What I learnt at the zoo

Yesterday, my son went to the zoo with all of his stage one (year 1 and year 2) comrades. As my son is a little difficult in public places, I went with him as his aide and support person. I was dreading it, but actually I learnt quite a lot! I didn’t learn anything about animals (well actually that depends on your opinion of children I suppose!). I learnt a lot about children, my own son in particular, teachers in general and even myself!

The first thing I noticed is how little teachers actually listen to the children around them. Perhaps I am lucky that I have a particular talent, (found in many writers I believe, as we have a natural curiosity about people, which helps us develop characters) to notice many things at once going on around me even when I’m concentrating on something in particular. One of my first observations was how children are constantly trying to get the adults to notice them in some way. We arrived at the zoo and had to wait and eat recess on a grassed area out the front of the zoo. The grass was covered in lots of rabbit poo, and of course this was a cause for much exclaiming and fuss from the children. Near me there was a little boy sitting by himself eating some cut fruit from his lunch box. He was minding his own business and getting on with eating. Another little boy approached him and deposited some rabbit poo into his fruit. Naturally the first boy, henceforth known as Bob for the purposes of this story, was upset with this and called out a complaint against his classmate, who shall be known as Jim.

The nearest teacher ignored him completely (fair enough, he wasn’t in her class…??!!). His own teacher called across, “Bob! Stop that complaining! Get on with eating quietly and stop fussing!”

Ummm… pardon?! She didn’t even ask him what he was complaining about! I think he was quite justifiable in the ‘fuss’ he was making to be honest! Meanwhile, ‘Jim’ thought this was quite funny, and proceeded to sit in front of Bob pulling faces and chuckling. I called across to the teacher that actually Bob had good reason for making a fuss, since Jim had just deposited poo in his fruit. I was ignored…or perhaps not heard, I am not sure. Thankfully, Jim left the scene once he was made aware that an adult was onto him, and Bob settled down in the knowledge that an adult had seen what really happened and was on his side in the matter.

Next there was the process of walking around the zoo. This was done very fast and with little time to stop and actually look at anything. No one gathered the children around to engage them with the exhibits or explain what anything was and give them actual information. It was more an exercise in keeping them together and walking as a group. We were taken to see an insect and reptile talk which was great. My son sat the whole time and listened, and didn’t even get up and leave when his eager hand in the air was ignored and the children who were given the chance to answer the questions being asked kept getting the answers wrong. I had really expected him to get up and leave in disgust and frustration, but to his credit, he didn’t

At the end of the reptile showing they were given some snake skin and lizard scales to pass around and feel. The boy next to my son said, “ewww gross!” and passed it on as quick as he could, which for some reason set my son off.

Son: “Hey! It’s not gross! It’s just skin and scales! Don’t be such an idiot! Why would you say something so stupid?”

OK, his presentation could use a little work, but I can see what he was getting at! He was also pretty mad when he wasn’t chosen to touch the frog. That was it for him and he left the group and walked away, proceeded to scratch my hands with his nails when I tried to bring him back.

As we walked around, I began doing something I do naturally. I was again hearing and noticing the things the children were saying and doing, and I started commenting and interacting with them. I can’t help it. It’s what I do. I learnt that it is quite amazing the reaction of children when they feel someone is paying them attention. I wasn’t paying them a lot of attention, just a little bit here and there. For example, if one of them read a sign out loud, I said, “it does say that! Good reading!”. Or if they exclaimed over one of the animals I simply said, “Yes! Wow!”. That was enough for them, they started to listen to me and ignore the teacher a bit. I was now the ‘go-to’ person when shoelaces needed tying, or lunch things needed opening, or to show a picture to that they had taken. Yes rather a lot of these 6 years olds had digital cameras! They were really good with them though!

I also got the opportunity to see that my son is not naughty, or rude, or stupid (not that I ever thought he was stupid of course!). I got to see this because although his behaviour is quite ‘out there’ and obvious, many of the other kids do the same things, but quietly. Sneakily, and not in front of adults. I am very good at blending so they often didn’t realise I was listening and watching. I could really see the difference between my son who just has problems holding his temper and realising that he’s being obnoxious or controlling his impulses, and those kids who were just belligerent and ignorant! Phew! It’s good to be reminded of this sometimes! I’m sure their parents would be horrified if they knew… or maybe not, I don’t really care. I only care that my son is imaginative and clever and so fun to talk to compared to many of those other kids! There were of course some lovely ones as well!

There was a moment when three boys were giggling and carrying on about a chimpanzee who was showing them his butt. One of them said, “look, monkey ass hole hee hee hee” I was glad my son hasn’t picked up any of the language they were demonstrating The boys were also noticing that the mote surrounding the Chimp enclosure was full of green stuff. One of the boys said, “eww look! It’s poo! Green poo all in the water!” My son shoved his way to the railing and announced to them,

“It’s moss! Not poo!”

The boys weren’t really interested in having this pointed out to them as it was clearly more fun if it was green fuzzy poo, but my son just couldn’t let it go. They told that they didn’t care what he said, and hadn’t asked him anyway. He then started getting mad.

“Why are you being so stupid?! IT’S NOT POO! IT IS MOSS!” That made them call it poo more of course

I decided to just steer my son gently away and explain that sometimes kids don’t like it when someone keeps pointing out how wrong they are about something. Hee hee.

So, that was my day at the zoo, and I learnt a lot, and I was tired at the end of it, but I actually feel better today about many things.

Funny, Sarcastic, Stubborn-ass!

School seems to have stopped giving me the communication book now. I wonder whether they feel sorry for me having to always read stuff that hasn’t gone right in my son’s day? Either way, I still discovered last night that as Monday approaches, I start to tense up and dread taking my son to school for the coming week. He doesn’t seem to hate it as much as he used to, but it’s still stressful. Enough about school for now, and onto more general topics surrounding our weekend.

Friday night was take away night for us. We hadn’t had any take away for two weeks, so we were all quite looking forward to it. The last time we had take away, McDonald’s had this family meal thing which had four of various food items in a large red box. My son really liked this idea, I’m not sure whether it was the actual hugeness of the box, or the actual contents, but something really excited him about this family meal box. With great eagerness, we drove into the drive-thru and my son was already canvassing to have that family box thing. We decided that if it contained food we wanted as well, then we would get it. Alas, it was no longer available on the menu…

Dad: “Sorry sweetie, they don’t have that family meal box anymore.”

Son: “What?! How can they do that?! Build up a family’s hopes and then dash them all when you get to the drive through?! Then that family can’t have anything at all to eat!”

Chuckle.. he’s so very dramatic. Highly entertaining though. Then later that evening.

Mum: “Can you feed the dog please?”

Son: “Yes. I can feed the dog.”

I waited, he kept playing with his plane.

Mum: “Are you going to feed the dog?”

Son: “No. You asked if I can. Yes I can. I know how to do it, but I don’t want to.”

Mum: Trying not to laugh.. or be sarcastic in return…”Go and feed the dog please!”

He did. He is getting a little to good at taking things exactly as they are put to him, and using language to his advantage. At least he lets me know in no uncertain terms that I need to give him specific and direct orders rather than vague and polite requests. Doesn’t make parenting him any easier though!

Thank goodness my husband is doing so well with the patience and emotion coaching at the moment as I seem to have lost my magic right now. Everything I ask him to do is met with either a sarcastic or angry reply. His favourite phrase at the moment is a direct response to us telling him that his first answer is not allowed to be “no” as we are trying to break that habit of his. This is what we get instead.

“Why would I want to?” This can be in reply to just about anything.

“Go and get in the bath now”….”Why would I want to?”

“Eat your dinner please”…”Why would I want to?”

“Get up off the grass and come home with me now”…”Why would I want to?”

It gets tiring after a while let me tell you!

I have also started to notice that he has very little patience, or tolerance for chubby, slow talking, whining Asian children. This can be quite embarrassing. At a birthday party on Sunday at McDonald’s, there was just such a child in the helicopter play thingy. I could hear the child telling the other children that it was his helicopter and no they couldn’t come in and share it with him. He had already pushed two of the girls in my son’s party, and this child was probably three times the size (height and weight) of my son and his party friends. A short time after, I heard a wailing noise coming from inside the helicopter. Now these play things are very difficult for adults to get up into, so usually adults just ignore what might be going on up in there.

Children began exiting via the slide as the wailing continued, and as I questioned them, they just shrugged and kept moving. I knew I would have to go up there. Proceeding to squish myself up through the wiggly little climbing holes and tunnels, I made it to the helicopter part. There were two girls sitting in the tunnel watching the action. What was the action? The Asian boy was sitting there with his head back wailing and screaming. Tears streamed down his face and snot and dribble exited his face in rivers. My son stood at the front of the helicopter and the little bit I heard was…

“Why are you crying?! Oh MY GOD! You are such a wuss! Hey chubby face, just get out of the helicopter if you are going to make that noise!” eeek… I asked the girls whether they knew what had happened. They shrugged and said that they thought my son had done something to the boy. I was starting to feel a bit like I needed to smack the kid myself, so I ordered my son out of there and we climbed down and out.

In the free air, within great earshot of all the parents in the joint, I asked my son what had happened.

Son: “He wasn’t sharing the helicopter and he was so fat that no one else could get in! He punched me in the stomach, so I had to punch him in the nose!”

Me: Secretly thinking that it must have been satisfying to do that, but knowing that it wasn’t OK to go around doing that sort of thing…”Sweetheart, even if he wasn’t sharing, or was being annoying or hurt you, you needed to come to the adults and let us know what was going on. It’s never OK to hit someone. You know that.”

Son: Heaving a huge exasperated sigh, “Yes I know! But he was such a whinger! I had to show him what it was like to get hurt!”

I decided further discussion wasn’t really going to help, so I held him on my lap for a two minutes time out and then said he couldn’t go back into the helicopter until the boy had left. I later saw the boy push his little brother into a garbage bin and then hit his mother as she tried to convince him to leave. All the while screaming at the top of his lungs and losing more tears than he had drunk in coke earlier! Now see, as I write this I am feeling guilty for my clear judgement on that child! It’s so strange how I have a child who could just as easily have been the one putting on a ruckus, but something told me that kid was just really really lacking discipline or any kind of rules. Why do I not go to what should be my default, that perhaps he has some kind of problem? I don’t know, and that’s too hard a question for Monday!

Anyway, we made it home without further incident thank goodness. I have only my own embarrassment to deal with, and the fact that I need to really ignore what other people might be thinking about me or my son in those situations. In actual fact, a Dad sitting near where I was talking to my son later said to me that my son was right, and the kid deserved a good smack! Each to their own?! Yep.

What makes you punch your child in the face?

That title got your attention didn’t it! Of course I didn’t actually mean to punch him in the face. The situation was very stressful, and I was seriously angry with him, but a mistimed, grab with my hand in an attempt to catch him, and a sideways fling  with his head while trying to escape, has resulted in a swollen eye. No doubt he will re-tell the story in such a way that it will be clear that I punched him in the eye!

So, what actually happened? Sigh…this afternoon kind of sucked…for him, for me, and probably for both of us. He has a swollen eye and I have a stiff and sore neck, so clearly things didn’t go well today!

After a day spent dusting some up high, and very dusty places in my house, I went to pick my son up from school. I had arranged a play date with his little girl friend, but he didn’t know about it yet, so I was eager to tell him the good news. I arrived at the school to see him coming down the stairs with the school counsellor. It is not unusual to find him being escorted out of class early by a teacher or Aide, but it is unusual for it to be the counsellor.

I picked up a bit of their conversation as they descended and it was a long standing, very problematic issue resurfacing. I am not going to go into specifics in my blog, but this is something that the school and our family has been working on, and it’s just not getting through to him for whatever reason. The counsellor spotted me and we went off to have a chat about what had happened and tell him yet again that it wasn’t OK. With that disappointment in my head and heart, we went to find the little friend and let her know that we were going to meet her Mummy in the car park.

Off we went. We followed the other child’s Mum to a park she had decided would be good. I had my son and the little girl with me, and she had her younger son. The two in the back seat of my car, decided that they absolutely hated the park we arrived at. Bloody children. Fortunately, I was able to convince them that the point of a play date was who you were playing with and not which park you were at! A lovely two and half hours passed by, with all the children playing nicely. Inevitably, the time came when I announced that we would have to leave in 5 minutes.

As expected, my son was very upset about this, and I began my well practiced emotion coaching.

Son “I’m not going home! I would rather die than go home! You can’t make me go, I’ll throw this at you!” (up a tree, peeling bark off in preparation for throwing at me)

Me “I know that you are upset about leaving because you were having a good time. It’s always really hard to leave when something is fun. We need to get dinner started, and it’s getting dark and late, so we are going now.”

Son “This is my heart right now.” grabs a piece of bark and tears it in half “broken”.

Me “Yes. I can see that you are heart broken about leaving. It’s hard… I know. We need to go though.”

Son – Gets down from the tree, and races over to a rickety fence surrounding a storm water drain. “I am going to jump in there so I die!”

Me – Getting a little anxious now, as we have a small audience, and the other Mum does not speak fluent English, so she’s not really aware of the difficulties he has. “Come on. You don’t need to talk like that. That’s really dangerous and you need to come away from that.” I then proceed to physically remove him from the danger.

He pretended to follow up towards the cars (this is a really really big park with sports grounds etc, and we were parked quite a way up the other end). He then ran off in the opposite direction at full speed towards the bushes and the river beyond. He can swim, so I wasn’t too worried about him falling in or anything, but it was getting dark, and a lot of people were about, walking, running, getting ready for soccer training and so on.

I called after him, using the ‘one, two, three’ count. It’s been quite a while since he actually let me get further than 1, but this time I got all the way to 3, and his new Lego plane was confiscated. He was meanwhile, getting further and further away, and people were starting to look around for his clearly inattentive mother. Here’s where I failed.

Caving in to the pressure of people making comments around me, and the Mum I was with getting stressed and not following my advice that we needed to keep walking towards the cars and he would then follow, I gave chase. He ran further. I was faster. I caught up with him and tried to grab his jumper, he ducked his head as my hand grabbed, and that’s how he ended up being punched in the eye!

I was so incredibly angry with him. I told him so. Lots. All the way home. I then sent him to his room and asked my husband to get his ‘patient’ hat on and please come home as I was too angry to deal with it right now. Thank goodness he did, and he even managed to calm us both down, and then he emotion coached the boy to sleep after dinner!

What a day. I am still quite tense, and feeling like a bit of a failure in general, with a very sore neck and shoulders, from stress I suppose. My lovely husband has procured me a finger bun and a cup of tea, and that is where I will now head…over to the lounge to relax.

Tomorrow is another day…

Why is it happy anniversary?

My husband and I are celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary today. Awwww.

As we all prepared to leave the house this morning for our various occupations, I wished my husband a happy anniversary and gave him a kiss. He said,

“Oh yes! It’s Tuesday isn’t it!” He had of course been keeping in his mind that our anniversary was on Tuesday. Our son looked confused for a moment and then said,

Son “But why is it ‘happy anniversary’ today?”

Me “Because on this day 13 years ago, Daddy and I got married.”

Son “But we have Tuesday every week! Why is it happy anniversary today?!”

Ahh a child’s mind! We must be careful with our use of ‘day’ vs ‘date’. A brief explanation of the difference set him straight and off we went to school while husband left for work.

Son on this 13th wedding anniversary, my husband shall we working, and I shall (or rather have been, but I am currently stopped for a bite to eat) cleaning the bathroom and doing the dusting and vacuuming…how romantic

Tonight we will all sit down together with my Mother-in-law and have a (hopefully) nice pea and ham soup cooked in her slow cooker. On our 15th anniversary we will do something special. That is the rule… every 5 years something special, every 10 years something super dooper special

Happy anniversary husband, I love you!

xxx

Cough, Coff, Coffee

After a very serious talk on Thursday about bullying and making it very clear that he had two choices when it came to that little boy in his class, either stay away from him completely or be very nice to him, Friday’s report from the teacher was that he was very nice indeed to him. He had made a special effort to go up and be extra nice to him, and ask him to play and so on. Now whether that will continue on into next week I don’t know, but I’ll take whatever good comes my way!

With Friday, that meant that he had earned his goal of  five days where his communication book read “Pretty good day” or “Mostly good day” consecutively. Yay! He got the Lego airplane from his Nanny in America that he has been waiting on for a while. It’s pretty hard for him to get five consecutive days without a great deal of behavioural mishaps in between! Fingers crossed for gradual improvements in the coming weeks.

I am not too hopeful though as his teacher, to whom he has become quite attached, has had a family illness and is taking four weeks leave to look after the family member in question. This means there will be two different temp teachers. One will do 3 days a week and the other 2 days. He’s already announced that he won’t be able to cope with that! We’ll see.

On a more amusing note, and the topic of this post… as I made my morning coffee yesterday, curious child climbed up onto the kitchen bench next to me and sniffed the heady aroma of roasted arabica beans freshly removed from the espresso machine. It made him cough, and then he said,

“Oh! So that’s why they call it coffee!”

Just too funny! But don’t laugh too loud or he’ll get mad and tell you not to laugh at him!

Bully

Today is a tough one, and I took a while to decide whether I was going to blog about this or not so strong are my current feelings on it. I have decided though, that ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ and so I will.

My son is a bully. He is not a general bully, but something has been making him bully one particular boy in his class. The boy is three times the size of my son, and has Autism. He has some strange behaviours, and has learning difficulties. Apart from that, he’s the son of one of my son’s Aides, and everything I’ve ever seen of him tells me he is a quiet, gentle boy.

I knew that my son had said mean things to him before and made him cry, and I had a good long talk to him about not doing that, but I didn’t realise that he was still doing it and also physically bullying whenever he is near this other boy. The other little boy annoys him, simply by being. He doesn’t necessarily say or do anything specifically directed at my son, but he does have some odd little behaviours like lying on the floor and saying ‘silly’ sentences.

This morning, my son sat down in the line right in front of this boy, and I went up to him and said to him,

“if you are going to sit here, you need to remember that it is never OK to be mean to someone. You are to leave (name) alone, and if he is annoying you, you must just look straight ahead and concentrate on the teacher.” My son agreed (but he often does), and I went to stand with the other parents.

I noticed that my son had turned around to face this boy, and they were talking. About what I don’t know, but it was something to do with hats. Eventually, and again I’m not sure why as I didn’t see what happened, they erupted into a fight pushing each other with their heads. My son was pulled away and the other little boy was crying and was quite upset. The boy’s mother comforted and redirected him, and I came over to ask if she knew what had happened.

She tried very hard to maintain her professional demeanour, but naturally, she needed to be a parent on this occasion and she informed me that my son has been bullying hers quite a lot. I was devastated. There is nothing I hate more in this world than people who bully others. I don’t mind if my son stands up for himself, and have often turned a blind eye if I have seen someone push him in the park and he pushed them back. I cannot however, stand that my son has targeted this little boy because he is vulnerable.

The irony of course, is that he teases this boy for the very same behaviours that he himself displays!

“He’s silly Mum! He never does his work in class and he lies on the floor and says silly things. He acts just like a baby!”

Ummm…. My son never does his work in class, hides under bookshelves and argues with everyone all the time!

I left school this morning in tears. Tears out of sympathy for the other Mum, tears out of frustration for my own son, and tears of sadness for myself as it’s just another thing I need to find a sensible way of dealing with!

I came home and my emotions told me to ‘wring his little neck and be mean to him to see how he likes it!’. Fortunately, my brain knows that is the absolute worst thing to do in the situation. I suspect that he in fact sees a lot of himself in this little boy, and he doesn’t like what he sees and therefore decides to pick on him for it. Whatever the reason, it’s not OK.

I think most kids have a go at bullying at one point or another just as part of the learning process. I need to find a way to teach a literal minded, logical, but lacking empathy (to a certain extent, but not completely), boy how to understand that it’s not OK to hurt people’s feelings or their bodies as you go about your own day. He is so caught up with his own anxieties at school, and everything being about how bad he feels, I just don’t really know where to start on this one.

I have decided to quietly talk to him about how he felt when I said I couldn’t stand to look at his tooth. Or how he feels when we all laugh at something he’s said, when he didn’t mean it to be a joke, and then he gets very upset with us because he feels stupid. I am hoping that by tapping into these feelings, he might start to realise that other people feel too. I don’t know if it will work as we’ve been doing that with him for quite some time now.

I find it difficult enough to be “Bigger, Wiser, Stronger and Kind” all the time, so teaching him how to do that is going to be tough. In the mean time, I just hope we can keep him away from that little boy somehow. I am sure that my son doesn’t derive any actual pleasure out of teasing the boy. Well I don’t think he does anyway. He presents me with logical arguments like, “well, he doesn’t learn! He’s not very smart! He is fat!” grrrr… deep breath and I reply.

“Stop! I understand that is what you see, but it is not OK to tell him. No matter how true something is, if it is making someone sad to hear you say that, then you need to stop immediately, apologise, and just don’t say anything unless you can say something nice!”

To quote the movie version of Jane Austen’s  Sense and Sensibility

“If you cannot think of anything appropriate to say, you will please restrict your remarks to the weather!”

I did step 1!

I have (with help from my clever husband and the good people at google) finished and launched my website! Find out more at www.discover-parenting.com.au
Now I just need the people to come. Oh and to actually write out my course content and test it on a guinea pig or two.