Friday, October 15, 2010

Patience

Little Guy is 3 years 0 months old
Little Lady is 2 months 2 weeks old
My lesson this week has been one of patience.  Being a parent sure takes a lot of it!
The Little Guy wants so much to be independent and gets so very frustrated when he can't do something by himself.  Today the challenge was clothing.  We had a fit in the genkan this morning over putting on socks, a time out at nap time for not taking off his shorts to use the toilet and in the evening there was finally success when he was able to change to the shirt he wanted, all by himself.
Last week matching things was his "I want to do it myself" topic of choice.  With the U-Play mat we set out V-Z, 1-5 and 5 categories of subject cards to be sorted and matched.  After a short time Little Guy decided he'd rather be the teacher and I should be the student who does the matching.  He's a very hands-on teacher though, taking the cards from me to show me how to match things correctly.  Guess I wasn't fast enough for him!


The other tester of my patience is still too cute to intentionally test my patience... but I still caught myself wanting to do things for/with her when she should be given the chance to try on her own.
The intentional use of her hands is her current skill of choice to practice.  Last week it was trying to roll to her side.  There are times when I want to just put something in her hands for her because I can see she is struggling to grab... but usually I will stop myself and let her do the reaching.  At supper last night she touched the bowl, chopsticks, napkin, my shirt and even made a go for her brother's hair.  Earlier in the day she had grabbed a lego that we set on her tummy and the rattle that we held in front of her.
It is fun to see the day-to-day progress but it is equally hard to see the frustration when the hands don't move as intended!

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