I went to bed “early” for me and then lost 2 hours to the television (honestly, I just wanted to watch the news!) Now I’m awake again only 4.5 hours later. Another long day of work ahead of me, bummer.
This morning I woke up thinking that I don’t know what a “typical” 4 year old is like and wondering if we’re holding Monkey back as a result. I know that most kids at this age are more independent and are doing more for themselves but Monkey seems to be missing (for the most part) the independent streak. He’s even a bit lazy, I would venture to say. He comes by this honestly of course.
Last night I was sitting on the couch complaining to my husband (via IM who was not 5 feet away from me) about being cold. I spent more time complaining and asking him to get me socks than it would have taken me to walk the 20 feet to our bedroom to get them myself. His solution was to turn the A/C down a bit via remote control so he wouldn’t have to listen to me complain or walk to our bedroom. So clearly he’s gotten a double dose of the lazy gene here. The child still asks me to carry him up and down stairs sometimes though I do say no 95% of the time, it’s a treat when I do agree to carry him. And, this past weekend, I made him some oatmeal. At one point, after he had eaten nearly all the oatmeal on his own with a spoon, I took the spoon to get the last little bit for him. He sat there with his mouth open, waiting for me to give him that last bite for I don’t know how long since I was distracted and talking to Duhdee. LAZY boy!
The point is that I woke up with this thought and tossed and turned for 45 minutes before I finally gave up and came out here to ask Professor Google. The Professor turned up lots of research abstracts (another sign that I’m not a typical parent, nearly all my search terms turn up research abstracts, lol) and finally spit out this. It seems pretty reasonable to me, any opinions from those been there, done that moms?
There are a number of things on there that Monkey is doing, there are some slight gaps and definitely some pronounced delays but there are things on there that he isn’t doing, that he could do if we encouraged him to do so. For instance, is there any reason Monkey can’t be putting his own clothes on? Sure, he doesn’t have the fine motor skills for zippers or the strength for snaps but he can easily put on his own boxers, sweatpants, pajamas, shirts, etc. So why doesn’t he?
Well, because we’ve always done it for him and it has become routine. He doesn’t object, we don’t think about it and oops…there go his self care skills! Since we have never had a “typical” 4 year old I think we may be holding him back in some ways. I’ve copied the list and I will print it out as soon as doing so won’t wake the entire household. I’ll show it to Duhdee and then we’ll start pushing Monkey to do more. This is one of those times when I really wish we’d had another child first, someone for Monkey to learn from. Someone for Duhdee and I to learn from! Instead I’m stuck with Professor Google. And you guys 😉
I know the feeling…sometimes it’s so much easier to “do it for them” than it is to have them do it for themselves. I still struggle with that at times. The boys should be doing more around the house to help out than they do now.
AND, I can be lazy at times, too! 🙂
Easier and, in our case, less stressful. Bedtime isn’t really a good time to be pushing new skills. I suppose if I got up earlier in the AM we could work on getting dressed then more easily…but who really wants to get up earlier?
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