It’s Not All Mary Poppins

I’m not here today because I’m over here, writing about daycare drop-offs…

During an interview recently, a parent asked about my “curriculum”. When I launched into a description of play and activities, she sort of waved me off. She wasn’t interested in hearing about just play. She wanted to know what they were learning. She was, it became clear, interested in knowing about the books I read (which I do, of course!), how I teach them about letters, numbers, shapes, colours.

Hmmm. Unless I can make some headway into her educational priorities, I doubt we’d be a good match, this mother and I. Worksheets and drills? At one and two years old?

“Just play,” she says.

“You can be Wally, and I’ll be Fred.”
“Okay!”
“And this,” Nigel hands Malli a block, “is your hammer.”
“Okay. I will hammer here!”

“Play is a child’s work”. Whether you attribute this quote to Adler, Montessori, Weininger, or someone else, it remains true. Everything a small child needs to learn, he learns through play. Even when we become adults, for that matter, the most effortless learning happens when we’re playing with the ideas, making a game of it. For a smallchild, it’s never “just” playing.

“Hey, Wally. Wally? Bring that piece of wall over here, okay?”
“This piece?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m brinn-inn it.”
“Now you don’t have a bathroom any more. Now there is no wall, and there is no bathroom, so you’ll have to go live somewhere else, far, far away from your house.”

When they’re playing, they practice problem-solving, they rehearse social situations, they deal with emotions.

“I’m not living in my house?”
“No, you have to live in a new house, and Wally and Fred will fix your old house. You live in a new house, with a new bedroom and no garden and no playing soccer in the back yard.”

They confront anxieties.

“Why can’t I play soccer?”
“Because the new house has nice grass and too much chairs and tables and a big umbrella, and the soccer ball might break the grass and make the chairs dirty.”
“I have a hammer!”
“Yeah. Let’s build the wall. We can build the wall, and make the bathroom again.”
“I’m building a toilet!”
“A toilet to poo in!”
“Uh-huh. You build the bathtub.”

Sounds of industrious hammering, as they construct a toilet and tub out of blocks and blankets. In play, they sort out confusing aspects of their lives.

“Build, build, build!”
“Are we done, Nigel?”
“I’m not Nigel, I’m Fred.”
“Are we done, Fred?”
“Almost. The bathroom is almost done, and the new bedroom is almost done, and the big family room is almost done. The house is much bigger.”
“We are buildinn a new, big house.”
“Not a new house, just a bigger old house. It will be my old house, just with another bathroom and another bedroom and more playing room.”

They deal with stress. They practice reality.
Sounds of hammering. Block pounds into block. Towers clatter.

“Are we done, Fred?”
“We are done! It is a beautiful new old house! Now I can come back!”
“Yay!”
“Yeah! I will have a beautiful new old house, and I will go back soon.”

“Just” play? I don’t think so.

“It’s okay, Timmy.” Little Emily is patting Timmy’s shoulder, peering into his face, speaking with gentle reassurance. “You don’t need to cry. I was not hurting you, I was hurting Anna.”
…

Anna bellows out in ’song’.
“OLD MACDONALD HAD A FARM!
E- I - E - I - YORE!

…

“Don’t touch those rocks! Those are dog-pee rocks!”
(He’s right: they are.)

….

We spy one of our favourite neighbourhood attractions, the large metal toad in a neighbour’s garden. We stop and visit with friend toad for a while, then must move on.

“Bye, toad!”
“Bye, toad!”
“Bye, toad!”
“Have a good weekend!”

….

“Why does Emily not got a penis?”
“You know why. Because she’s a girl. She has a vulva instead.”
“When she grows up, she will have a hairy penis.”
“No, she won’t. When she grows up, she will have hair there, but no penis.”
“Yes, she will. My mummy has a penis.”
(I can hardly wait to tell mummy this one…)
“No, lovie, she doesn’t. Daddy has a penis, mummy has a vulva and a vagina.”
“Mummy does, too, have a penis! It’s just hiding in the hair.”
(Oh, I think I’ll just let mummy take it from here…)

Birds!
The neighbours voices, drifting in the open window.
The refrigerator humming in the next room.
The clickety-click of the laptop keys.

And

That’s

It.

No, I don’t have the day off — that’s tomorrow. (Happy Canada Day!!)

Today, Emma and a friend have taken the three tots to the beach. They will be there all morning. They will eat their picnic lunch, lovingly packed by me, and they will not be home until naptime.

The hours of the morning stretch out before me, and I know JUST what I will do with them:

- hang the laundry
- sit on the porch and write
- mop all the downstairs floors
- sit on the porch and write
- vacuum the stairs
- sit on the porch and write

etc.

And when they return? When they return, it will be naptime, so after greeting them and tucking them all in bed, I will go to the bank. And maybe hit a coffee shop before I get home.

I lied. I am getting a day off.
And it’s only costing me $10/hour.
Worth EVERY penny.

Nigel’s voice lilts down the stairs from the bathroom. A sweet voice, a happy, cheerful, sing-song voice:

“Maaary! There’s shit all over the tooooi-let!”

“Look at the friends!“

There’s a woman in my neighbourhood who I see quite often as we stroll with our children. We never seem to be heading in the same direction, not for more than a block or so. I’m going to the park as she heads away from it, I’m heading down my street as she crosses the intersection to proceed down the street perpendicular to mine. And every time she sees us approach, it’s the same thing,

“Oh, guys! Look at all the friends!“

Or, on occasion,

“Careful! You don’t want to bump into the friends!”
“Squeeze over, honey, and let the friends go by.”
“Don’t poke your stick at the friends, sweetie.”

“Friends”? Lady, we don’t even know you.

I understand why she does this, of course. She wants to engender a positive attitude to other children; she wants her children to see other children as potential playmates, not as threats. She wants her kids to lean into life with a smile of welcome, not a frown of suspicion.

(Not that she seems to be succeeding in her efforts. Her children almost always shove mine and/or menace them with sticks or aggressive roars. Rotten little cretins. Probably sick to death of having total strangers fobbed off on them as “friends”.)

I really, really don’t like it — the friend thing, I mean. It’s a bad idea on so many levels. First off, it’s insufferably patronizing. Why should agemates be automatic friends? When she’s out for a coffee with a girlfriend, does she enter the coffee shop, see a couple of tables of thirty-something women, and call out to the room at large, “Oh, Suzie! Look at all the friends in here!”

They’d be carting her off in a padded wagon in short order. Or at least muzzling her saccharine outbursts with stony faces and averted eyes. (”Don’t look up. The crazy “friend” woman just walked in”)

And she is so saccharine. Her voice just oozes ooey-gooey preciousness. Ick. I’ve managed, so far, not to sneer, but I can tell you the very last thing she’s engendering in me is any desire whatsoever to encourage friendships between her children and my tots. Because then I’d have to hang out with her. Ugh. That lilting, squeaky-happy voice. Those earnest, earnest mommy sentiments. The way she patronizes the kids, while at the same time letting them treat her with huge disrespect. Could I stand it? I could not. I’d be fighting the urge to beat her senseless with a sippy cup within moments.

On a more substantive level, do you really want your child thinking that everyone is a potential friend? No, you don’t want to encourage hostility, but a little social caution is only sensible. Firstly, with other kids: The children who do best socially are those who follow a consistent set of steps: they stand back and watch the other children play, then enter the game and do as they’re directed, and only after they’ve been accepted into the game do they attempt to direct the game themselves at all.

Children who skip steps one and/or two tend to be ostracized. If you are successful in teaching a child that everyone is automatically their friend, no breaking-in required, you will almost certainly create a child who is shunned by the others. A little counter-productive, no?

And with adults? It’s a sad fact of life, but not every adult out there is a child’s friend. Not every adult is benign. You absolutely do NOT want your child assuming every adult is a friend. That’s just plain dangerous.

You want your children to be open to friendship? Teach them how friendships are formed. Model open, friendly behaviour. But don’t set them up with false definitions and dangerous assumptions. Good heavens.

Take one driveway. At one end, draw a square for each tot, all in a row. Do the same at the other end. Between the rows of squares, draw circles in assorted colours.

Ta-dah! A polka-dot driveway! Enough to amuse the neighbours for days and days. Or until the next rain.

Introduce the tots to the polka-dot drive. Explain the idea. You start in a square! And you jump to a circle! Jump! Jump! Jump! Because we loooove to jump. Mary knows this, because they do it — or try to — All.The.Time in the house.

So! A JUMPING GAME!!! WOO-HOO!!!

And this is what they do:

…sigh…

My internet connection is misbehaving badly today, connecting and disconnecting a minute or two later. There’s no way I can get a long list of links put in today, not if I want to stay sane. Or as sane as possible…

I’ll try later this evening, and if I can’t get on then, I’ll try tomorrow. Could it be the thunderstorms?

Hmmm… This bingeing this is not all I’d hoped it would be this year. I’ve gotten through another two or three books, and … I have yet to read one that I enjoyed, unconditionally, from start to finish. This week’s selection were two “meh’s”, and an “I think this woman is unhinged.” (The main character, or possibly the author. I’m not sure.)

I hope yours is going better!

The tots say the darndest things all day, every day. I’m always delighted by it, but I’m also pretty much used to it. But some days, and I think it must be me, I keep hearing things. Things they have no idea they’re saying, but there I am, hearing them anyway. I blame hormones.

—-

Tot 1: I am coming!
Tot 2: No! I comed first!

Snort. I’ve known men like him… Bet some of you have, too…

—–

Timmy arrives, brandishing a book for me to read. I demur. It’s one of that inane Mr. Men series, which I loathe. I am not paid enough to be that bored. However, the title gives me a laugh.

“Mary, see! I gots Mr. Happy!”

Snort. All day, every day, sweetie. You don’t know the half of it yet.
—-

“Careful with the macaroni, guys. It’s a little hot. Blow on it first.”
Ever helpful, Emily leans over to blow on Nigel’s macaroni.
“No! Emily! Don’t do that!”
She does it again.
“NO, Emily! Don’t blow me! I don’t like that!”

Snort. The day will come when he won’t believe he could ever have said that …

—-

Okay. I think I’ll go have a soothing cup of tea now. My mouth is sore what with all the snorting I’ve been doing.