The Small Family     

Well, it’s been a busy week around here, starting off with some fun last Sunday, after I had already posted the blog last week. Chris finally had time to build my long-awaited veggie garden! Our soil here in Roseville is awful, so my veggie garden required a dedicated box with lovely soil purchased from Lowe’s--otherwise, it would’ve been hopeless. So my master gardener (a.k.a. Chris) spent much of Sunday out in the yard, building a lovely 4’ by 6’ planter box and filling it with soil! Then we went back to Lowe’s and picked out some plants. I think I actually over-planted, but we’ll see--I’ll weed out items as need be. I already removed the snap peas, which were not doing well at all. At the moment, we have tomatoes (2), cucumbers (2), strawberries (2), broccoli (4), Brussels sprouts (4), and beans (2).

Theo is, naturally, entranced by the garden, but I’ve been able to keep him out of it by encouraging him to help with the other, established plants in our yard. He loves watering them! I’d let him water the veggies, but the plants are so young that I’m afraid his overzealous watering would drown the poor things!

Oddly enough, the toughest battle so far is keeping Luna from sauntering through the garden. Here I thought Zoe would be the little destroyer, but Luna is the one who keeps wandering through and stepping on things!

The next excitement in our week was Theo’s birthday! We celebrated last weekend, as mentioned in my post last week, but of course we didn’t let the actual day (Tuesday) go by without some fanfare. In the morning, Grandma Diane and I took Theo to the mall to get his three-year pictures done. And I must say, they are pretty darn cute! Last year, pictures were a bit of a nightmare--Theo was having NONE OF IT. But this year, he was pretty cooperative, and we got some cute shots. I admit to bribing him with the promise of McDonald’s French fries for lunch--I’m not above a little bribery where needed!

After Chris got home that evening, we went to the gym (Theo’s favorite activity most days) and then stopped at the much-loved frozen-yogurt store for a birthday treat. Then Theo opened a couple of gifts from Chris and me--all in all, a successful birthday!

I’m also pleased to announce that we got Theo enrolled in preschool for the summer! He’ll start July 5th, two mornings a week. Apparently their summer program is themed, and this summer’s is “Oceans of Fun.” Although we are a hundred miles from the nearest ocean, apparently the ocean will be present at Rocklin Montessori for the months of July and August! The kiddos will be exploring all sorts of fun water physics (pouring, melting, freezing, floating, sinking…), tidepool inhabitants and ocean creatures, and ocean-based art activities. They also get to do music and movement segments with songs, instruments, yoga, and outdoor games, as well as cooking healthful foods that they then get to bring home to share with Mom and Dad. Heck, this sounds like so much fun that I want to go!!

As long as I’m on the subject of preschool, my aunt sent me a neat article about Montessori. If you’re interested, click here. It basically discusses how Montessori can be a great pedagogy for encouraging creative, out-of-the-box thinking, which is one thing we love about it. I had no idea so many entrepreneurs were Montessori alum, but hey, if Theo wants to be the next Jeff Bezos someday, I can’t say I’d complain! ;-)

So, speaking of our beloved three-year-old, I’ve been musing about something: I have realized that my son does not respond at all to negative consequences. At all. Now, this interests me because I grew up in a house where discipline was based on negative consequences. Don’t get me wrong: My parents weren’t taskmasters who punished us all the time! Far from it, in fact--I actually don’t remember getting in trouble very often at all. But they were pretty strict in terms of having set rules and expectations, and we knew that we had to follow those, or there would be punishment of some sort (usually grounding or loss of privileges, but on very rare occasions a spanking). And so, I assumed that a similar strategy would work with our son. Our expectations are not as strict as what I grew up with (and again, my parents weren’t crazy-strict--but they did tend to be a bit on the stricter side, whereas I’m more relaxed about most things), but we do have certain behavior expectations for Theo. And when he doesn’t comply (which is often, given that he’s quite strong-willed and likes to exert that will), we enforce consequences. In our case, that’s a timeout in his room. Because timeout is supposed to work so well! I’ll tell you what: In our house, it doesn’t. It works in terms of giving him a safe place to chill out and a chance for Chris or me (or both) to step away, take a deep breath, and calm ourselves so we don’t toss Theo out the window (I’m kidding, of course). But in terms of correcting negative behavior? Completely, utterly, 100% useless. He just doesn’t care. He has never cared, and he still doesn’t care. He’s perfectly happy to take his punishment if it means he got to misbehave in the way he wanted to.

Can you say frustrating?! Good heavens, it is. I recently read a comment on a friend’s blog. This friend was having some issues with her two-year-old daughter telling her she didn’t like her. (The friend recently had a new baby, and the two-year-old is acting out because she feels a bit displaced, I think.) The person commenting on the blog said that she had gone through the same thing with her child, and she told her child, “It’s not okay to talk to me like that. We don’t use words to hurt others. You come get me when you want to talk about it.” She said it might take a week or two of doing this, but my friend’s daughter should come around and stop saying that.

I burst out laughing, read this to Chris, and said, “What kind of kid is that?! A week or two?? Give me a break!!” We tried something similar to get Theo to stop swearing, as you may recall, and after many months of this (coupling it with timeouts), we finally realized that it was never, ever going to work, and we had to resort to a different strategy. And now again, we’re going through it with regard to the dogs: Theo keeps growling at the dogs when he’s frustrated with them (especially Zoe--the poor thing is rather confused by it!), and we’ve been trying unsuccessfully for months to get him to stop, using a similar approach to what this woman said. It does not work. (For the record, I’ll be interested to see whether it works with my friend’s daughter, who sounds like a pretty strong-willed little girl!)

So, we have moved on to the sticker chart. For every two hours that Theo is nice to the dogs (that is, no growling at them, no pulling their fur, and no kicking at them), he gets a sticker. When he gets a certain number of stickers, he earns a trip to the frozen-yogurt store. That is how we finally broke him of the swearing habit, and it’s what we hope will work this time, too. Because clearly, negative consequences mean absolutely zilch to my son. And let me tell you that we are so consistent with the consequences, given that we’re both well aware that consistency is absolutely the biggest key to child-rearing in terms of behavior. But even all our consistency doesn’t work when we’re talking about consequences for negative behavior, and frankly, many months of it is exhausting. So, back to stickers…which is fine. If that’s what works, I’m fine with it. I’m just rather baffled that negative consequences mean nothing to the kid, since they certainly meant something to me when I was growing up, and I know my sister was the same way when she was growing up.

I will say that when I shared this revelation with my Mom, she replied, “Yeah, well, it worked fine with you and your sister--it never worked with your brother. Some kids just don’t respond to consequences.” Indeed…well said, Mom!

So that’s my musing on parenting. Three years into this gig, and I’ve finally come to peace with the fact that my son couldn’t care less about negative consequences. Let’s hope that when he’s older and potentially getting into more serious trouble than just growling at the dogs, negative consequences will have a bit more effect. Because I don’t think a sticker chart is going to keep him from, say, experimenting with alcohol. Or trying pot. Or doing whatever else it is that teenage boys are wont to do….

Speaking of our little guy, I have to say that his powers of reasoning and persuasion are a never-ending source of amusement for me. One example from this week concerns a cake I was making. I love pound cake, and I recently found a recipe for chocolate truffle pound cake that I wanted to try. You have to make the truffles first, let them set for a couple of hours, and then bake the pound cake with the truffles in it. So one afternoon when Theo woke up from his nap, I asked him if he wanted to help me bake a pound cake. He said enthusiastically, “Feo want EAT cake!” I explained that we could start making the cake that day, but that it wouldn’t be ready for him to eat until the next day. He thought for a minute and said, “Feo want go bed.” I said, “What? You just got up from your nap!” Immediately, I thought, “Please don’t let this be another round of the stomach flu! Why would he want to go to bed when he’s just gotten up from his nap??” His reply cleared things up for me: “Feo want go bed then eat cake!” Ahhh, I get it now--if you go to bed right now, then you can eat cake sooner! Clever boy…

The clever boy also managed to scam my Mom out of soda, of all things. We don’t allow him to have soda, and he knows this--every time he asks for a sip of ours, we say, “Soda’s for grown-ups, not for little boys.” He knows full well he can’t have soda. But when Grandma Diane came to babysit him on Friday night, he managed to convince her that he was allowed to have sips of her soda. She was rather surprised, knowing that we try to feed him very healthful food and drinks, but apparently Mr. Con Artist managed to convince her that he was allowed to have soda. Um…no. Though I kind of admire his clever manipulation there….

Grandma Diane babysat so Chris and I could go out to dinner to celebrate his raise! We tried a tiny new restaurant near us that has been getting great reviews: The Chef’s Table. Oh, it lived up to the hype! It only has about five tables, so getting a reservation can be tricky, but I booked far enough ahead that we got one. Neat place--very casual atmosphere, but outstanding food. We shared two appetizers (pesto parmesan fries and fried calamari with hearts of palm and some other veggies) and an entrée (fried chicken--they’re somewhat famous for it). And for dessert, we split a bacon brownie sundae, which I have to say was fantastic! (The bacon was very, very subtle, and the brownie was hot, gooey wonderfulness!) Afterward, we went bowling, where Chris trounced me two games in a row. A lovely way to spend a Friday evening!

Saturday we went to the Farmer’s Market in Davis and got a bunch of fresh produce, including kale! I’m having a love affair with kale ever since I discovered it a few weeks ago. And we’re going to attempt baby bok choy, too--another one I’ve been meaning to try. After the Market, we went to a favorite Italian deli for lunch, and then stopped by a great educational-toy store in Davis run by a rather fun, eccentric guy who always talks our ear off when we go in and loves to let Theo play with anything and everything in the store--it's pure heaven for Theo. We found a spelling puzzle game that I think Theo is going to love--they’re wooden puzzle cards that you fit letters into to spell the word that matches the picture on the card. Theo’s such a spelling freak lately that I think he’ll get a kick out of it.

Sunday we went down to San Francisco for a real treat--a dim sum lunch with Jason and Maria and their kids, Caitlin and Caleb. They were up to visit a few months ago, and I mentioned I’d never tried dim sum, so they invited us to meet them in San Francisco for a dim sum lunch. Yum!! I think our favorite was the shrimp dumplings, but we tried many yummy things. Afterward, we all went to the SF Zoo, where Theo and Caitlin enjoyed playing in the dirt and sand (what could be more fun?!), going on the playground, and, finally, seeing the animals. (I think the kids would’ve been happy to play in the dirt and sand forever, but we did finally get them to go see some animals, too.)

Speaking of the zoo playground, my kid is a nut. He wanted to swing on the big-boy swings, which were over sand. He quickly realized how much fun it is to drag one’s feet in the sand while swinging. Eventually, his feet caught on the sand and pulled him off the swing, so he face-planted right into the sand. Was he upset? No, not at all. After spitting out a mouthful of sand, he laughed and climbed back up for more swinging--and more face-planting. After about the fifth time, I realized the little monkey was doing it on purpose--he thought it was hilarious! Weirdo….:-)

And so wraps up an eventful week for us! My work schedule has suddenly gotten INSANE for the next six weeks, so we’ll see what fun things we can squeeze in around that for the next few weeks. If nothing else, we have a weekend getaway to Santa Cruz coming up, and in mid-May Chris and I have a romantic overnight to…well, it’s undecided yet…for his 35th birthday. Dang, he’s getting old! ;-)