Kids are wired all wrong.
Even compensating for and taking into consideration the fact that four-year-old children need a strong self preservation mechanism or their little bodies would never make it to adulthood they seem to be wired all wrong.
At least mine.
Exhibit A. By son, now rapidly approaching five years old, will still sometimes refuse to go down slides. Not the shiny metal, super heated, thigh burning variety, or even some super-deluxe, twisty turny, five-story high monstrosity; just a simple, single turn, plastic one at the local Burger King. Ok, you say, maybe he is afraid of heights or the fall. Which I'd totally buy as an explanation, except he has no problem standing on his dinner chair, then happily jumping onto his sister's chair.
Exhibit B. My other son nearly melted down during a recent climb up a playground at the Crayola Experience. He climbed his way up one of those climbing towers every playground seems to have. About three quarters of the way up toward the net walkway some other kids jostled him. For those of you unfamiliar with these structures - you'd have a hard time falling down a single level, let alone managing any type real fall. Every 3 feet or so there is another "level" opposite the one you are standing on. So at most you could fall about 2 feet.
Which could well be terrifying for a four-year-old child. Again, I'd totally buy this explanation, except that this son falls off his kitchen chair probably every other meal. "Ah ha," you say, "see, he already has experience falling, and no one like that." Well yes, except one would expect him to have learned something; to have some takeaway from all this falling. But it certainly hasn't stilled him at meals, the fidgeting at which is the result of all those mealtime falls. Meanwhile, the completely safe climb at the Crayola Factory; that freaked him out.
And yet, my son has somehow mastered the Kindle Fire he plays with inside out. I mean, he can order games, find how what parts of games are locked, explains to me what unlocking certain aspects will gain him, finds things on YouTube. You name it. Rand gave my wife explicit instructions the other day about how to find what he was looking for.
"Mom, you hit the block, then the green thing, then the orange thing."
It didn't make much sense at the time. But damned if that wasn't the exact way to go about doing what he wanted. Liam told he knew how to download apps deleted off of a Kindle Fire the other day. And guess what, he did. Rand taught him, apparently.
So how come he can figure that out, and convey it, but I can't get them to say "please" and "thank you."?
And before you head to the comments to post about how bad a parenting job I'm doing and how my "Super Cool Blue" parenting model is failing to instill proper values, you should know that its not for lack of trying. We emphasis the need for these words pretty much every time they miss them.
But still, the request for milk comes out as "milk," or even "milk, please," but lacks the form of a question.
Even compensating for and taking into consideration the fact that four-year-old children need a strong self preservation mechanism or their little bodies would never make it to adulthood they seem to be wired all wrong.
At least mine.
Exhibit A. By son, now rapidly approaching five years old, will still sometimes refuse to go down slides. Not the shiny metal, super heated, thigh burning variety, or even some super-deluxe, twisty turny, five-story high monstrosity; just a simple, single turn, plastic one at the local Burger King. Ok, you say, maybe he is afraid of heights or the fall. Which I'd totally buy as an explanation, except he has no problem standing on his dinner chair, then happily jumping onto his sister's chair.
Exhibit B. My other son nearly melted down during a recent climb up a playground at the Crayola Experience. He climbed his way up one of those climbing towers every playground seems to have. About three quarters of the way up toward the net walkway some other kids jostled him. For those of you unfamiliar with these structures - you'd have a hard time falling down a single level, let alone managing any type real fall. Every 3 feet or so there is another "level" opposite the one you are standing on. So at most you could fall about 2 feet.
Which could well be terrifying for a four-year-old child. Again, I'd totally buy this explanation, except that this son falls off his kitchen chair probably every other meal. "Ah ha," you say, "see, he already has experience falling, and no one like that." Well yes, except one would expect him to have learned something; to have some takeaway from all this falling. But it certainly hasn't stilled him at meals, the fidgeting at which is the result of all those mealtime falls. Meanwhile, the completely safe climb at the Crayola Factory; that freaked him out.
And yet, my son has somehow mastered the Kindle Fire he plays with inside out. I mean, he can order games, find how what parts of games are locked, explains to me what unlocking certain aspects will gain him, finds things on YouTube. You name it. Rand gave my wife explicit instructions the other day about how to find what he was looking for.
"Mom, you hit the block, then the green thing, then the orange thing."
It didn't make much sense at the time. But damned if that wasn't the exact way to go about doing what he wanted. Liam told he knew how to download apps deleted off of a Kindle Fire the other day. And guess what, he did. Rand taught him, apparently.
So how come he can figure that out, and convey it, but I can't get them to say "please" and "thank you."?
And before you head to the comments to post about how bad a parenting job I'm doing and how my "Super Cool Blue" parenting model is failing to instill proper values, you should know that its not for lack of trying. We emphasis the need for these words pretty much every time they miss them.
But still, the request for milk comes out as "milk," or even "milk, please," but lacks the form of a question.
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