Parenting

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

Groucho Marx

I don't remember this problem when we had our second child, but our oldest seems to be jealous. On some levels, this is an incredibly complex situation, on other levels it all turns back to simplicity.

So here's the problem. The Mugwump has a growing tendency of sitting on Six-Pense. It's really pretty agressive and generally results in a crying 2 year old. So why does he do this? Because innevitably he gets in trouble. That's what he wants is attention, and he gets it when he sits on a younger brother, or pokes a brother in the eye.

What's the solution? We started sending the Mugwump to his room without toys. If he can't play nicely with his brothers, a natural consequence would be for him to not be able to play with his brothers. That was an OK idea, but it increased the jealousy and there is no way to send a kid to his room without giving him attention and then giving him additional attention when he gets out of his room. And what if he misbehaves in his room, or refuses to stay in there? He gets further attention. It didn't work out well.

It was time for parents to regroup. What is the main underlying problem? Oldest son didn't feel as loved as the others. So the solution ends up being quite simple. Show him that we love him just as much as the others. Instead of dealing out consequences, we've taken to preemtive displays of love.

How crazy is it that showing love worked so well at improving the behavior of a child? I don't know, but I would bet that this same principle could work in many different situations.

Children's Museum

We went up to the Children's Museum in Salt Lake last week. It was interesting. I love going and watching kids play and interact. I also like watching the parents and how they interact with their children. I learn a lot and try to find things that I can do better and things that I never want to do.

We'll start with the things that I never want to do. OK, what this really comes down to is a disdain for portable electronic devices. Lets start with cell phones. Dads were particularly guilty on this one. If you are going to take your kid to the Children's Museum, spend time with your kid. Take the obnoxious blue glowing growth out of your head and interact with your kid. Leave the cell phone in the car, is there really that much that is as important as spending time with your children? Of course if you're a doctor on call, it would be appropriate to have your cell phone, but the conversations I overheard were not medical emergencies. I fear that some fathers think that spending money to get their kids into the Children's Museum is their exhibition of love. I'll give you a hint, it's not the money, it's the time and interaction. While the Children's Museum offers some unique opportunities for interaction and exploration, entrance is only the monetary fee for a positive relationship.

I'm done bashing cell phones... Well almost. My next annoyance was digital cameras, which are often built into a cell phone for your convenience. I have nothing against recording images with a digital camera, but let the kids play! I don't know how many parents I saw rushing their kids around to each exhibit so that they could get a picture of their child posing (pretending to play, but looking at the camera), just to be pulled to the next exhibit to "play". Of course I recognize in this modern age that if there was no picture taken of an event, it never really happened (excuse the sarcasm). Why did you pay to go to the Children's Museum, to let your kid play, learn and have fun, or to get a different back drop for pictures? Just because I didn't like the people posing their children and moving them, doesn't mean that I'm against pictures, see, I even took a couple myself.

So here's the top of Six-Pence's head while he's playing with dominoes at the Children's Museum.

This is the Mugwump building a castle out of giant Legos. Notice the great view I got of the top of his head. No balding yet. Oh, and the giant Legos were really cool, just PLEASE don't get us any, could you imagine trying to store those things?

So what are you supposed to do at the Children's Museum? Here's my opinion... not that I'm opinionated. While I may have led you astray with my comments on cell phones, I don't think that you have to constantly play with your kids at the Children's Museum, especially if you play with them at home. You just have to be available to play. I like to let the kids run free and just follow them and watch how they interact. Often they will come interact with me and then I get a chance to play, but if they want to play with other children, that is fine as well. This works great for the next month, and then we'll have three kids. So how does that work if there are two parents and three kids? Anyway, I think that parents being available to their children is hugely important.

As I was getting the pictures from the Children's Museum, I found some others from a topic that I forgot to write about. Christmas. It was great, thanks to everyone who got us stuff, we appreciate it. This was a wonderful year because we didn't get any electric junk or commercialized toy stuff. I don't mind toys, but when the toys are all based on TV shows or movies, suddenly the toys are no longer imaginative, they are a marketing ploy. Anyway, we didn't get any and we're thankful for that. Here are a few pics.

That is Six-Pence dressed up as a frog. The boys love imagination and dressing up as things. Grammie did a WONDERFUL job making costumes for the boys, they are beautifully made and the boys love them. The only problem is that big brother steals the eye balls of from the frog and then makes the frog close his eyes and run around blind. Grammie is really smart, she sent four spare eyeballs in case some get lost.

The Mugwump can now dress up like a cowboy. While he loves the shirt, vest and chaps, we find him wearing the boots all over the place.

Look at this, both boys are looking toward the camera and one of them is even smiling. These pictures are rare. You can also see the truck that carries toy cars. The boys love that as well. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.

Parenting

I'm going to start with a story and then I have a couple of questions about parenting.

Today at Church was that day that the children did the presentations. They had musical numbers and little talks prepared, it was really cute. The Mugwump was the star of the show, he sang louder than the rest of the kids combined (or at that point do you call it screaming?). Anyway, he was into the music, he would sing and if he ran into a note that he liked where he knew the words (OK, it rarely lasted more than one word), he would stick with it for a while and make sure everyone knew that word. Sure, the rest of the choir moved on, but really that didn't matter because the only person you could hear was my son belting out the words he knew at the top of his lungs. Well, that's not completely true, because he belted out the notes if he didn't know the words. You know what I'm talking about, you do the same thing while you are singing along to the radio and you don't know the words, you start da da da-ing along. So did the Mugwump. At the top of his lungs. It was really cute.



The best part was that when the Mugwump got all excited with the singing, Six-pence would hear him and make sure that everyone knew that was his brother. Then we had our kids, the Mugwump belting out a song in the primary chorus and Six-pence chanting his name from the front row of the congregation. You would have thought it was a rock concert had we not been in the church. I was proud of both of them. I like that they aren't reserved and that they are happy to sing out in the front of a large group.

So I've got a couple of parenting questions. I'll start easy and get progressively more difficult. The last one should really be a blog of its own, but I'll put it out there and see if I get any comments first.

First question... How do you get a four year old to wipe for himself? He's potty trained (during the day anyway) and he rarely has accidents, but after he poops, he sits on the toilet yelling, "I need to be wiped!" We've talked to him about this and suggested that it would be far easier if he were to just do it on his own, but he says he's not going to until he's 5. I know I can just put up with another 6 months of wiping for him (and that's probably how things will end up anyway), but I was wondering if there were any other suggestions out there.

Second question... How do you teach a four year old to spit? He's doing well with brushing his teeth, but when it comes time to spit, he sort of does a congested elephant thing that takes a whole lot of effort, and very little comes out of his mouth (except noise, there's plenty of noise). This is actually a step of progress, he used to just swallow it and refuse to spit, but then we threatened to make him brush with baking soda if he didn't spit. He didn't spit and he got the baking soda. Talk about good spitting, that kid was able to get every bit of the baking soda out of his mouth with good productive spits, but when we use toothpaste, he's back to the elephant thing. Any suggestions?

Third Question... So I came home the other day and the Mugwump ran out to meet me with a spaghetti server and a chop stick and showed me his "bow and arrow". "Such a creative little boy", I thought. Little did I realize that this kid could actually shoot the chopstick with the spaghetti server. So I'm watching him use this thing and he puts the chopstick through the hole in the spaghetti server and then pulls on the chopstick a little creating some pretty good bend in the spaghetti server. When he lets go, the chopstick shoots through the air, right at whatever he was aiming at. So if that didn't make sense, I just ran downstairs and took a picture of the setup in case people didn't believe me, you can see that below. So here's the question... We aren't big fans of weapons in our home, and normally I would discourage the use of a bow and arrow, but this setup is so ingenious, I have a hard time discouraging his little creative mind. So what do you do, encourage the creation of highly accurate weapons, or discourage a creative developing mind?

OK, final question... This is the one that I could do an entire blog about. I probably should put it off and give it its own air time, but I have time tonight so I'm going to do it now to add to the world's longest post that only two people will actually read the entirety of (Thanks Mom). So my wife is doing a home-school thing with the Mugwump. He loves learning and it's going well.

Last week the lesson was safety, so my wife got some DVDs from the library about child safety. We previewed them and were sort of split on the talking to strangers issue. On the one hand, you want your child to be safe and there are some bad people out there, so prohibiting your children from talking to strangers is a good way to help assure that your child doesn't get abducted. On the other hand, in watching the DVDs, it seems like they aim to make the children scared of adults they don't know or who aren't on their "safe list". Not all adults are bad. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the vast majority of adults would not harm a child, even if they were alone with the child and nobody would ever know what happened between them. There are only a relative few wackos in the world that would actually harm a vulnerable child. In teaching children to fear or distrust all adults, are we creating a society of distrust? Would our communities be safer if we knew everyone on our street and had relationships with them so that we recognize when there's someone around that doesn't belong? Wouldn't teaching my kid to trust better accomplish the goal of building community than teaching him to distrust all adults?

Sure there's a middle ground, but I still think the point is valid. I like it when my kids approach the people walking by our house and start a conversation with them. I think it's friendly. I also think that it's safe while my wife or I are sitting there watching them. I think it is a way of building community, which is desperately needed in the world. Of course my children are taught not to get into a car with a stranger or to take candy from someone they don't know, but I think that we need to learn to trust and to be friends. I think the key is to teach kids to think and make good decisions for themselves (and then supervise them until they are old enough to make those decisions).

I may come back to that point sometime, but for now I'm going to conclude my longest ever blog entry.

Experiences in Parenthood

My wife's little brother is still in town (that is how my brother-in-law is 15) and they came up for lunch today. We were sitting outside enjoying the weather and talking. Naturally the conversation turned to urine and the quantity produced at each occurance.

I was telling my brother-in-law about a study I was in recently. I was instructed to come to the study well hydrated, so I did. Upon arrival I voided my bladder and was then given a bunch of water to drink. I then had to sit for 75 minutes before I voided my bladder again, this time the sample would be collected. After 75 minutes I REALLY had to go. I grabbed the beaker and hurried to the bathroom. I filled the 500 ml beaker and had to cut it off, take the beaker back and ask for another before finishing the process. The conversation continued and we eventually moved on to other, less interesting, topics.

I eventually had to leave my family in order to go to class. I said goodbye and was about to leave when the Mugwump had something to say. He asked, "Daddy, are you going to go cut your penis off again?" I didn't have the foggiest idea what he was talking about, since as far as I knew, I had never cut my penis off before, nor do I have any intentions to cut it off in the future. I thought about it for awhile and eventually my wife had to explain it to me. I then had to explain to a 3 year old that I had never cut my penis off, and that it is an expression used to say that you stopped urinating when you still had to go. I sure hope I didn't mess up my kid for life.