend ask me: “How do you survive all those kids?!”

The answer is that most days aren’t like the one I’ve just described.  Most days have maybe One of those caliber of events.  Some days have none at all.  The quiet days aren’t the ones that I tell about in here because they aren’t as amusing to tell or to read about.  I don’t often tell about the times that Kiki grabs Patches and takes him out into the back yard to play quietly for an hour.  Or the times that all four kids play quietly in the sandbox without getting sand-in-the-hair.  Or the times that Kiki runs off to a friend’s house, Patches naps, and Link and Gleek play quietly with duplos while I nap.  These kinds of things happen just as frequently as the other kind, I just don’t tell about them as much.  I probably should, because those are the moments when I have time to watch my kids and love them and realize exactly why I put up with all the annoying stuff.

And then there is all the really cute stuff.  Just last night Gleek came down the stairs into the office where Howard was playing music while he worked.  She stopped on the stairs and began doing a little bobbing dance.  “I like this music!  It has dancing in it!”

I like my children.  They have Joy in them.

Here is the final installment of my day in May 2003.  The story ends at lunchtime because after that the kids returned to normal.  I still had to deal with squabbles, but they played with toys and with each other without getting quite so . . . creative.

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May Day Part 3: Sandbox to BathtubRead More »

Here is the second part of the three part saga of That One Day.  All of the events chronicled did in fact take place on the same day.  I’m not compressing or embellishing for literary purposes.

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May Day part 2: Playing BabiesRead More »

A little over a year ago I had an unbelievable day. By 10 am I realized that it was the kind of day that needed to be recorded for posterity. (Quite literally, I want to be able to show it to my kids.) So I began taking notes. I’ve always intended to write up a full account from the notes.  During my vacation last week I finally did.  It ended up in three parts. If you want to read about kid stuff …

May Day Part 1: Before SchoolRead More »

I think it is cosmically unfair to inflict two children in the “why?” stage on me at once. Someone somewhere has to be laughing. I don’t mind Link asking why. He is usually honestly seeking information. There are just so many subjects on which he is less than fully informed as yet. Gleek’s “why?” is a different story. It seems to be some kind of an instinctive automatic conversation extender. I’m not even sure she hears the answers or cares to process the information. She’s only been doing it for 2 days and it’s already annoying. And then I look down at the little face with the big trusting eyes and I realize I simply have to feed this hungry little mind no matter how frustrating the process may be.

Kiki created the first major challenge to the New World Order just recently. She cut her own bangs. Normally this kind of offense is cause for much scolding and upset. This time I just looked at the bangs (a picture of which could have served as the definitions of “crooked” and “hacked”) and realized that SHE was the one who would have to live with them. So I merely said “Did you cut your hair?” She came nigh to denying it, but didn’t. I then ascertained that the scissors hadn’t been left where Gleek could get them and made Kiki clean up the mess. She was pretty relieved not to be scolded and then asked if I would help her cut them straighter. Had she not asked, I would not have offered. I seriously considered making her go to a professional haircutter and pay for the haircut out of her own money. But she asked so nicely, that I did help trim them. Now they’re shorter than we’d like, but they aren’t crooked anymore. And look at all the stress and crying I sidestepped. I feel pretty good about that.

Well I’ve survived the end of school. Tomorrow begins the first week of summer with attendant non-schedule. My kids are in for a little surprise. I’m changing the house rules for the summer. On school mornings if we can get kids up, fed, and out the door I’m happy. Beds made and teeth adequately brushed are a nice bonus. This summer I get mean.

Before they can turn on any form of electronic entertainment or go to a friend’s house they have to do their 5 morning things (Eat, dress, make-bed, brush teeth, fix hair), one chore (I get to pick it), and their room needs to be clean. I figure, during the school year their work is to go to school. During the summer they need to learn how to help around the house. When they are on the ball, this requirement takes 30 minutes or less, when they’re not, it can take all day long.

I’ve also instituted a stress relieving system for me. I’ve decided I’m not responsible for taking care of their things. I hadn’t realized how much energy I spent preventing damage to beloved items for fear of upsets and replacement costs. I’ve decided that I shouldn’t be stressing that stuff. If they damage a toy beyond repair, my job is to sympathize and wipe tears and find something else for them to do. If the item needs replaced, then the child who did the damage can pay for the replacement out of allowance or money earned doing chores. (Money chores can only be done AFTER regular chores.) If I child wants to take a toy or blanket to a public place like a grocery store, then the child needs to keep track of it and carry it, not me.

Oh and if they leave their stuff lying around the house. I’ll ask them to pick it up. Once. If they don’t pick it up, then I will. I will put it in “Jail” (a box in my closet) and it can only be bailed out by an extra chore.

Told you I was getting mean.

The good news for the kids is that I’ve already begun some of these changes and the resultant lower stress level has turned me into a mom who is more willing to play. I’m not shouldering so much of the work and so I’m not tired and resentful when the work is all done. I think that once they get used to it the kids are going to like this as much as I do.

I’ve discovered a new parenting tactic. Like many of my favorite tactics it happened on the spur of the moment. I came home from the trip to my brother’s house with a sense that I need to be doing a better job of making my kids accountable for their own choices. I also need to be doing a better job of requiring them to help make our home a nice place to be.

So Sunday night after our three hour car trip, the kids were showing me brownian motion in action and I needed a way to quell them enough for them to pay attention to me. If you can control the hands and feet of kids it is very difficult for them to move the rest, so I said in a loud voice. “Sit down and put your hands on your feet.” The novelty of this command was such that they did it instantly. Quiet. Motionless. It was amazing. I then informed them that this position was called the frog sit. (I’ve no idea where I pulled the name from) And if they didn’t follow my next instructions or got distracted, they would have to frog sit for 3 minutes to think about not getting distracted. I then ordered them into their pajamas. They ran upstairs and did it.

It works really really well on Kiki and Link. Kiki has yet to have to frog sit. Link has had two sessions because of distractions. It doesn’t work so well on Gleek. I have to stand right over her to keep her frog sitting which is time consuming. The true art of parenting is applying consequences to your kids which don’t punish you even worse than the kids. Patches is too young for frog sitting to even begin to work.

I figure the consequences of frog sitting only apply during the brief periods of the day when I’m giving multiple instructions to multiple kids and I need them to keep themselves on task. Times like bedtime or chore time. Hopefully it’ll keep on working. If it doesn’t I’ll have to get creative AGAIN.