My mother is a big fan of Haim Ginott’s Between Parent and Child, and I am, too. I like that it really encourages you to understand and sympathize with your child’s disappointments, to see the world through their view. Day’s recent post was a really good example of why that can work. Frankly, I can see how that could be really tough if you have three teeny kids, but one of the nice things about only having one (particularly if he’s an articulate one) is having the time and patience to engage in this way.
My mom said the only problem is that my sister found and read the book at nine or ten and thereafter she saw through my mother’s techniques and they were no longer effective. Gatito has my sister beat by a long shot. He totally uses our methods against us.
When Gatito’s new bed arrived in early July, we left his crib in his room so that he could choose to move to the bed. He switched to the bed immediately, and since his room is small, we were anxious to get the crib out of there. He told us several times that we could do it on the following Friday. Finally, when A pressed again, he said, “I know it’s fun for you to take my crib down, but it’s not time yet. You can do it on Friday.” All righty then. Friday it was. And that was just the first of many incidents where he’s acknowledged what we want and then told us why it’s not time or not possible. I don’t know if all kids do this, but I think it’s amazing.
Meanwhile, as you know, I’ve been worried about how to tell Gatito that he’s going to preschool alone. I’ve been basically trying to tell him without using the words “leaving,” “alone,” etc. So I tell him I’ll take him there on the first day and he’ll play with his friends and then I’ll pick him up. This weekend, I was telling him that there are a couple of play dates planned at the school playground (for before school starts) and that he’ll go with Tata. “No,” he told me confidently. “I’m going to go there by myself.” Okay then!
