It's amazing that kids test your limits and your patience in so many different ways but they never thought of challenging the counting trick. Parents do it all the time. "Get off the table before I count to 3 or...1, 2..." and off jumps the child. I have never had to count beyond 2. Yet. In fact I sometimes fear that one not-so-fine day minime will decide to call my bluff and I won't remember what comes after 2. Worse, I might not know what to do. Lock her in the bathroom? She might just run the bath and splash around and have fun. Maybe, lock her in her room? Nah! Too many toys to play with. Time out? Bad idea...she loves time outs. In fact she has always wanted me to put her in time out. And there's nothing else I can think off.
But, it's worked for 4 1/2 years. I am hoping it will work for another few. In fact I think it works because of our innate fear of the unknown. I have never ever told her what will happen after 3. She has never bothered to ask. Good for me! And so, I leave it to her imagination. Like the the movie 'Pan's Labyrinth' where they show absolutely no violence but the movie feels way more gory than Kill Bill. All they do is show a mean guy with a knife and another guy's fingers. And they leave the rest to your imagination. Now, knife + fingers = infinite possibilities. And somehow our brains work in such a way that we always imagine the worst possibility. Same thing. A counting parent + a poor little child = infinite possibilities and the child's brain, I assume, sees only the worst. Three cheers for the brain! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Friday, June 18, 2010
I'm Back...again!!
So, here I am. After another long break. This time around, I will be here for a reasonably long time. Or, so I think.
It's end of school year and my life is back to square one. But, it was mighty fun while it lasted. Like I said earlier, kids are always fun. Be it the little boy from Kindergarten who wouldn't tell on the pretty little girl from 3rd grade (who beats him up during every recess) because he wants her to like him, or the girl who just can't stop talking at circle time no matter how hard she tries, or the boy who can't separate fact from fiction (like he went to the zoo over the weekend and saw a tiger that ate some meat that the zoo keeper gave him but the meat was a deer and it came alive in his stomach and tore the tiger's tummy with it's horns and there was blood everywhere and so on and so forth), or the boy who wants to go to the restroom every 10 minitues just so he wouldn't have to do spellings, or the girl who thinks every alphabet makes the sound p, h, and k, or the girl who is so fond of singing in the bathroom and having monologues in front of the mirror that somebody needs to remind her every few seconds that there are 22 other people who can hear her loud and clear just on the other side of that door!
And now, school year is over and I might never see these kids again. It's a strange feeling but that's life. For a few weeks I might feel like there's a big gaping empty hole in my day but slowly I will figure out ways to fill it up. Whatever I fill it up with might or might not be as much fun, but fill it I will...
It's end of school year and my life is back to square one. But, it was mighty fun while it lasted. Like I said earlier, kids are always fun. Be it the little boy from Kindergarten who wouldn't tell on the pretty little girl from 3rd grade (who beats him up during every recess) because he wants her to like him, or the girl who just can't stop talking at circle time no matter how hard she tries, or the boy who can't separate fact from fiction (like he went to the zoo over the weekend and saw a tiger that ate some meat that the zoo keeper gave him but the meat was a deer and it came alive in his stomach and tore the tiger's tummy with it's horns and there was blood everywhere and so on and so forth), or the boy who wants to go to the restroom every 10 minitues just so he wouldn't have to do spellings, or the girl who thinks every alphabet makes the sound p, h, and k, or the girl who is so fond of singing in the bathroom and having monologues in front of the mirror that somebody needs to remind her every few seconds that there are 22 other people who can hear her loud and clear just on the other side of that door!
And now, school year is over and I might never see these kids again. It's a strange feeling but that's life. For a few weeks I might feel like there's a big gaping empty hole in my day but slowly I will figure out ways to fill it up. Whatever I fill it up with might or might not be as much fun, but fill it I will...
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