Christmas Gift Ideas now? It is coming close to Christmas already, so it’s best to start thinking of what you might like to get for your child before the Christmas rush.
Old Man Wills, 8 turning 30, is smart, intelligent, has a good sense of humour, and is a mature little boy. He also loves his gadgetry. If I had to guess, his Christmas wish list would be something like this:
Bethany, 6 turning 16, is smart, cheeky, playful, has a wicked sense of humour, and loves her art and craft. She is still a young girl but is interested in a wide range of things. If I had to guess, her Christmas wish list would be something like this:
In my series to look at Child Care in Australia, Perth in particular, I need to talk about dumping my son in Child Care once a week to get him ready for Montessori School by age 3. Wills started off at a lovely Family Day Care provider’s granny flat in a leafy suburb. But after a year of that, the Family Day Carer told us that she was closing down her day care facility. Her life situation had changed and she wouldn’t be able to take care of our child anymore.
This was absolutely heart wrenching – Wills had gotten used to her and was even enjoying sessions at her place. Now we had to look for an alternative Child Care facility, and we feared that it will not live up to the standards set by the Family Day Carer. We were right. The new child care service, not far away, was housed in a huge building. All the children were in the same room and my son, being the gentle soul that he was, didn’t appreciate being jostled and wrestled. He was absolutely unhappy at this new place.
We persisted with this new child care place, a decision I now slightly regret, because we really didn’t have very many options and believed that along with playgroup, child care was good for him. We should have had the wherewithal to review the situation after a few weeks and pull the plug when it was ascertained that he wasn’t handling it very well. Fortunately his time at this subsequent child care service was short lived, and he entered Montessori school soon after.
When our little boy Wills was 12 months old, we knew that he’d be starting full time Montessori school here in Perth at the age of three. So we started to look for child care close to us where Wills could go for half a day or so, once or twice a week. We didn’t need long term child care as I was a stay-at-home parent doing my Master’s studies, and had my MIL close by.
Family Day Care seemed to be in line with what we wanted for our family – Family Day Carers are child care providers who would take care of up to four wards in their own homes, and are governed by policies set forth by Family Day Care WA. The choice of child care provider of course was up to us, and this was very much what we wanted.
We picked a family day care lady who was absolutely gorgeous. She was five minutes from us, had a lovely granny flat converted to a play house, and had four absolutely lovely teenage children. Of course, William, who was then 18 months old, was unimpressed and bawled bitterly when I left him for a short play that first day. I was devastated – and felt awful that morning. But I knew the experience was good for young William, and he needed to get used to a larger circle of people.
With his time at Family Day Care, he was exposed to other children, a new carer, stories, toys, games (he got really good at T-ball), art, and craft. What I thought was really cool was that he was exposed to different lunchtime food provided by the family day care provider. It’s not that we eat Asian food exclusively, to the contrary we don’t. But our lunches then were different to what they’d be served, and it would be nice to know he developed a taste of pumpkin soup outside our family. A new story to tell, son.
Family Day Care turned out to be just fantastic for him. His carer was better than we expected, and I still have very fond memories of her and her children to this day.
The last 9 years as a parent have seen me trawl through childhood memories reflecting on how my parents brought me up. I remember all too well instances which involved unjustified smacking, questionable choice of movies, not too healthful food and beverage provisions, and interesting decisions involving education. I don’t personally blame my parents for these things, they were doing the best they could for us. In fact, I think of these memories impartially because in fairness there were many good times and great points of my childhood. And yes, I felt loved.
Whatever can be said of my childhood, from the nutritional perspective (I was obese as a kid) or from an educational standpoint (government school most of the way), I think I turned out pretty well.
Reflecting on concern I have for my children, I’ve come up with some questions:
If I’m a total stuff up, how can my children model themselves on what NOT to become?
How do I make sure that they look impartially on our failings and yet remember us fondly?
How can they maximise their own potential despite any current shortcomings?
And … how would they develop personal independence yet retain the wisdom to depend on our input?
It’s interesting looking through the retrospectroscope back into childhood, isn’t it? I certainly can remember lots of things from when I was 3yo and upwards. Reflecting on these memories is yet another lesson for your own parenting approach. How do you view your parents? How would you like your children to look at you?
The School-at-Home Program and Art over Maths posts were about an activity in the holidays that included art, history, cooking, and poetry in an integrated course by yours truly. Let’s cut through the chase, while the kids kinda like that sort of thing, what they really like is the SuperParents Holiday Driving Program.
Yes you heard it, DRIVING.
We go to a large semi-deserted carpark, and the kids hop on my lap and take over the wheel. I control the pedals and provide some instruction, but otherwise, they get to steer the car and drive. This is a great opportunity to discuss safety tips like looking left and right, how to be aware when you drive, and how the car handles on the road. The best thing is that they have lots of fun feeling how a real car behaves.
Do you know what a quantum leap is? From Wikipedia …
In the popular sense, the term is usually applied to mean a large or significant change
This is what Wills went through two days ago whilst doing Suzuki Violin practice. He’s at the end of book one, and we have been looking at flashes of brilliance and then instances where he looks like he’s plodding through mud. The issue, and which has always been his bugbear, is that when he thinks the song is harder or faster, he tries harder. Inevitably, this means he tenses up to either play it faster by moving his bow arm faster or shifting fingers over string positions whilst following the music. No where is this problem more apparent than when he does his doubles – either on Perpetual Motion or Etude.
I wanted him to change this idea of ‘trying harder’. My assumption is that to move more fluidly and be more responsive, the Suzuki violinist needs to have a state of relaxedness. Not total relaxation, but to have an optimal amount of relaxedness in order to control fine muscle movement. Rather than have him stand, I got him to sit on the chair and waited until he centred his mind – meaning I waited until he stopped twitching around and looked at me. The shoulders are kept relaxed in his sitting position. The violin goes up on his shoulder. The right bow arm is left dangling by his side. I then instructed him to bring his bowing arm ever so slowly close to his body, in toward his centre-line, and then to gently place it on the strings. Then keeping movements small, start with minute movements of the wrist and then into the forearm. The idea is to ’shiver’ the muscles – rather than to initiate bowing motion from shoulder muscles.
When the speed and clarity of these ‘doubles’ satisfied me, we returned to Perpetual Motion. The same instructions ensued. In the middle of the piece, when the doubles started, a strange thing happened. He started off blitzing the doubles, and immediately realised he was trying too hard and way too fast for Perpetual Motion. He corrected his speed and continued the doubles – but this time it came out beautiful and slow-sounding. Almost as though he hit the air brakes and entered the zone.
Future muscle and joint injuries, and occurrences of RSI averted. Easily done.
Bed and Breakfast in Perth with SuperParents is really my eldest son Wills started taking out the plates and toasting bread whilst I was still in bed. Ahhh. What a life.
Wills has increasingly made it known that he likes to get to school early. He loved it when he was one of the first to get to school last week. So coming into the kitchen this morning, I saw a fully dressed young man already halfway through his breakfast. There was drink poured for his little sister and more toast for the entire family.
Time slowed a little as we prepared their school lunches but Wills left the table in a flash, got ready, grabbed my keys and was waiting in the car for all of us. Unfortunately, there he waited as the little girl still needed her hair done and typically gets ready when she gets ready.
While not the best reward for his good efforts, he needs to realise that we’re a team – and we cross the finish line together.
The video below is of my precious little girl – aged 5 – at a large indoor rock climbing facility in Malaysia. In that one hour plus session, she scaled up multiple walls and was the centre of attention on a particular two story high wall. On coming down from that one massive climb, there was all round applause from climbers and spectators.
She could very well be the poster child for women of the 21st Century.
She’s intelligent, fearless, physically fit, confident, and tactical. Brought up by equal parenting, she sees both the man and the woman as equals trying their best for the ‘team’. Best of all she has not been told that girls can’t do this or that; she’s not been indoctrinated to think of stereotypes. As a judo practitioner, she faces off both girls and boys and knows to fall back on technique and mental strength rather than think of issues of physical power or strength.
How would you feel if you were told you weren’t good enough all the time? If you constantly met people who just thought of you as ‘arm candy’? Or who judged you on your vital statistics? All this just because you are a woman. Do you think you’d start to doubt yourself?
Her strengths? She empathizes for the team, but knows to look out for herself. She is composed, steady, and will probably be underestimated constantly.
I remember class down time after exams in Year 8 sitting in the AV Room and watching the movie Flashdance, and listening to the theme song ‘What a Feeling’ by Irene Cara.
Can there be another more inappropriate movie to show a bunch of pimply hormonal 14yos? Classified an M for its raunchy scenes it was really interesting to see the reactions from some the kids, and hearing the goss about how these two classmates of ours were ‘getting it on’ at the back of class. How did I miss that? Oh yeah, I was sitting closer to the screen for a better view.
What would you think if your child’s school put on some inappropriate movies for your children? I remember seeing a bunch of shows I shouldn’t have watched. I mean for chrissakes – Jaws at 6yo! Bo Derek at 7!
The Original SuperKid and my son Wills decided last Thursday he wanted to cook dinner for the entire family.
He choose his menu – Spaghetti Bolognese and Apple Rhubarb Crumble, researched the recipes online and from the Stephanie Alexander recipe bible, created his grocery list, managed the shopping, prepared everything, and cooked most of all the food – ALL BY HIMSELF. My daughter did the garlic bread and helped with the table setting for our family and one guest.
Getting kids to be a part of the family means getting them to work side by side you in the kitchen. Cooking and food preparation allows me to share with him valuable tips in organising his bench. Scheduling what needs to be done and prioritising what to focus on. The best thing is that I get to give him some good tips to produce some beautiful food. Below is a picture of Wills chopping up the garlic. You can see the goggles on his head from when he was dicing the onions.
William 8yo Cooking Dinner
The following photo is of him stirring the bolognese sauce and ensuring that it’s properly seasoned. I took over at this point in time when he left to go do his crumble. I modified the recipe a little to ensure the sauce comes up tasting really good – but I didn’t have to do very much to it at all.
Stirring the Pot with a Smile
The dinner came together really well. Despite my wife and I were doing the good cop bad cop routine – she was pressuring him to finish the food because our guests were arriving and I was telling him to focus on getting the food right. It was almost like a MasterChef episode. He was so proud of his efforts – and was smiling from ear-to-ear as he plated up and served it to us all.
As part of his ‘School-at-Home‘ Holiday Program, I’m getting him to write a post on what he felt were areas he needed help in, where he asked for support, and what he learned from the entire cooking exercise. I’ll get that up on this blog when he finishes it.
