Archive for the Parenting Category
Written on January 15, 2010 by Jen
Filed Under: Parenting
Yesterday JJ and I had a morning to kill in the city while my car’s air conditioning was being fixed. On our way to the River Torrens to have a paddle in a boat we went via the Festival Centre.
They have a bunch of blocks that are perfect for climbing and jumping on.
JJ climbed up on them easily enough.
But then he needed my help to go from one to the other. I held his hand for a little while as he got more comfortable with the process.
Then he started doing it by himself – hesitating at first.
Then he got quite comfortable and more confident and went on the slightly higher blocks and got much faster going from block to block. As a mum, I put my visions of seeing him fall inbetween the blocks and banging his head and having to accompany him to hospital in the ambulance aside, and let him go for it.
That’s my boy, getting more self-confidence all round. Can’t remember if I mentioned that he got put up a level in his swimming classes this summer. He initially didn’t want to go up a level, and no amount of persuading on my part made a difference. He had to make up his own mind to do it and in his own time. He went up the level and did very well, except for the infection he’s now got in his ear!
Written on January 8, 2010 by Jen
Filed Under: Parenting, Photos, Travel
We are in the middle of our holidays and in full holiday mode. We’ve had time to relax, Christmas and New Year are now over and all we really have to worry about is hot weather. As we are now at the beginning of yet another heatwave – we have three days of 41 degrees coming up – I thought we’d better get out and about before this hot weather hits.
So the other day we headed off into town on the tram to have some lunch and browse around the art gallery and the museum to get some cultcha you know, and to drag the child away from his DSi.
As soon as we walked into the first gallery in the art gallery JJ informed me that he was quite bored and asked when we were leaving. The colonial art didn’t really interest me – I’ve discovered I’m more of a modern art girl. Although I did start a bit of a game to try and find the oldest piece of art and we found some from Italy that was about 600 years old which I found interesting too.
I therefore didn’t bother paying to see the John Brack exhibition as it wouldn’t have been worth my while with a whingy guts hanging off me telling me he was bored every minute.
In the museum we had to trek all the way up the stairs to see the top of the giant squid but didn’t spend that long in the museum either.
I managed to get some photos along North Terrace.
After a milkshake I was allowed to go to an op-shop to get my fix while closing my ears to every other complaint that he managed to come up with.
On the tram on the way home he somehow managed to work into a conversation with two German woman about how old I am. One of them told him that her mum is 95. After we got off the tram I explained that it’s not the done thing to just blurt out how old your mum is. He couldn’t work out why it was okay to say someone’s mum is 95, but not talk about my age. I tried to explain that if you make it to 95 then you deserve bragging rights but if you’re only in the middle of your life then there’s not too much to say about it really.
To get some piece and quiet from all the questions I flaked in front of the tv and let him play his DSi for a while when we got home.
Written on January 6, 2010 by Jen
Filed Under: Parenting, Photos
Yesterday JJ had a friend over after swimming in the morning. They were glued to the Nintendo DS’s for too long until I made them turn them off, and put a box of Lego in the back room so they could make something.
They occupied themselves for at least an hour and would have continued but JJ’s mate’s mum came to pick him up. The Lego is still out there ready to be added to or whatever.
Not sure that the tree person at the top of the castle is part of Lego but he was in the box so he features. He looks like he’s the king of the castle.
Written on January 4, 2010 by Jen
Filed Under: Parenting
JJ got a cook book for Christmas and today we tried a recipe for cupcakes from it. I got him to read out the ingredients to me and he got them out of the cupboard. Again, I made him look for the labels of the ingredients as it’s really easy to get someone else to do it for you.
With only a mishap of spilling the sugar all over the floor, the sugar that I’d forgotten to put into the mixture the cakes were cooked.
I’ve only got blue and red food colouring so JJ said I could make purple if I wanted as that’s my favourite colour. Bless him. It wasn’t quite enough to cover all the cakes but I don’t mind if I give those ones a miss and let JJ eat them.
Written on December 17, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Parenting
I had to share this Christmas card from JJ to me. His writing has improved a lot this year but he still needs a bit of work in the spelling area. While I’m mentioning improvements I have to say how overall, he improved in the last school term of the year.
He’d been falling into all his old patterns of naughtiness and detentions at school and it was really driving me and his teachers mad. On the first day of the last term JJ told me he’d been to the principal’s office after a kid’s parents had been to see her about JJ. He also told me that he was going back to see her on the Friday.
I rang the principal the next day to introduce myself and to talk about his behaviour. Even though I’d had numerous chats with his teacher and made it clear that I want to work with the school in regards to JJ this mustn’t have been relayed to the principal because she said she was glad that we’d had our chat and happy that I wanted to work with them to help JJ.
The upshot of the phone call was a meeting with a behaviour management person from the Department of Education, the pastoral care worker from school, a special ed teacher and JJ’s teacher. We sorted out a student development plan for JJ where we came up with three really simple goals that he could achieve quite easily and he would be rated by himself and his teacher three times per day with 1 being not very good and 5 being very good.
The goals (and aims) were: 1. Put up your hand for help (to allow yourself and others to work without distraction), 2. Stay in your seat and on task until you have finished your work (to get more learning done), and 3. Start work when the teacher asks (to get a good start with your learning).
If he got good ‘marks’ then he was able to have a reward and JJ and his teacher came up with a list of rewards like taking his DSi in, extra time on the computer – that sort of thing.
Looking back over the charts he hardly got any 1’s but mainly got 4’s annd 5’s. I bore the brunt of his being good at school because he was tired of that when he got home and we had some doozies of tantrums. I’d been kind of prepared for it though and was willing to go with it if it meant good behaviour at school. I was also pretty sure that it was just an adjustment phase for him and that things would settle down at home too.
During the term we had two or three follow up meetings with Department and the school, and JJ was involved this time too. He admitted that it was a long time to be good for not much time getting rewards, but as we told him the rewards were much more than just a bit of time playing his DSi at school.
And they were. The rewards for him were a boost in self-esteem and no detentions at all in the last term. I spoke to his teacher on the last day of term and she couldn’t say enough great stuff about him. Things like he’d become a role model for the other kids. He’d be first in line or first sitting down when asked to. She said she was going to tell his teacher for next year to not judge JJ on his previous record, but that the slate should be wiped clean and this was a brand new kid going to start grade 3.
Because JJ goes to out of school hours care we had to start something similar there too. At the beginning of the student development plan JJ had had a really good day at school and then at after school care was really really naughty. He’d even said to them that he’d been really good at school and didn’t need to be good afterwards. Needless to say once we started an after school care plan he was absolutely fine!
We’re going to continue the plan at the beginning of the next school year just to reinforce the good work that was done in the last term and fingers crossed it works.
Anyway, back to my Christmas card from JJ.
It says, Dear mum. I love you. You are the best (not beast). It would be cool if we could fly ad look at the rainbow closer – silly. And have a happy Christmas.
Bless him. I’m sure that ‘you are the beast’ is not a Freudian slip!
Written on October 6, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Journal, Parenting
After a few hectic weeks we’ve finally got a week off. We’re half packed and when we finish we’ll be heading off to the beach for a couple of days then a friend’s for a couple of days. I can’t wait. This is just what we all need to regroup before another school term starts.
Monty is JJ’s best friend when he feels that nobody else loves him, ie when he’s having an argument with me and ‘I’m in the wrong’. We love Monty. Do you think Monty’s expression is a look of love or a get me out of here look?
Written on September 4, 2009 by Jen
Filed Under: Parenting
photo credit: moriza
Dear parents at school,
Do you remember what it felt like when your child first started school and you knew nobody? Perhaps that didn’t bother you, or perhaps you connected with other parents really quickly, or maybe you knew other parents from the local kindergarten and already had a school parents’ friends base.
Not all parents find as easy to connect with others though. Spare a thought for them when they drop off or collect their child and they’re standing alone.
Perhaps they only occasionally drop their child off and find it hard to break into the clique who are there every morning and afternoon doing the drop-off and pickup.
Maybe you’ve pre-judged them because their child’s always in trouble and maybe their child has called your child a ‘fat-arse’ and you think that the parent must have somehow influenced the child saying that.
Maybe you think that because their child is in trouble nearly all the time that they don’t care about this and wouldn’t be worth knowing.
Maybe if you reached out that parent might really like some support and a friendly chat.
Maybe they’re just really shy and would welcome it if you made an effort to say hello to them and engage them in some sort of conversation. After all have one thing in common – your kid goes to the same school.
Maybe because you only rarely see them that you think it’s not worth it, after all they probably don’t have time to join you for a really long chat or a coffee and you just can’t be bothered.
So spare a thought for that mum or dad who’s standing by themselves at the school. They might not be standing alone out of choice.
