Oh…This and That.

I’m finding myself feeling more and more like I have absolutely nothing to say some days.  C’mon creative Leah brain, do your job!

Silas has taken to his new bed rather nicely.  He was getting up yesterday and bringing toys into his bed when he should have been napping but he eventually settled down to sleep.  I think I’m going to buy this for his bed because a rolled up pillow isn’t so handy.

Silas has a funny way of learning English.  I haven’t been pushing him with saying things properly but lately I’ve started to work with him on it a bit more.  When I ask him if he wants some thing like “do you want some orange juice”, he usually replies back with “do you want some orange juice?” which means “yes”.  He’s OK with saying “no”.  So we’ve been working on getting him to say “yes please” which has been working for the most part.  Yaaay.  Now to get him to understand that “ok” doesn’t mean no.  He says “ok” when he really doesn’t want something because I always say “ok” after he says “no”.  Oh my.

My sister Jill is a very passionate ECE teacher at a Boys and Girl’s club.  She’s always giving me little tidbits of help when it comes to the kind of language you need to be speaking to your child.  So right now I’m working on getting in the habit of telling him he can do something as opposed to saying he can’t.  What I mean by that is if he’s jumping on the couch you can say “you can jump on the floor” instead of saying “don’t jump on the couch”.  I think that saying things in a more positive way is definitely a good way to support good self esteem.  How wonderful would it have been to grow up hearing “you can” a lot more often?  Obviously it can’t be used in every situation like when he’s beating up his little brother but like this morning when he said “salt and pepper on my oat meal?” I simply said “you can have salt and pepper on your supper” and that was the end of it.  I  like this new way of thinking.

I don’t think my goal is to raise kids that have perfect manners and don’t mess up.  There’s many way to get a child to behave but I don’t think the goal is just behaving, I think it’s a strong confidence, a good sense of empathy and an ability to function well in the world we live in.  I think speaking positively to a child instead of using shame, violence/pain or negativity will help them in the long run.  Just my opinion though.  Hard to do it a different way than our human nature wants us to though.

Jill sure is handy.  What a wonderful resource to have, especially since I have a hard time reading all of the “how-to” books.  And the Scarlet Letter…Jennie thought it would be an easy read for me…ha ha ha.  The first paragraph made me go cross eyed.  Nice one.  K I’m rambling..