Curie February 2015. Who would have guessed that sitting in the dark listening to Curie laugh in her sleep would be something so heartwarming? This month we have made progress on self-control; we have also remembered that though we are tracking Elia’s milestones, Curie continues to develop at a remarkable pace surprising us with new things she learns almost every day.
Recently somebody told us “if you can understand the currency your child believes in, and it changes all the time, then you are golden.” This is actually true for management as well from baby boomers to the millennial. What this all is tantamount is teaching your children self-control through bribery. Really though we have been seeing that you need a constant mix in approach and frankly, we won’t be able to say whether any of it has worked until we are 80 (okay, Albert 80, Erin 68) to see if we did okay. Some parents use stars on a chart that the kids can cash in for prizes, others use the inverse and use time outs and the stick.
Curie is crying less, learning to be less whiny and controlling her feelings more – her currency was screen time, but recently instead of giving her blind bags when we felt like it, Curie now gets a blind bag if she has progressed and controlled herself the whole day – which means she might start to whine, but finds her self control along the way and stops. It has, at least for the couple of weeks, worked wonders. If she can go a whole week, she can get an Octonaut toy; lest you think we are just buying a lot of toys, she has not earned the Octonaut toy yet.
A new wrinkle in the “I’m not tired,” negotiations of not going to bed has been that she now will leave the bed and come downstairs to spend time with Albert watching what went from “your” to “our favorite car show (Top Gear).” When she is sufficiently tired, she will be back up and want “Mommy all to myself.”
The most effective changer, recently though, has been having Curie watch “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” which is based on Mr. Rogers for those of us a little older. Each episode has a lesson, but more importantly a little song that goes with the lesson like “if you have to go potty, stop and go right away, wash and flush and you are on your way!” This for instance has boosted Curie from almost potty trained to essentially potty trained (though for convenience we put her in pull-ups on weekends or when she goes to sleep). There are songs on jealousy, sharing, feeling frustrated – “if you start to get angry and you want to roar, take a deep breath and count to four,” The secret is the parents learn the songs too and give you common language to solve problems. Curie will sing them to us when she sees our behavior and can use them to identify when she is jealous, or angry, or needing to share, or needing to go potty.
With all the toys and games we have inherited, been gifted, or bought, we learned, during a warm weekend, that there is nothing like running in a field to Curie. She wanted us to race, to get picked up, twirled, did “123 jump,” helped Elia walk and as we mentioned earlier did “123 jump” with her. When she falls she tends to jump up and say “I’m okay!” The same goes with in the house with a clean space in the living room, or the mattress in her room, to twirl, dance, “do a show,” or just exercise with her yoga, her exercise, with dog and tree pose.
Curie is sensitive and caring, wanting to be “in the middle” between Albert and Erin when she can, likes to hold “my little sister,” discovered that she can pick Elia up, played “fetch” with Elia (yeah, “catch” would have been better) with a ball. And Curie, one day, worried about Albert’s ear, met him at the stairs after he had returned from the minute clinic to give him a big hug because he said he had said needed it – “I need to give Daddy a big hug.”
We were late to the Frozen game, so “Let it go,” and “Do you want to build a snowman,” are just showing up, our biggest surprise was when she could sing the entire first verse of “The duck walks up,” having not heard it from us for almost half a year, by herself. And there are other little things -after more than a year after trying to get her to wear sunglasses, on the last day of Cancun, she decided it was time to wear them – for the day. She likes fixing things and replacing batteries; Albert bought her a shovel so she could help shoveling snow. All in all it is the simple things, and we tend to forget that.
Finally one thought, with kids, parents tend to be partners and forget to be married. The children have precedence in time, mind, and effort – and yet when you remember to fall in love regularly, you become less resentful, snipe and nag less, and remember to be considerate and thoughtful of each other’s feelings. You become Partners again with the capital “P” and remember that laughter is what brought you together and it is what will allow us to grow old together.