Five years old is a really under-reported age in terms of difficulty. You hear all about the terrible twos, but I am OK with toddlers. Toddlers are fascinated by order and want to understand the world around them... Once you get the hang of breaking things down into what I call Toddler Logic, dealing with toddlers is practically therapeutic.
But five years old? That's different. That's temper. Frustration as they realize the limits of their independence, and suddenly their emotions are getting the better of them again.
My daughter has just hit this magical age.
We have been through this before. When our son turned five, he developed a violent side to his temper. I still have vivid memories of when I announced it was time to leave the space museum and he did his five year old best to beat me up. I ended up carrying him out in a fireman's lift, with him screaming the whole way.
At five, that's manageable, but I'd read things about parents of older children who could not discipline them because the child was physically stronger. (Trade secret: probably 50% of my parenting is driven by abject terror of their teenage years.) So our reaction was to place a complete ban on any physical violence in our house, either in sibling squabbles or parental discipline. It's not accepted, and there will be immediate consequences.
I also refused to take him out again without another adult for over a month afterwards. Eventually, we wrote out an agreement on what behaviour was expected when we were out and how we (parents included!) could be more considerate to each other, which we all signed. (This idea was stolen from a classroom agreement at school—I am all about plagiarising my kids' teachers.)
Mostly though, it was a case of teaching my son that however angry he got, it would not change the situation. Another vivid memory: my son shrieking at me while I stood next to the calendar. Every time he screamed, I crossed off another day for which there would be no television. I think it was nine days by the time he stopped... Sticking to that wasn't much fun for any of us, but it worked. Since then, I only have to ask him: "What will it take before you listen to me?" and I can see him struggling to master his temper, however resentfully.
The hard part moving on from that is to allow his other resolution techniques to work. As a parent, you really do have absolute power, and absolute power really does corrupt. It's hard for me to express how difficult it is to play 'fair' instead of rationalising to what is convenient for me. This past week, I have been failing miserably.
Fortunately, our daughter is not getting violent, but she is flying into intense rages at the drop of a hat, and this needs to be stopped. Of course, this just happens to coincide with an ongoing bout of insomnia for me. I'm exhausted, my patience is minimal, and my daughter is
challenging everything I ask/tell her to do. Tackling the problem head on has never been less appealing.
To procrastinate, I've been trying to allow her a little more independence. One afternoon, I let her make the rules, with the end result that we watched a lot of television and did not go out to enjoy the spell of nice weather as I wanted; not a success. I've let her help out in the kitchen, despite how much stress that adds to the cooking; she sliced into her thumb while chopping a pepper—actually, I'll call that a win, considering it taught both of us that such an event was entirely manageable.
Ultimately, though, I need to just grit my teeth and enforce a code of conduct regarding temper tantrums, insomnia or no insomnia! At least I've got one success story in the form of my son, who is such good company these days. (To be fair to my daughter, she's delightful company too... but only for about five minutes at a time.)
But even with my daughter already, I've got one small success already. My husband was out one night last week and I got into a raging battle with my daughter over the issue of bedtime. Neither of us came out of that looking good, but at the end of it when she was recovering from her tears and I was giving her the Stricken Hug of Maternal Guilt, I said to her: "I love you. Even when I'm angry with you, I still love you."
It was partly rote. I meant it, but it was a case of reminding myself to say it, and I didn't really consider that it would mean anything to her. Yet the next day, she repeated those words back to me, after her daily protest against getting in the car for school. Since then, she's said that sentiment or something similar a few times... I can't say I ever take it too seriously when my daughter calls me "The worst Mummy ever!" but it is ridiculously reassuring to hear she doesn't mean it.
It doesn't change the slog ahead of us, as we work through five year old temper, but both she and I feel a little more secure in the relationship we're fighting for.
Monday, 22 February 2016
Saturday, 15 August 2015
The F Word
As we were driving to his swimming lesson this week, my six year old son suddenly piped up from the back of the car: "Is the F word 'fuck'?"
I like to imagine at this point a reasonable, sensitively presented, age appropriate discussion on swearing in our society. However, I was caught off guard (as I always am) and his four year old sister was also in the back--either off in her own little world or silently hooked on every word we were saying. So what I actually said was: "Yes, but don't use it."
"Why not?"
And so ensued a rather muddled discussion, in which I vaguely hit the key points I wanted to make. I deliberately said 'fuck' at least once, because I didn't want it to glamorise it at as The Word That Must Not Be Named. I know he has some concept of 'bad words,' but I don't know quite what that is as it's a phrase he's picked up from his peers.
I did not ask "Where did you hear that?" because I figured there was a big chance that the answer would be awkward. Likewise, I didn't want to say that only bad people said it. I told him: "Some people use it to express their feelings." Handily, I don't use the word 'fuck', so this wasn't prevaricating. I am very bad at self-censoring, so I never got into the habit of using the really strong swear words (the kids learned 'damn' 'oh my god' 'crap' and 'bugger' all from me.)
And in fits and starts we covered situations where you should not say it: "In job interviews," was my inspired first example. Then I pushed the age level down ten years, and we settled on 'at school' 'with other children' and 'in front of your grandparents'.
Obviously, we didn't talk about contexts where it was appropriate, but I didn't ban him from saying it either. Children swearing tends to be a provocative issue... people either find it shocking or funny. It doesn't bother me either way; I just don't want my child being the one teaching it to the others in the playground. But it seemed a little pointless to me to ban him from using a word based on his age.
I do regret not talking about the concept of offence, and why different words might offend different people. It didn't occur to me until afterwards, and then the moment had passed. I don't quite have the nerve to initiate another conversation on swearing. We'll just put that one off until his first job interview...
I like to imagine at this point a reasonable, sensitively presented, age appropriate discussion on swearing in our society. However, I was caught off guard (as I always am) and his four year old sister was also in the back--either off in her own little world or silently hooked on every word we were saying. So what I actually said was: "Yes, but don't use it."
"Why not?"
And so ensued a rather muddled discussion, in which I vaguely hit the key points I wanted to make. I deliberately said 'fuck' at least once, because I didn't want it to glamorise it at as The Word That Must Not Be Named. I know he has some concept of 'bad words,' but I don't know quite what that is as it's a phrase he's picked up from his peers.
I did not ask "Where did you hear that?" because I figured there was a big chance that the answer would be awkward. Likewise, I didn't want to say that only bad people said it. I told him: "Some people use it to express their feelings." Handily, I don't use the word 'fuck', so this wasn't prevaricating. I am very bad at self-censoring, so I never got into the habit of using the really strong swear words (the kids learned 'damn' 'oh my god' 'crap' and 'bugger' all from me.)
And in fits and starts we covered situations where you should not say it: "In job interviews," was my inspired first example. Then I pushed the age level down ten years, and we settled on 'at school' 'with other children' and 'in front of your grandparents'.
Obviously, we didn't talk about contexts where it was appropriate, but I didn't ban him from saying it either. Children swearing tends to be a provocative issue... people either find it shocking or funny. It doesn't bother me either way; I just don't want my child being the one teaching it to the others in the playground. But it seemed a little pointless to me to ban him from using a word based on his age.
I do regret not talking about the concept of offence, and why different words might offend different people. It didn't occur to me until afterwards, and then the moment had passed. I don't quite have the nerve to initiate another conversation on swearing. We'll just put that one off until his first job interview...
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
Talking about Guns; Listening about Beauty
I recently read this article about a three year old boy accidentally (and non-fatally) shooting his parents, and it occurred to me that I'd never talked to my children about gun safety. We don't have a gun, and so it hadn't been on my radar.
But my son is now at an age where he plays 'unsupervised' with friends. There's always an adult in the house, but they are not necessarily in the same room as him. He certainly has playdates where neither nor my husband nor myself are present, and I don't know who does or doesn't have a gun. I certainly shouldn't just assume that every gun owner we visit has their gun safely stored where the children can't get to it.
So I told my son about that shooting. I knew he'd like the detail about the father being shot in the bottom--and by that same token, he would remember it. I also told him that incidents like this happened where people died, including children. That nobody should handle a gun who hadn't been properly trained.
Then we talked about what he should do if a friend tried to show him a gun. That he should say no, that if somebody was holding a gun, he should walk out of the room. That he should never touch a gun.
I felt that that covered it for our purposes... At least for the time being. Gun-education is not something I have ever given much thought to, but considering how many American households have a gun, this is probably as vital as "Don't talk to strangers."
On a sweeter note, something that happened today... it started off being embarrassing. We were in the check out line at the supermarket when my son started pointing at the lady in front of us. I hastily pushed his hand down, but I crouched next to him and asked him what was wrong. He told me she was "so beautiful."
The lady in question was elderly, overweight, and casually dressed, but when I gave her this second look, I saw she had lovely skin for her age, bright blue eyes and thick white hair. Most likely my son saw something of Frozen's Elsa in her, and why the hell not?
I didn't want to embarrass my son, but when his back was turned, I tapped the woman on her shoulder and told her what he'd said. I figured it would make her day, and judging by her reaction, I wasn't far wrong. My son is too young to recognize age and he's not yet attuned to weight. There was something very refreshing about looking through his eyes and seeing beauty where I hadn't thought to look for it.
But my son is now at an age where he plays 'unsupervised' with friends. There's always an adult in the house, but they are not necessarily in the same room as him. He certainly has playdates where neither nor my husband nor myself are present, and I don't know who does or doesn't have a gun. I certainly shouldn't just assume that every gun owner we visit has their gun safely stored where the children can't get to it.
So I told my son about that shooting. I knew he'd like the detail about the father being shot in the bottom--and by that same token, he would remember it. I also told him that incidents like this happened where people died, including children. That nobody should handle a gun who hadn't been properly trained.
Then we talked about what he should do if a friend tried to show him a gun. That he should say no, that if somebody was holding a gun, he should walk out of the room. That he should never touch a gun.
I felt that that covered it for our purposes... At least for the time being. Gun-education is not something I have ever given much thought to, but considering how many American households have a gun, this is probably as vital as "Don't talk to strangers."
On a sweeter note, something that happened today... it started off being embarrassing. We were in the check out line at the supermarket when my son started pointing at the lady in front of us. I hastily pushed his hand down, but I crouched next to him and asked him what was wrong. He told me she was "so beautiful."
The lady in question was elderly, overweight, and casually dressed, but when I gave her this second look, I saw she had lovely skin for her age, bright blue eyes and thick white hair. Most likely my son saw something of Frozen's Elsa in her, and why the hell not?
I didn't want to embarrass my son, but when his back was turned, I tapped the woman on her shoulder and told her what he'd said. I figured it would make her day, and judging by her reaction, I wasn't far wrong. My son is too young to recognize age and he's not yet attuned to weight. There was something very refreshing about looking through his eyes and seeing beauty where I hadn't thought to look for it.
Tuesday, 28 October 2014
Breathing is not just for Babies
Perhaps one of the first jobs you fully take on board as a
parent is that you’ve got to keep this puny little bundle breathing. I spent
the first six months of my children’s lives listening to them breathe, compulsively checking for it while they were sleeping. As they grew older, I
finally started taking respiration for granted and began worrying about other life skills
such as eating their dinner or flushing the toilet.
But as it turns out, that breathing thing is still pretty important—and still a really effective source of stress. That's a clue as to how my weekend went…
My five year old son started coughing on Thursday evening—enough for me to give him some cough medicine to help him sleep.
Friday 6:15am: My son woke up coughing and saying he didn’t feel well enough for school. He didn’t have a temperature, and was generally upbeat if quieter than usual so I was in two minds about whether or not to send him to school, but leaning towards keeping him home, if the cough didn’t settle.
7:30am: He started wheezing. As he has a history of colds developing into bronchial issues, that settled it—he was staying home. I had a dentist appointment at 9am and optimistically thought that perhaps I could sit him in the corner with an iPad during it. My husband took our daughter to school.
8:45am: He had such a violent attack of coughing that he threw up. I cancelled the dentist.
9-10am: He became increasingly subdued, and his breathing grew noisier. I started googling the enterovirus that is currently running around the country and its charming lingering effects of death and paralysis. Luckily, one of the symptoms is fever, and my son remained fever free.
10:30am: By the time we got to our appointment, he was grunting slightly with each breath, and when I was done signing him in, he took me up on my offer to cuddle him on my lap—not unheard of, but certainly not his usual practice.
The staff were alarmed by the sound of him too… we were seen very quickly, and the doctor popped through in advance of our ‘turn’ to OK him for an immediate albuterol treatment. That turned out to be the first of three, along with an oral steroid, while the doctor declared him to be asthmatic and was clearly in two minds about whether or not to send him off to the emergency room.
11:50am: I left my son with the nurse setting up his third albuterol treatment, so I could go outside for the phone signal I needed to call the school and let them know I would be late picking up my daughter. My son did not complain about being left, but he disliked the taste of the albuterol, and this third treatment did him in. I ended up having to hug him and hold the mask on his face while he cried, so we were pretty miserable all round.
12:15am: His oxygen levels had stayed above the emergency room point, if only just, and the treatments improved his wheezing, though it didn’t totally clear it up. We were given a handful of prescriptions and a chit for an X-Ray at the children’s hospital—to check for pneumonia. On our way back from the hospital, we were to return to the doctors’ office for a walk-in. (Our doctors’ office never takes walk-ins.) We were, however, allowed to pick up my daughter, collect the prescriptions and go home first.
12:30pm: I picked up my cheerful child. My less cheerful one fell asleep in the car—huzzah for drive through pharmacists! I managed to get hold of my husband who left a busy day at work to come home, care for our daughter and get her to her gym lesson.
2:30pm: My son and I arrived at the children’s hospital, and he started crying and refusing to get out of the car despite my best encouragement. He just wanted to sleep by that point, and I completely agreed with him, but we didn’t have a choice, and so I had to bully him out. As scary as everything else was, that moment was hands down the worst part of the day for me.
Luckily the waiting room was showing the Lego Movie which improved his mood enough to carry him through the actual X-ray.
3:30pm: We parked our car at the doctors’ office again, and he threw up for no apparent reason other than sheer exhaustion. Luckily I still had a barf bag the nurse had given me that morning, so it was done tidily enough, and after that his mood improved tremendously. The X-rays came back clear, so he didn’t have pneumonia—Hooray!—but they could still hear a wheeze through the stethoscope. Boo! We scheduled a Saturday morning follow up and finally returned home to rest.
Friday evening and night: As prescribed, I helped my son use his inhaler every four hours… including overnight. And there was much stumbling around and yawning.
Come Saturday, he was one hundred percent better in mood and alertness, but they could still hear the same wheeze. We made a follow up for Monday, but were given the OK to drop the inhaler at night. I looked forward to getting a better night’s sleep.
That same Saturday morning, my three year old daughter woke up coughing.
As she has been less prone to respiratory issues, I wasn’t so concerned about my daughter, though she was very sorry for herself, so we sat on the sofa and watched movies together. My husband took our son out in the afternoon, and our daughter fell asleep for a couple of hours—yet still wanted to go to bed at the usual time. She also had no appetite, so it seemed she was very much following the track of my son’s illness, but without the wheezing. Huzzah.
10pm I was preparing for an early bedtime, determined to be horizontal for a full eight hours, when my daughter woke up and wanted to use the bathroom. As I took her, I heard her making the same grunting that my son had made at the height of his wheezing. I gave her five minutes and checked back in on her—she was practically panting in her sleep and sounded like a chain smoker. For half an hour, my husband and I kept an ear on the situation, but ultimately, there was no way that we were going to sleep on this one.
10:30pm I got back into my clothes, readied the car, and then we woke our confused and reluctant daughter, and I took her off in her nightie and a jacket (no shoes or socks). To my relief, the novelty of being out at night took over, and she was perfectly chipper. I couldn’t hear the wheezing so easily in the car, and I began to brace myself for the embarrassment of turning up at the emergency room with a completely wheeze-less child. Not the case!
11pm: They take breathing seriously at ER. I was still filling out the paperwork when the triage nurse called us through—it didn’t help that I was so tired, it was taking me ten seconds to gather my wits every time I was asked for a birthdate. Ten minutes later, I was carrying my daughter to a bed.
Somewhat surprisingly, this was the first time we had taken one of the children to the emergency room. It wasn’t as traumatic as I had expected. She wasn’t nearly as distressed as my son had been the previous day, so I wasn’t unduly afraid, and despite it being a Saturday night, things seemed fairly quiet. We were lucky enough to get a bed on the wall end of the row, so we had less disturbance anyway.
My daughter took things calmly, but after I laid her in the bed, she looked up at me with very big eyes and said: “Don’t go.” I assured her I was going to stay right there with her, though it was a few minutes before she seemed secure. Luckily, since I had already been through the drill with my son, I was able to tell her a bit about what was going on / going to happen. E.g. when the machine measuring her oxygen levels read 93, I could tell her that her brother had had 91, so she was doing better than him. Watching the numbers go back and forth was the game for awhile, and she dozed a little though there was too much going on for her to settle.
She was given a treatment of albuterol, but with a mister rather than a mask. She lost interest in that pretty quickly, and seemed unimpressed by my insistence that she had to breathe it in until the mist ran out. I ended up having to hold it and let the mist play over her firmly closed mouth, though the nurse assured me it was fine being inhaled through the nose as well.
She was also given the same oral steroid as her brother, and much to the nurse’s confusion, she declared that she liked it. (He certainly hadn’t!) And, of course, she was popped in a wheelchair and wheeled for an X-ray. She was getting very tired and overwhelmed at this point and struggled to follow the directions, but she sat cross-legged on her chair and never complained. Back in her bed she said she wanted to go home once or twice but never argued the point when I told her we had to stay.
1am She was finally tired enough to go properly off to sleep. So was I, but I didn’t have a bed to lie down on. I eventually used the end of her bed as a pillow, though it wasn’t enough for me to actually fall asleep. My chief entertainment was listening to what other people were there for, which all seemed tame enough, barring the guy who had been robbed at knifepoint.
2am Then came a patient who had clearly been taking something inadvisable. He heralded his arrival with the screams: “Don’t break my fucking arm! Please don’t break my fucking arm!” He lacked the courage of his convictions, for a few minutes later this became: “Please break my fucking arm! Fuck you, break it! Please break my fucking arm!”
Thankfully, my daughter remained asleep. I poked my head out and ascertained that the screamer was indeed strapped to his gurney and had a couple of burly guys around him wearing Fire and Rescue Dept T-shirts. It seemed I wasn’t going to have to seize my daughter and dive behind the bed while somebody went on a hallucinogenic rampage.
He continued to scream more often than not for the next hour. His arm and breaking or not breaking it was the recurring theme, but we also had moments of “Get this shit off me!” “Don’t touch me, you bitch!” And my personal favourite: (sobbing) “Look at them. Oh, let them live… please let them live…”
Shortly after he first entered, my daughter rolled over and woke up enough to give me a squinty glare for the disturbance before falling back asleep—to my great relief. While the swearing didn’t concern me, the overt rage, fear and despair, were not what she needed to hear in this situation.
After half an hour or so of his screaming, she woke up fully, stared at me and put her hands over her ears. Quite calmly, she told me she wanted to go home now. Just as calmly, she accepted my explanation that we couldn’t, and told me it was too loud so she had to put her hands over her ears. I agreed with her that this man was not in control of his temper. Her hands were insufficient, and she put her fingers in her ears instead, and while I maintained what I hoped was a calming smile (as opposed to a frozen rictus), she was beginning to look stressed and unhappy.
It was one of those situations that couldn’t be helped, and thankfully, the patient finally quietened enough that she was able to fall back to sleep—the following day, when I asked her if she remembered the hospital last night, she replied: “There was a loud noise, and I had to cover my ears.” It's a shame she wasn't fourteen. It would have put her off drugs for life.
3am I hadn’t given much thought to the X-ray, because my son’s had come back clear, so I was completely taken aback when I was informed she had a touch of pneumonia. Also unlike her brother, her temperature spiked, so she was woken up for motrin, which she took amiably and went right back to sleep again. She was more deeply asleep when the nurse brought her antibiotic for the pneumonia, and I had to prop her up, while the nurse tucked the syringe between her lips, though thankfully she went to the effort of swallowing it by herself.
So my daughter slept, while I alternated between dozing at the foot of her bed and walking around shaking my limbs to make me feel better. Finally, after almost five hours, we were discharged, and I woke her for her only meltdown of the night. I told her we could finally go home, but by this point, she was too far gone. I left the emergency room in a wheelchair with a hysterical child on my lap—all very reminiscent of leaving the hospital after giving birth to her, though embarrassingly, the nurse pushing me was six months pregnant and probably more deserving of the wheelchair than I was.
By the time I buckled my daughter in the car, she was screaming as indiscriminately as the stoned guy. There had been no phone signal in the hospital, so I had planned to send my husband a message from the car park, but I abandoned that idea in favour of getting home as quickly as possible. She spent the entire drive home hanging off the back of my seat—it’s about the only time I’ve missed her carseat over the booster she’s in now. At one point, I had to stop the car, because I thought she’d unbuckled herself. (Thankfully, she hadn’t.)
Home at last, I handed the paperwork off to my husband and carried our daughter up to an armchair in the living room. The familiar surroundings managed to give her some coherency and she eventually wailed to me that she was too cold to go to bed. When I suggested that I go upstairs and sit on her bed with her to help keep it warm, she gulped back the sobs, took my hand and walked upstairs herself. Luckily, it took about two minutes for her to pass out again.
Her brother (they share a room) was woken up by the fuss but he was glad to see us. Apparently, he had woken up at 1am, freaked out to find his sister gone and started screaming for Mummy. Daddy had to break it to him that I was gone too. In short, none of us got a great deal of sleep that night, though my husband was good enough to ensure that our daughter and I had a lie in—he got up at the crack of dawn with our son and got him settled downstairs. Our daughter was up at 7am anyway, but I slept in until almost 9am (eventually woken by our daughter bellowing her pants were inside out) and had two or three naps during the day for good measure.
I kept both children at home on the Monday—and regretted it, even though it was the right call. They were bouncing off the walls after a weekend of being ill, but every time they tried to make use of their extra energy, they started coughing. Thankfully, the doctor’s appointment—with their usual paediatrician this time—gave us the all-clear as far as lungs were concerned. Her opinion of my son was that he had reactive airway disease rather than asthma, and it wasn’t something we should worry too much about unless it becomes a more frequent occurrence.
So that was that. A particularly nasty bug from a parenting perspective, and an extremely efficient way to leave the entire family utterly exhausted. Fortunately, the only long term harm is that the children will have to have the flu shot and not the flu mist this year, because they’ve had albuterol so recently. My son is seriously unimpressed by this prospect. I am a teensy bit apologetic for not getting off my backside and sorting out flu shots before now, but mostly, I’m more focused on catching up on my sleep. Beautiful, wondrous, sleeeeeep….
But as it turns out, that breathing thing is still pretty important—and still a really effective source of stress. That's a clue as to how my weekend went…
My five year old son started coughing on Thursday evening—enough for me to give him some cough medicine to help him sleep.
Friday 6:15am: My son woke up coughing and saying he didn’t feel well enough for school. He didn’t have a temperature, and was generally upbeat if quieter than usual so I was in two minds about whether or not to send him to school, but leaning towards keeping him home, if the cough didn’t settle.
7:30am: He started wheezing. As he has a history of colds developing into bronchial issues, that settled it—he was staying home. I had a dentist appointment at 9am and optimistically thought that perhaps I could sit him in the corner with an iPad during it. My husband took our daughter to school.
8:45am: He had such a violent attack of coughing that he threw up. I cancelled the dentist.
9-10am: He became increasingly subdued, and his breathing grew noisier. I started googling the enterovirus that is currently running around the country and its charming lingering effects of death and paralysis. Luckily, one of the symptoms is fever, and my son remained fever free.
10:30am: By the time we got to our appointment, he was grunting slightly with each breath, and when I was done signing him in, he took me up on my offer to cuddle him on my lap—not unheard of, but certainly not his usual practice.
The staff were alarmed by the sound of him too… we were seen very quickly, and the doctor popped through in advance of our ‘turn’ to OK him for an immediate albuterol treatment. That turned out to be the first of three, along with an oral steroid, while the doctor declared him to be asthmatic and was clearly in two minds about whether or not to send him off to the emergency room.
11:50am: I left my son with the nurse setting up his third albuterol treatment, so I could go outside for the phone signal I needed to call the school and let them know I would be late picking up my daughter. My son did not complain about being left, but he disliked the taste of the albuterol, and this third treatment did him in. I ended up having to hug him and hold the mask on his face while he cried, so we were pretty miserable all round.
12:15am: His oxygen levels had stayed above the emergency room point, if only just, and the treatments improved his wheezing, though it didn’t totally clear it up. We were given a handful of prescriptions and a chit for an X-Ray at the children’s hospital—to check for pneumonia. On our way back from the hospital, we were to return to the doctors’ office for a walk-in. (Our doctors’ office never takes walk-ins.) We were, however, allowed to pick up my daughter, collect the prescriptions and go home first.
12:30pm: I picked up my cheerful child. My less cheerful one fell asleep in the car—huzzah for drive through pharmacists! I managed to get hold of my husband who left a busy day at work to come home, care for our daughter and get her to her gym lesson.
2:30pm: My son and I arrived at the children’s hospital, and he started crying and refusing to get out of the car despite my best encouragement. He just wanted to sleep by that point, and I completely agreed with him, but we didn’t have a choice, and so I had to bully him out. As scary as everything else was, that moment was hands down the worst part of the day for me.
Luckily the waiting room was showing the Lego Movie which improved his mood enough to carry him through the actual X-ray.
3:30pm: We parked our car at the doctors’ office again, and he threw up for no apparent reason other than sheer exhaustion. Luckily I still had a barf bag the nurse had given me that morning, so it was done tidily enough, and after that his mood improved tremendously. The X-rays came back clear, so he didn’t have pneumonia—Hooray!—but they could still hear a wheeze through the stethoscope. Boo! We scheduled a Saturday morning follow up and finally returned home to rest.
Friday evening and night: As prescribed, I helped my son use his inhaler every four hours… including overnight. And there was much stumbling around and yawning.
Come Saturday, he was one hundred percent better in mood and alertness, but they could still hear the same wheeze. We made a follow up for Monday, but were given the OK to drop the inhaler at night. I looked forward to getting a better night’s sleep.
That same Saturday morning, my three year old daughter woke up coughing.
As she has been less prone to respiratory issues, I wasn’t so concerned about my daughter, though she was very sorry for herself, so we sat on the sofa and watched movies together. My husband took our son out in the afternoon, and our daughter fell asleep for a couple of hours—yet still wanted to go to bed at the usual time. She also had no appetite, so it seemed she was very much following the track of my son’s illness, but without the wheezing. Huzzah.
10pm I was preparing for an early bedtime, determined to be horizontal for a full eight hours, when my daughter woke up and wanted to use the bathroom. As I took her, I heard her making the same grunting that my son had made at the height of his wheezing. I gave her five minutes and checked back in on her—she was practically panting in her sleep and sounded like a chain smoker. For half an hour, my husband and I kept an ear on the situation, but ultimately, there was no way that we were going to sleep on this one.
10:30pm I got back into my clothes, readied the car, and then we woke our confused and reluctant daughter, and I took her off in her nightie and a jacket (no shoes or socks). To my relief, the novelty of being out at night took over, and she was perfectly chipper. I couldn’t hear the wheezing so easily in the car, and I began to brace myself for the embarrassment of turning up at the emergency room with a completely wheeze-less child. Not the case!
11pm: They take breathing seriously at ER. I was still filling out the paperwork when the triage nurse called us through—it didn’t help that I was so tired, it was taking me ten seconds to gather my wits every time I was asked for a birthdate. Ten minutes later, I was carrying my daughter to a bed.
Somewhat surprisingly, this was the first time we had taken one of the children to the emergency room. It wasn’t as traumatic as I had expected. She wasn’t nearly as distressed as my son had been the previous day, so I wasn’t unduly afraid, and despite it being a Saturday night, things seemed fairly quiet. We were lucky enough to get a bed on the wall end of the row, so we had less disturbance anyway.
My daughter took things calmly, but after I laid her in the bed, she looked up at me with very big eyes and said: “Don’t go.” I assured her I was going to stay right there with her, though it was a few minutes before she seemed secure. Luckily, since I had already been through the drill with my son, I was able to tell her a bit about what was going on / going to happen. E.g. when the machine measuring her oxygen levels read 93, I could tell her that her brother had had 91, so she was doing better than him. Watching the numbers go back and forth was the game for awhile, and she dozed a little though there was too much going on for her to settle.
She was given a treatment of albuterol, but with a mister rather than a mask. She lost interest in that pretty quickly, and seemed unimpressed by my insistence that she had to breathe it in until the mist ran out. I ended up having to hold it and let the mist play over her firmly closed mouth, though the nurse assured me it was fine being inhaled through the nose as well.
She was also given the same oral steroid as her brother, and much to the nurse’s confusion, she declared that she liked it. (He certainly hadn’t!) And, of course, she was popped in a wheelchair and wheeled for an X-ray. She was getting very tired and overwhelmed at this point and struggled to follow the directions, but she sat cross-legged on her chair and never complained. Back in her bed she said she wanted to go home once or twice but never argued the point when I told her we had to stay.
1am She was finally tired enough to go properly off to sleep. So was I, but I didn’t have a bed to lie down on. I eventually used the end of her bed as a pillow, though it wasn’t enough for me to actually fall asleep. My chief entertainment was listening to what other people were there for, which all seemed tame enough, barring the guy who had been robbed at knifepoint.
2am Then came a patient who had clearly been taking something inadvisable. He heralded his arrival with the screams: “Don’t break my fucking arm! Please don’t break my fucking arm!” He lacked the courage of his convictions, for a few minutes later this became: “Please break my fucking arm! Fuck you, break it! Please break my fucking arm!”
Thankfully, my daughter remained asleep. I poked my head out and ascertained that the screamer was indeed strapped to his gurney and had a couple of burly guys around him wearing Fire and Rescue Dept T-shirts. It seemed I wasn’t going to have to seize my daughter and dive behind the bed while somebody went on a hallucinogenic rampage.
He continued to scream more often than not for the next hour. His arm and breaking or not breaking it was the recurring theme, but we also had moments of “Get this shit off me!” “Don’t touch me, you bitch!” And my personal favourite: (sobbing) “Look at them. Oh, let them live… please let them live…”
Shortly after he first entered, my daughter rolled over and woke up enough to give me a squinty glare for the disturbance before falling back asleep—to my great relief. While the swearing didn’t concern me, the overt rage, fear and despair, were not what she needed to hear in this situation.
After half an hour or so of his screaming, she woke up fully, stared at me and put her hands over her ears. Quite calmly, she told me she wanted to go home now. Just as calmly, she accepted my explanation that we couldn’t, and told me it was too loud so she had to put her hands over her ears. I agreed with her that this man was not in control of his temper. Her hands were insufficient, and she put her fingers in her ears instead, and while I maintained what I hoped was a calming smile (as opposed to a frozen rictus), she was beginning to look stressed and unhappy.
It was one of those situations that couldn’t be helped, and thankfully, the patient finally quietened enough that she was able to fall back to sleep—the following day, when I asked her if she remembered the hospital last night, she replied: “There was a loud noise, and I had to cover my ears.” It's a shame she wasn't fourteen. It would have put her off drugs for life.
3am I hadn’t given much thought to the X-ray, because my son’s had come back clear, so I was completely taken aback when I was informed she had a touch of pneumonia. Also unlike her brother, her temperature spiked, so she was woken up for motrin, which she took amiably and went right back to sleep again. She was more deeply asleep when the nurse brought her antibiotic for the pneumonia, and I had to prop her up, while the nurse tucked the syringe between her lips, though thankfully she went to the effort of swallowing it by herself.
So my daughter slept, while I alternated between dozing at the foot of her bed and walking around shaking my limbs to make me feel better. Finally, after almost five hours, we were discharged, and I woke her for her only meltdown of the night. I told her we could finally go home, but by this point, she was too far gone. I left the emergency room in a wheelchair with a hysterical child on my lap—all very reminiscent of leaving the hospital after giving birth to her, though embarrassingly, the nurse pushing me was six months pregnant and probably more deserving of the wheelchair than I was.
By the time I buckled my daughter in the car, she was screaming as indiscriminately as the stoned guy. There had been no phone signal in the hospital, so I had planned to send my husband a message from the car park, but I abandoned that idea in favour of getting home as quickly as possible. She spent the entire drive home hanging off the back of my seat—it’s about the only time I’ve missed her carseat over the booster she’s in now. At one point, I had to stop the car, because I thought she’d unbuckled herself. (Thankfully, she hadn’t.)
Home at last, I handed the paperwork off to my husband and carried our daughter up to an armchair in the living room. The familiar surroundings managed to give her some coherency and she eventually wailed to me that she was too cold to go to bed. When I suggested that I go upstairs and sit on her bed with her to help keep it warm, she gulped back the sobs, took my hand and walked upstairs herself. Luckily, it took about two minutes for her to pass out again.
Her brother (they share a room) was woken up by the fuss but he was glad to see us. Apparently, he had woken up at 1am, freaked out to find his sister gone and started screaming for Mummy. Daddy had to break it to him that I was gone too. In short, none of us got a great deal of sleep that night, though my husband was good enough to ensure that our daughter and I had a lie in—he got up at the crack of dawn with our son and got him settled downstairs. Our daughter was up at 7am anyway, but I slept in until almost 9am (eventually woken by our daughter bellowing her pants were inside out) and had two or three naps during the day for good measure.
I kept both children at home on the Monday—and regretted it, even though it was the right call. They were bouncing off the walls after a weekend of being ill, but every time they tried to make use of their extra energy, they started coughing. Thankfully, the doctor’s appointment—with their usual paediatrician this time—gave us the all-clear as far as lungs were concerned. Her opinion of my son was that he had reactive airway disease rather than asthma, and it wasn’t something we should worry too much about unless it becomes a more frequent occurrence.
So that was that. A particularly nasty bug from a parenting perspective, and an extremely efficient way to leave the entire family utterly exhausted. Fortunately, the only long term harm is that the children will have to have the flu shot and not the flu mist this year, because they’ve had albuterol so recently. My son is seriously unimpressed by this prospect. I am a teensy bit apologetic for not getting off my backside and sorting out flu shots before now, but mostly, I’m more focused on catching up on my sleep. Beautiful, wondrous, sleeeeeep….
Wednesday, 24 September 2014
Homework update
Since my previous post, my son has started getting daily homework, and we are gradually settling into it. He did lose his temper with me today when I told him it was homework time... 5pm is our routine time for doing it--the children have had plenty of time to play together, and I'm pottering about the kitchen, tidying up and starting to get dinner ready. By this time, the novelty's worn off, so even though I gave him plenty of warning that 5pm was coming, he did not want to do it.
At one point, I told him that it was my job to make sure he did his homework, and he told me it was his. I think he was just negating what I said without really thinking about it, but it did give me a moment's pause. After all, I do want to get him into good, *independent* habits. Yet at the same time, we've only just started this, so it's not a habit yet. And it's as important that he have a time to do it that suits all of us as it is for him to take initiative. e.g., he can't decide to do his homework five minutes before dinner, or when I'm doing something with his sister.
Fortunately, once we actually start doing the homework, there's no problem. So far, it only takes him about ten minutes to do homework (sometimes getting him to clear his work off the kitchen table so we can serve dinner takes longer than the actual homework), and it's worked out quite well. I was concerned about my daughter being a distraction, but she has been fine playing or reading by herself, and doesn't seem one whit bothered that her brother's doing something she can't do. This could all change, but for now, all is going well.
One week down, thirteen years to go!
At one point, I told him that it was my job to make sure he did his homework, and he told me it was his. I think he was just negating what I said without really thinking about it, but it did give me a moment's pause. After all, I do want to get him into good, *independent* habits. Yet at the same time, we've only just started this, so it's not a habit yet. And it's as important that he have a time to do it that suits all of us as it is for him to take initiative. e.g., he can't decide to do his homework five minutes before dinner, or when I'm doing something with his sister.
Fortunately, once we actually start doing the homework, there's no problem. So far, it only takes him about ten minutes to do homework (sometimes getting him to clear his work off the kitchen table so we can serve dinner takes longer than the actual homework), and it's worked out quite well. I was concerned about my daughter being a distraction, but she has been fine playing or reading by herself, and doesn't seem one whit bothered that her brother's doing something she can't do. This could all change, but for now, all is going well.
One week down, thirteen years to go!
Monday, 15 September 2014
Family Geek Out
We went to Barnes and Noble yesterday in an ultimately unsuccessful quest to buy my son a dictionary. (It's almost as if all the parents in the area recently had cause to buy the same item at once!) As we always do, we browsed the picture books in case anything caught our eye, and this did. Quest, by Aaron Becker, the sequel to Journey.
Journey is a wordless picture book about a girl with a magic crayon that leads her on an adventure through a magical world. Most of the pictures are large detailed landscapes, letting your eye do the exploring. Thanks to the wordless part, both my children (five and three) love to 'read' it, and I've enjoyed talking through the story with them as well, because the artwork is ruddy gorgeous. Below is the book trailer to give you an idea.
When I recognised the characters from Journey on the cover of Quest, I immediately pulled it off the shelf and showed it to the kids. Their eyes went huge, and they squeaked: "Journey!" I may have squeaked as well.
At that point, buying it was a foregone conclusion, and after some argument, we agreed that nobody should have it in the car on the way home; we would all read it together.
And that was exactly what we did, page by page, guessing what it was the children were drawing next, and finding out the details of the story together. Once we finished, we immediately re-read.
My husband and I are geeks, and there are plenty of times that we've been mutually excited over something. But this is the first time I've been able to really geek out with the kids--for all three of us to be genuine fans of a fantasy world, and it warmed my nerdy little heart.
The good news is that we should get the chance to do this again. Apparently, Journey and Quest are destined to be a trilogy. I can't wait. (And, so he tells me, neither can my son.)
Journey is a wordless picture book about a girl with a magic crayon that leads her on an adventure through a magical world. Most of the pictures are large detailed landscapes, letting your eye do the exploring. Thanks to the wordless part, both my children (five and three) love to 'read' it, and I've enjoyed talking through the story with them as well, because the artwork is ruddy gorgeous. Below is the book trailer to give you an idea.
When I recognised the characters from Journey on the cover of Quest, I immediately pulled it off the shelf and showed it to the kids. Their eyes went huge, and they squeaked: "Journey!" I may have squeaked as well.
At that point, buying it was a foregone conclusion, and after some argument, we agreed that nobody should have it in the car on the way home; we would all read it together.
And that was exactly what we did, page by page, guessing what it was the children were drawing next, and finding out the details of the story together. Once we finished, we immediately re-read.
My husband and I are geeks, and there are plenty of times that we've been mutually excited over something. But this is the first time I've been able to really geek out with the kids--for all three of us to be genuine fans of a fantasy world, and it warmed my nerdy little heart.
The good news is that we should get the chance to do this again. Apparently, Journey and Quest are destined to be a trilogy. I can't wait. (And, so he tells me, neither can my son.)
Sunday, 7 September 2014
School just got Real
In between my travel write ups (we did too much traveling this summer--I've got New York and Washington DC to add now!), I should catch up with actual goings on. Such as my son's graduation from Children's House to the Elementary Class.
We've kept him in his Montessori School, so he's in a mixed age six-nine classroom, but it's the equivalent to first grade. I.e. moving from pre-school to honest-to-goodness school.
The significance of this transition hadn't occurred to me until August when we got the class supply list, featuring binders and notebooks instead of paints and kitchen roll. It really hit me when we had the parent orientation evening, and we were talked through expectations such as... homework.
In many ways, up until this point, I've considered the children to be at school to learn practical skills and socialisation. Any academic advancements have been a bonus. Yes, I stressed about his reading, but there was always the feeling that it didn't really matter. And now it feels like it does.
It's still Montessori, it's still child-led, so my son will still go at his own pace, and there isn't really a specific standard in each subject that they have to achieve in the three years of elementary. But there is an expectation now that they will stay in line with the rest of the country--and there's an element of preparing them for a non-Montessori academic future, with work-sheets and tests and such like.
And the aforementioned homework. Homework is not really Montessori, which is designed around using materials that are in the classroom and not the home. His teacher's solution to this is to get the children to work at home on the stuff they need to burn into their memories for the long term.
For now, my son's homework is one or two worksheets a week to practice his 'math facts' (multiplication tables, 0-9 sums, etc.) In a few more weeks, spelling will be added to the mix--two nights of studying the words, and two nights of choosing his own activity out of a range from 'write your words from shortest to longest' to 'write a poem using your words.') This will mean something to do every night of the week.
He is taking this development with all due cheer and enthusiasm. I am all anxiety (well, outwardly, I strive for a mask of cool confidence, but inwardly I'm first-world-probleming 24/7). My own homework practices at school were atrocious and thus I am resolved for my children to do better. I want to have a routine time where he sits at the table and does homework, and I am available to help him, discuss it with him or otherwise show interest--but equally, I've got to find something to keep my daughter engaged without distracting him at the same time.
So far it's been very easy because he doesn't seem to have a problem with maths. (That in itself is interesting because up until now, he's always done maths with concrete materials: unit beads, ten bars, hundred squares and thousand cubes, etc. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time he's sat down with a piece of paper and done it in his head--and he can. My husband and I were both mathematically inclined, so this might just be genetic luck easing the transition, but it was fun to listen him read the questions dramatically as if it was the most insane thing he'd ever been asked before declaring: "Well, it has to be [answer].")
I am more worried about how the spelling will go down, but then again, this is just the tip of a fifteen-year long iceberg. It's going to get tough eventually... I should enjoy staying afloat while I can.
The other thing that's starting to concern me is keeping up with his British peers. Technically, he's skipped a year in the US system (it's really a little more blurred thanks to the Montessori system and his early start in that), but in the UK, he'd be starting 'proper' school this year too. The BBC recently ran this article on the new national curriculum, which made me realize I should be keeping an eye on what he's expected to know there.
From my own experience (educated in the US from the age of nine to eleven, before returning to the UK for high school), the US is perhaps more academic than the UK at the primary level... but that was twenty five years ago. To use the examples cited in this article, I know my son will be learning fractions, though computer coding was not mentioned in the elementary class overview! Handily, my husband's a computer guy and I'm sure there are all kinds of apps for that, but what else lurks in the pages of the National Curriculum?
My first thought was to panic, download a PDF of Key Stage One expectations, make extensive notes and start googling downloadable worksheets, to keep my son abreast of the UK standards...
And then there was the second thought which is that I have better things to do with my time, so does my son, and my whole thing about Montessori is that I don't like forcing children to a standard anyway.
So I probably will try to keep aware of what's going on in the equivalent British class. But I'll also acknowledge that there will always be gaps he'll have to bridge when he starts school there. And that's OK. He's going to have huge blind spots in his history and geography, but let's seize the opportunity we have to learn about American history and geography.
Right now, the most important thing is his enthusiasm for learning. That's what I want to celebrate and sustain for as long as possible. Besides, almost six years on from his birth, there are still few things more enjoyable than watching him learn and discover the world around him.
We've kept him in his Montessori School, so he's in a mixed age six-nine classroom, but it's the equivalent to first grade. I.e. moving from pre-school to honest-to-goodness school.
The significance of this transition hadn't occurred to me until August when we got the class supply list, featuring binders and notebooks instead of paints and kitchen roll. It really hit me when we had the parent orientation evening, and we were talked through expectations such as... homework.
In many ways, up until this point, I've considered the children to be at school to learn practical skills and socialisation. Any academic advancements have been a bonus. Yes, I stressed about his reading, but there was always the feeling that it didn't really matter. And now it feels like it does.
It's still Montessori, it's still child-led, so my son will still go at his own pace, and there isn't really a specific standard in each subject that they have to achieve in the three years of elementary. But there is an expectation now that they will stay in line with the rest of the country--and there's an element of preparing them for a non-Montessori academic future, with work-sheets and tests and such like.
And the aforementioned homework. Homework is not really Montessori, which is designed around using materials that are in the classroom and not the home. His teacher's solution to this is to get the children to work at home on the stuff they need to burn into their memories for the long term.
For now, my son's homework is one or two worksheets a week to practice his 'math facts' (multiplication tables, 0-9 sums, etc.) In a few more weeks, spelling will be added to the mix--two nights of studying the words, and two nights of choosing his own activity out of a range from 'write your words from shortest to longest' to 'write a poem using your words.') This will mean something to do every night of the week.
He is taking this development with all due cheer and enthusiasm. I am all anxiety (well, outwardly, I strive for a mask of cool confidence, but inwardly I'm first-world-probleming 24/7). My own homework practices at school were atrocious and thus I am resolved for my children to do better. I want to have a routine time where he sits at the table and does homework, and I am available to help him, discuss it with him or otherwise show interest--but equally, I've got to find something to keep my daughter engaged without distracting him at the same time.
So far it's been very easy because he doesn't seem to have a problem with maths. (That in itself is interesting because up until now, he's always done maths with concrete materials: unit beads, ten bars, hundred squares and thousand cubes, etc. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time he's sat down with a piece of paper and done it in his head--and he can. My husband and I were both mathematically inclined, so this might just be genetic luck easing the transition, but it was fun to listen him read the questions dramatically as if it was the most insane thing he'd ever been asked before declaring: "Well, it has to be [answer].")
I am more worried about how the spelling will go down, but then again, this is just the tip of a fifteen-year long iceberg. It's going to get tough eventually... I should enjoy staying afloat while I can.
The other thing that's starting to concern me is keeping up with his British peers. Technically, he's skipped a year in the US system (it's really a little more blurred thanks to the Montessori system and his early start in that), but in the UK, he'd be starting 'proper' school this year too. The BBC recently ran this article on the new national curriculum, which made me realize I should be keeping an eye on what he's expected to know there.
From my own experience (educated in the US from the age of nine to eleven, before returning to the UK for high school), the US is perhaps more academic than the UK at the primary level... but that was twenty five years ago. To use the examples cited in this article, I know my son will be learning fractions, though computer coding was not mentioned in the elementary class overview! Handily, my husband's a computer guy and I'm sure there are all kinds of apps for that, but what else lurks in the pages of the National Curriculum?
My first thought was to panic, download a PDF of Key Stage One expectations, make extensive notes and start googling downloadable worksheets, to keep my son abreast of the UK standards...
And then there was the second thought which is that I have better things to do with my time, so does my son, and my whole thing about Montessori is that I don't like forcing children to a standard anyway.
So I probably will try to keep aware of what's going on in the equivalent British class. But I'll also acknowledge that there will always be gaps he'll have to bridge when he starts school there. And that's OK. He's going to have huge blind spots in his history and geography, but let's seize the opportunity we have to learn about American history and geography.
Right now, the most important thing is his enthusiasm for learning. That's what I want to celebrate and sustain for as long as possible. Besides, almost six years on from his birth, there are still few things more enjoyable than watching him learn and discover the world around him.
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