Big, please stop hauling Small about.
But he’s my baby.
I not your baby, I your brudder.
Watching Pinocchio, this gem from Big:
I don’t have a conscience, I have a mummy.
And a link that I enjoyed, courtesy of Doc, Raising humanist children. To be honest, I’d settle for raising tolerant children of pretty much any belief persuasion, but there’s a part of that article that really made sense, thus:
An ethical person lives his or her ideals. Period. There is no middle ground. No exceptions. No half way. This is one of the most important lessons that humanist children should be taught.
I think that might be close to one of the most important lessons any child should learn. Note that I changed the emphasis there, I’m increasingly coming to the opinion that it’s difficult to teach anything. You can show stuff, you can explain stuff, demonstrate, pontificate, but can you really teach anyone anything they don’t want to learn?
Yesterday, Big got her Disney Princess Bead Weaving Loom
I’m really impressed with how she sticks with stuff she’s interested in – the loom is not easy to use and she kept at it for a good hour or more. I really don’t feel that I need to worry about her any more – she’s got most of the skills she needs to be able to take it from here with out continued support, which she (hopefully) knows that she has. Not to say that I’m not going to keep suggesting stuff, of course I am, and we’ll dip in and out of the Muddlepuddle Reading Year as well. But overall, I’m pretty happy with my little girl, and that’s a good feeling to have.
Small is another story. He’s just burst fully into two year old mischief, and he’s so very different to how Big was. I really don’t recall her ever accidentally drawing on the furniture, or chopping up things she wasn’t supposed to chop up. And today he dismantled one of my favourite of his toys, which hugely unimpressed me. But displeasure seems to roll off him, with notable exceptions, as demonstrated (loudly) in the kitchen at Melrose last week. (For those not present, Merry brought him to me, having removed a leaf or two from a rather abused plant at the top of the stairs. He was looking very shamefaced as she explained, and all I had to do was to say his name for him to just dissolve into complete hysterics. Odd child). Still, we keep plugging away.
And to finish, tonights google home education alert is actually about home education, so I thought I’d share. It’s from Indianapolis, and is a good round up of all the alternative educational paths being taken out there it would appear.
with out your continued support Jax?? or was it with our?
lovely post, and Big is getting on well with that loom
oh, and you might like this picture
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scrumble/102318468/
time for you to flickr!!!
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the teaching/wanting to learn stuff Jax. Children and adults alike are individuals who will take on board what it pertinent to them. The only thing I ‘teach’ small person is boundaries (of acceptable/unacceptable social behaviour); I am merely an information service provider, she teaches herself.
Small reminds me of my brother (and every little boy I’ve ever known!) when he was a kid: he used to test my parents’ patience by trying things out just to see if the end result was as he had been told. His two boys are exactly the same funnily enough
Just love that Pinnochio comment
Know what you mean about Small. I can just imagine his expression when you found him with the taken apart toy..like: “Moi?” Ash is just…oh!…I love him and I should know the ropes by now but…for me it’s just about keeping in contact with him at the right moment and leaving him be at the right moment and then messing it up completely and offending him so he stomps off in a sulk. With Ash it’s a bit like treading on eggshells right now. The two year old thing and the breakages..well they just mount up and up. We still have a box full of stuff that needs to be repaired after Willow went through his two years stuff. I guess some kids breakage piles are just taller than others. *sigh*. But it does kind of remind me of kittens with balls of string. It’s just this urge to unroll and play with until tangled and then move on to something else leaving the tangle behind. Good luck, and count to ten if all else fails…x
I keep thinking this about B and the girls, but then I have to remind myself that when they were this age we didn’t have the stuff that B now has access to. So I have to wonder whether, if the girls were B and B the girls would they have done what he does, IYSWIM?!
My entire educational theory right there,jax.
You CANNOT teach what they are not ripe for,and only they have the wisdom to know what ,where ,when is right for them.
My lot stagger me daily!
I lurve our bead loom! Small’s speech sounds like it’s coming on fantastically!
Awww, kids say such cute things. Small seems to be doing well.
Carol
x
I’d prefer to say that an ethical person tries to live up to their ideals. It’s big bad real world out there.
I can’t really get that hung up on the religion thing, but then the situtation re religion and schools (in fact re religion in general) is somewhat different in the US.
“I don’t have a conscience, I have a mummy.”
ROFL. That’s so right, and yet so wrong.
I’m with Tech. D was a really *good* toddler with no real naughtiness to speak of. S was a nightmare with all of the text book possible things your toddler could do being done. But in thinking about it D couldn’t draw on walls when he was 2 because all the pens were kept out of his reach and only gotten out when we were doing drawing together. When S was 2 she had a 4yo brother littering the place with his pens and so she took full advantage.
Big had pens and scissors at this age, and she drew on and cut up paper. Small accidentally covered his pjs, one of the sofas, bits of the floor…they are just different children. Don’t think it’s to do with having access to different things, I think they just have very different personalities.