I wasn’t very well yesterday.
I wasn’t really ill either, but ill enough to feel very sorry for myself and to need sleep.
Unfortunately, needing sleep when you have a 10 month old who still breastfeeds means you are needing something difficult to get. I did manage a long nap in the afternoon, but it was partly by taking soa with me, and then by Big taking her off to the living room while I slept some more. Napping in an hour slots basically.
Big was very helpful. She is often very helpful. But only if she notices stuff, which just as often, she doesn’t.
So she’ll ask if there’s anything she can do for me when I’m sat stuck in a chair under a falling baby, after she’s left the kitchen in a state after her last meal. And I say no thank you, not knowing that she’s made work for me at the very least in calling her back to clear it and have the standard argument at that point in time.
Sigh. I’m not quite sure what to do about all this. When they were Montessori-ed they were supposed to clear their own places and wash up their own stuff, but somehow that never carried over into home life. Which seems rather a failing of the system. Part of the problem is that Small still struggles to reach the sink, but I don’t know what Big’s excuse is.
Anyway, that wasn’t what I was going to write about. 😉
During tea, we were talking about how I felt. And we got on to the topic of sympathy. It’s understanding how someone feels, we explained, and letting them know that you share their feeling.
Both children looked at us blankly.
🙁 It’s true, they are hardly ever ill, so they can’t understand by remembering. But neither of them ever really tries to imagine what other ppl might be feeling, and as for sharing in it, well, just no. I remember Small did it once, at nursery, when he was about 3 – but the fact that that incident stands out in my mind is indicative of something to say the least!
Big is a very caring person, but in a fairly ineffectual way. She doesn’t really ‘get’ ppl, and that is becoming more and more obvious as she gets older. She wants to have friends, but doesn’t know how to go about it. And it’s not really something I can help her with, as I shared the problem at her age. It’s taken me years to find a group of friends who I share interests with and it was mainly home education and blogging about it that built those friendships. Quite a lot of us have been together through thick and thin now, and I really value those relationships – but I can’t tell Big to wait until she’s 30 to find friends!
She does get along well with many of her home educated peers. Possibly because she’s known them for years, effectively growing up with them. But unfortunately we don’t live that near to any of her closest friends now, and she hasn’t managed to click that well with anyone through either swimming or Brownies.
(And before anyone suggests it, I’ve no reason to think that her going to school would improve her chances. I went to school. I made some friends, but certainly not a lot! And while I’ve reconnected with a few ppl through facebook, that reconnection word should say a little about the relationships 😉 )
So, it looks like we’re going to be working explicitly on things like sympathy, empathy, sharing and caring. Anyone got any resources they’d like to suggest? Following our conversation though, both children left the table and snuck off to make me get well cards so that went down well, and as I do feel better today, presumably worked too 🙂
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