Respect

So, Z just had his exit interview with his PT. She no longer thinks that he will need special education in the future, so she cannot offer PT through the special education school system. He graduated! Yay, Z!
On to the point:
He started PT at Mary Free Bed, (he still needs PT, just not special ed) and he thoroughly enjoys it. He is happy to go to see Laura. The difference, you ask? Let me compare for you:
His previous PT, let's call her Maggie: "Z, walk down the hall so I can watch how you walk." (Z tucks his chin to his chest and gazes at her, shy and embarrassed. He refuses to walk. M gets frustrated with him.)
Laura: "Hey Z! Go look out the window over there and tell me what you see. Is there grass out there? Any flowers?" (Z runs over to check it out.)

M: "Z, please stack those blocks." (Z's fingers seem to betray him when he tries to stack blocks. They get in the way, pushing blocks off of his no-higher-than-two-block-stack. They push the blocks that he has already stacked onto the floor. Z knows he has a hard time with stacking, but COLORS.....He KNOWS his colors, so he attempts to display his strong points...) "Maggie, look a green block. Purple, Maggie!" (smiling and holding up block). Maggie: "Z, you need to listen. We are not doing colors right now, we are stacking. Please stack the blocks. (Z is no longer smiling, but says "Green one, Maggie.) Maggie: "Z, you need to focus. You are not paying attention. Please put the block on top of the other one." (Z throws the block across the room...hee, hee.) Maggie to me: "Z has an attention problem. He cannot get past what he wants to do to listen to what I am telling him."
And now Laura: "Z, how 'bout we stack these cups together? Look here. There's an elephant on this one. Can you put it on top of the whale one?" (Z: "What's that, Laura?", pointing to a flamingo on the cup). Laura: "That is a flamingo, Z. Can you say that? The flamingo wants to go on top of the seal." Z: "Grey seal, Laura." Laura: "Yes! That IS a grey seal, Z. Good job." (Z puts the flamingo cup on top of the seal, smiling).
Ok, one more.
Laura sat Z on her lap with some toys, while she talked to me about her treatment plan for him. Sometimes, he would ask a question or make a statement, and she would answer, and keep going.
Maggie sat Z at a table with two THREE-PIECE puzzles and asked him to be quiet, because she needed to talk to his mom. He smiled, and did the puzzles....for about two minutes. He then said, quietly, "Mom, I want to color." M: "Z, I SAID that I needed your mom's attention. You need to be quiet and sit still." (I reminded her that he was two and was not going to sit still for 30 minutes with the "entertainment" she had offered him. I asked if he could go play in the playhouse across the room.) He played quietly for about 10 minutes before he peeked his head out and said, "Hi, mama!" M: "ZEKE. I TOLD you that you cannot interrupt. You need to stop talking to your mommy until we are done here." (Z: "Hi mama!")
I want to point out that it took just as long for M to correct Z than it took for Laura to simply respond PLEASANTLY to his questions.
I just have a few comments, and then I will be through.
First, I don't mind teaching a kid to be polite and to not interrupt when I am talking to someone. Really, I don't. But the kid is TWO. I don't think any two-year old would not interrupt for THIRTY minutes. I'm not sure that I could sit in a room with two people and be quiet for TEN minutes.
Second, if a mom is in the room with her kid and is quite obviously aware of her kid's behavior.....maybe you should let the mom deal with it. (I am all about letting the community raise your child, but I'm not sure I'd want it to look like that. I have seen it look different....and I appreciate the help. But usually, the correction I have seen from friends and family has been doled out with love).
Third, there are more respectful ways to correct a child. Would M have talked to an adult like that, if an adult had interrupted her very important meeting?
I sometimes think that adults forget that kids are people. I know that kids need to learn things that are appropriate and that they need to be corrected, but I am not convinced that correction=lack of respect. For instance, if my kid is watching TV and we need to leave, I would cringe a little if K just went and shut it off. Would he do that to me? What about "Hey, guys. I know you are watching this show, but it is time to leave, so you need to turn it off, ok? B, why don't you turn it off for me?"


I didn't realize that I would be so protective about the way that people treated my kids. Really, I shouldn't even say "people", because I haven't had this issue with people----just one person.

I am pretty positive that "do unto others...." includes the way you treat kids, doesn't it?

Camping with Cocoa

We camped again this weekend.
Same campground, same campsite, but we came alot more prepared.

We had an enormous amount of tarps.

We had a tarp for Diana and Beth's tent. We had a tarp for our tent and Bonnie's tent. We had a tarp for the wood, the picnic table, and for a spot close enough to the fire to feel like we were still camping (but not close enough for it to set our shelter aflame).

And again, it rained. Almost all night. With my head buried deep in my sleeping bag, I was imagining drops collected on top of me, and I pictured our kids sleeping in currents of flowing water....but when I sat up to check (every 20 minutes or so), everyone and everything was very, very dry. Yup, our tent closely resembled a turtle (with its bright, green tarp pulled tightly around its cheap frame), but we were (relatively) warm and not at all sopping wet. It was great.




I love that camping leaves the kids with lots of safe space to play. I didn't have to keep yelling, "No, no, you need to stay by mama. No, you cannot take Max (the dog's) bone from him. No, you cannot walk into the road. No, you cannot "swim" in the creek."

I love the less-cleanup, less-supervision, less-having-to-pay-bills-and-balance-check-books escape of camping.

I'll tell you what I DIDN'T love about this particular camping trip. I didn't love the "delicacy" we consumed called hot chocolate:
The kids were way too busy to be bothered with drinking anything, so I decided I would be a "good" mom and let them have hot chocolate. At least the kids would be tricked into drinking the milk that I mixed in with it, and the cocoa would keep us nice and warm.
We contentedly drank our cocoa by the fire, sharing it between the four of us. There was just a little bit left in the bottom of the cup when S noticed a small, whitish thing lounging on the lid of the thermos. I smiled at her reassuringly and said, "Oh, S. It's ok. It is just a....(I hesitated a second while I studied the small, white, possible marshmallow to make sure I labeled it correctly....)

"It is just a....(gag, gag, swallow, gag)....a maggot!"

There was a maggot....a MAGGOT!.....on our cocoa lid. There were even more floating and crowded together in my cup when I opened it up to check. Yup....what I thought were marshmallows melting more slowly than usual were actually clusters of maggots doing syncrenized swimming in the cocoa I had just fed to myself and all three of our kids. I do not love that so much. At all. What I assumed was Swiss Miss with Marshmallows turned out to be Swiss Miss with Maggots. I still have a lump in my throat.

Yeah, I love camping, but I probably won't brave the hot cocoa again any time soon.