A Facebook memory popped up recently that reminded me of a quote from a parenting book that I read a while ago. This quote seems more relevant now than ever. The source of this quote is How Toddlers Thrive:
"Remember, it's not your job to make your child happy. ... The truth is this: No parent can make his or her child happy all the time. Children know how to be happy. What they are not so good at is handling the hard times. This is where you, the parent, come in. Want happiness? Our job is to set them up to handle life more and more on their own, and to gradually let go. At the center of this is helping them deal with life's hurdles. ...By supporting them to handle negatives in life--negative feelings, disappointments, rejections, errors, and setbacks. That is the biggest gift you can give your child...From there emerges happiness. ...The catch is that a child can only have this competence if we let them face the tough times...and help them through." I wanted to reflect a little bit about this, because recently I have noticed that my son is just on an emotional rollercoaster. Around his birthday, he really wanted a birthday party. My husband and I didn't think it was going to turn out well, since he had been in and out of school all year (due to the pandemic) and has not had steady in-school friendships as a result. But I can't protect him from social disappointment forever, right? He really wanted a birthday party because we had done a just-us-at-home celebration for him in 2020, and he was willing to take the risk that maybe only a few kids would come to his party. We ended up hosting an outdoors party at a neighborhood playground, and it went fine, even though I was nail-biting for two weeks after sending out the invites, because we were only receiving No's in return. It was not a birthday rager, but my son was happy to have a few of his classmates and a few family friends come to celebrate with him. He even wrote out party invitations to his stuffed animals and told me that "the stuffies RSVP'ed and said they would definitely be there!" And, in the end, he told me that he had a great day because his friends came and made him feel very special. Then, my son had a real heartbreak when his beloved grandparents left to return home after a month of staying with us this summer. I don't know when the next time will be that we could see them, because we don't feel comfortable flying until the kids are both vaccinated. But, I held him multiple days and let him cry in my arms, until he started to feel better. We read a book about a grandma (The Most Beautiful Thing by Kao Kalia Yang), and talked about how even when grandparents are not physically next to us, the memories that we made with them stay with us and become a part of us. I talked to him about how, even though my mom has passed, she is still with me because I have so many wonderful memories of her, and that while his grandparents are far away, we can look at photos and be reminded of those special times he spent with them. I helped him print out some photos, let him take charge of updating our family album, and I hung up in his room a photo of him holding hands with his grandparents, so that he can look at it often and be reminded daily of how much they love him. The day that we switched my son to a new gymnastics class (shortly after he turned 5, he aged out of his previous gymnastics class), I was nervous about that transition. When we took him to the new gym location, we learned that because of their lack of windows and COVID precautions, they do not allow parents to hang out and watch the kids. So, it was a drop-off-and-see-ya-later situation. Given that it was a new class, a new coach, and a new location, I did not know how it would go, but my son was totally fine in the end. Currently, my son is undergoing a lot of emotions as his friends are transitioning out of the pre-K class at different points in the summer. It is mixed, I am sure, with anxiety about Kindergarten. I have not talked to any parent who has an incoming Kindergartener, who is not nervous about the transition, but I think about how the Kindergarten teachers are pros at managing this transition, and how much personal confidence my son is going to gain after managing this transition (which will take a little while, I am sure). As people learning to find themselves, our kids need this type of challenge to help them grow beyond what is already comfortable. I have to remind myself that it is good -- and necessary -- for them to be challenged this way. Without smaller challenges, they cannot gain the confidence that they need to tackle bigger challenges. On a related note, I recently read the book Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne, a long-term counselor and Waldorf educator. I love his book and his podcast by the same name, both of which advocate for simplifying our kids' lives (fewer activities, fewer toys, less screen time, less adult news, narrower set of choices, stricter daily rhythm, and fewer books even!) in order to give their brains a chance to self-heal and to grow at an appropriate pace that maximizes their mental health. When our kids feel challenged, his podcast and book offer many practical ways to ease the tension/balance between what is asked of the kids and what they are able to give. I highly recommend it. As a parent, what do you worry about? What part of those worries can you reframe as necessary and beneficial for your child's growth?
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I have been reading Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating to help my big kid with his eating issues. I love this book. It is so clearly respectful to the child and emphasizes all the reasons why it is important to lessen pressure around meal times and to trust that the child will explore new foods on their own timeline. I also live in the real world and understand that maintaining that trust is hard when you are facing a challenging eater, but the book helps me to at least wrap my mind around this philosophy so that I can really give it a shot. The thing I like the most about the book is that it makes me feel like the authors really see my child. I know that they are writing about a general category of kids, but the descriptions they use feel so vivid to our family's experience, that they might as well be sitting in my dining room.
Feeding therapy is going surprisingly well, actually. We are only five weeks in, and miraculously, every week my son has gained and kept up with one new food item! (Each week, we try about three new foods during the 45-minute feeding therapy session, so he is still rejecting plenty of foods. I feel that the feeding therapy was a very good decision on our part, and it has already moved us in the right direction, but it is clearly still necessary for him to continue the professional help.) I don't take this progress for granted, because I have read threads on different forums about picky eaters either trying a new food during the therapy session and then not keeping the food up at home, or picky eaters not trying any food at all per suggestions. One thing that has been very powerful for us in the therapy process is introducing new foods that are related to existing favorites. For example, last week we tried to introduce guacamole, immediately after my son ate some avocados. (If you are wondering why guacamole would be challenging for a child who eats avocados, this is what I am saying -- you and I are living two separate parenting realities. This is why I feel so supported and seen by this book, as a parent struggling with this issue.) My son ended up eating the entire serving of guacamole that day, even though initially he would not even touch it with his fingers. In the book I am reading, they describe this as a "bridging" strategy for connecting what the child already eats with what you would like them to eat. (They also offer other bridging strategies.) I used to think that you can just keep putting any food item in front of a child, and offer it enough times until they eventually try it. Now, I understand that for my son, at least, that strategy is very unlikely to work. He needs to be offered tiny little steps from where he is, to go all the way to the new food. It takes a lot of patience and forethought, but it seems to make a difference. For example, my son has been successfully eating small pieces of new (unfamiliar) cheeses tucked inside a tiny Cheezit cracker sandwich (2 crackers holding a piece of cheese in the middle), as a treat at the end of every lunch meal that I serve at home. He likes these fun / funny Cheezit "sandwiches," because he likes the cracker and he thinks that this way, he can't really taste the cheese. But, after eating the Cheezit sandwich for a few days in a row, I was able to convince him to open up the sandwich to eat the cheese on top of a single cracker (like an "open-faced sandwich"). This way, over time, I can change it up to put the cheese on more bland crackers, and -- tada! -- he will just be eating regular crackers with those new cheese varieties at that point. These are many tiny bridges, intentionally connecting where he started and where he needs to go as an eater. It sounds a little exhausting, perhaps, to think ahead this way, but trust me, it is way less exhausting than trying to deal with the emotional rollercoaster of a child who skips meals because they feel overwhelmed by everything on the table. I also feel incredibly grateful that we decided to get feeding help when we did, because I don't have actual caloric concerns at the moment for L, and I don't believe we have permanently damaged his relationship to food. I think ideally, we would have found feeding help even sooner, before L fell into the rhythm of being served a separate meal from us. But, when I read through the book Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating, I was affirmed that we did not do too many things to cause further food-related anxiety. (We only bargained with him minimally, and we never tried things like sticker charts or bribing with desserts.) We did start to go down the route of inviting conflict during meal times about two months ago, but stopped things from spiraling downhill when we sought help from a feeding specialist, and for that, I am so grateful. Related to this, I have been thinking about the parallels between family dinners and watching my child on the playground. I accompanied my other child (my toddler) to the playground today, and frankly felt a little disappointed, because most of the time at the playground, she was carrying two tiny pieces of fruit from a tree back and forth between two places on the playground. She only used the playground equipment minimally, which made me feel a bit like, "Okay, we could have just gone outside of our house, if she was going to just do this, instead of walking 20 minutes to get here?" Although I gently suggested a couple of times for her to play on the slide or the swing, I did not insist on her playing with anything. I did not tell her, "This is a waste of my time," or confront her with, "Why are you not interested in the equipment today? What's wrong with them?" If I did do that, I think it would have been very inappropriate. But, why do we feel like we should do that at meal time? In fact, we feel like it's our job to get our kids to eat "enough", and that if our kids decide to ignore meats for 6 months, that there is a real problem to fix, maybe through coercion. Maybe we feel like they need to eat because we spent so much time cooking the food, and what's wrong with this food anyway? --Today, on the playground, I was reflecting about how kids will be kids; thinking about the connection between trusting them to have autonomy on the playground and trusting them to make their decisions at the dinner table, helps me to refocus on why Division of Responsibility makes sense. I always think about how we, as people, have a hard time learning abstract things in a vacuum. It's hard to really teach a child about growth mindset, when they are not actively working through a challenge. It's hard to teach a child about compassion for others, if they rarely encounter people who are differently-abled or who are in a different socioeconomic situation. Likewise, I try to look at situations like the one we are in -- where we are trying to work with our son through something that is really tough for him -- and consider what insights we are gaining as parents, as we work through this challenge together. (I am pondering this from a parenting perspective, because I think it's a bit more obvious what my child is gaining from this? He is slowly gaining more confidence with food, which must indirectly impact other aspects of his confidence and self-perception.) I am still thinking about this, but I know that what we gain as parents has something to do with deeper trust, joy, empathy, and patience. Viewing through that lens, we are maybe exactly where we need to be in our journey to grow as parents. 'Tis the spooky season! We finally carved our pumpkins yesterday. I think they did not turn out as well as last year's pumpkins, but considering that now we have two little ones running around, it was not bad! My husband also roasted some really delicious pumpkin seeds, which we had never done before. Now that the sun is setting earlier, we have been trying to eat dinner early on Friday nights, so that we can either play boardgames or do crafts as a family after dinner to ease into the weekend. This past Friday night, we had our second family Halloween craft night. This time, I thought it might be fun to make a ghost garland together, since it requires only printer paper, scissors, a hole-puncher, and some clear tape. Surprisingly, the family was super into this simple craft! My husband and I enjoyed making various designs of ghosts on tri-folded printer paper, and my son enjoyed cutting them out. (The adults cut out/hole-punched the faces, since they were a bit tricky, and I helped with taping the garland pieces all together, but my son was happy to cut out all the ghost outlines, and I think he did a very nice job "cutting on the line"!) My daughter enjoyed sitting on the bench, touching the paper scraps, and being one of the big kids. Below are some finished products. If you are looking for a fun and easy Halloween activity still for this coming week, I would highly recommend trying this! My husband remarked that the last time our house was this decorated for Halloween was when we threw a huge Halloween bash 4 years ago. Earlier in the week, when I was out walking with my kids on a particularly dry and windy day, we enjoyed seeing all of the colorful fall foliage. We collected some leaves from the floor and made foliage crowns! Such an easy and fun thing to make. My daughter, in particular, loved her crown and wore it around the house on multiple days. In other updates, we have been going to the library every week, now that our local branch offers curb-side pickup for the books that we have reserved online. This week, we coincided our library pickup with dropping off our ballots for the November election. In light of all of the voter suppression, I feel so incredibly fortunate to not only live in an area that has had a track record of extremely effective voting-by-mail, but to be able to walk to our nearest ballot box, which is located next to our neighborhood branch of the library. I usually take one or both kids with me to drop off our ballots. This year was no exception, and my son was very excited to be the designated ballot-inserter! After we dropped off the ballots, we walked literally less than 10 feet to get in line to pick up our library books. Our latest stash from the library includes two books about gender identity. My son enjoys both of them very much! One is called I Am Jazz and it is told from the perspective of a (real-life) transgender child, Jazz Jennings. I agree with the review on the back cover of the book that says that the best part of the book is that Jazz is never apologetic about who she is. From beginning to end, the book has no feeling of shame, and L says he likes "everything" about the book! The other book, Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, is about a boy who likes to wear a dress and high heels at school. It's more nuanced than I am Jazz, because it is not clear if Morris is exploring a different gender or if he is simply creative and likes to play outside of the norms of stereotypical gender roles. I really like this book, because it reaffirms that everyone is okay to wear what they like to wear, and they don't owe anyone else an explanation. My son also really likes this book (no surprise there; I think it is really well-written, thoughtful, and FUN). He told me, at one point, that I had already asked him multiple times, "Is that nice?" when other kids at school bully Morris for wearing a dress. I think some things bear repeating, and I told L that if we both can agree that it is not nice, then if L were to see someone at school acting that way, he should stand up and tell them, "Hey, that's not nice! You should not do that!" L nodded and replied, "Or, I can also tell the teacher."
The books from the library are part of my on-going attempt to expose L to issues outside of himself. In my reflection about home-schooling, I have been thinking a lot about teaching empathy, compassion, and self-regulation. I think that generally, my son can be empathetic and reasonable, but he is not consistently so. I can do a better job in focusing on building up his socio-emotional skills, even though it can be hard to teach that in a vacuum, when he is not around other kids except for his little sister. One thing that I will try to do in the coming months is to introduce an emotions chart. My son has maybe only 6 or so self-regulating descriptors that he currently uses: happy, sad, mad, tired, hungry, thirsty, and scared; and he sometimes says "This is taking too long!" instead of saying he feels impatient or "This is too hard!" when he means to say that he feels frustrated. I want to increase his facility with emotional vocabulary, to increase his ability to label his own feelings. I also want to encourage him to practice articulating boundaries like, "I don't like it when you __________ because ___________." Like anything else, I think it will just take practice for him to get better with it, and if we practice using that language even just once a day, everyday, then we will see dividends in a little while! I love to read with my kids. My son is now 4 and loves to read anything from baby board books to short chapter books, so how we read together over the years has changed a lot, but reading has always filled a special place in our home. We are very lucky to have had no regular screen time for him up until now (before COVID, it was a parenting choice because we did not like how even short exposure to screens affected his moods, but after the pandemic started, I am cognizant of how much of a privilege it is to parent without screens). Because of this, books play a huge role in our down time. I thought I would write a post to share what types of books and what styles of reading have worked best for us, in case this helps anyone else. When my son was a baby, he immediately liked interactive books and music. He loved the baby animal books with flaps, of course. We also have a shark finger puppet book Little Shark, and when I read it, I interleave the actual book text with "little shark, doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo" rhythm from the Baby Shark song while wiggling the shark finger puppet. He also liked Snuggle Puppy, because I made up a tune to go with the book and would sing the tune every time. (I probably should have looked up the actual Sandra Boynton song, but once I made up a tune, we just stuck by it, and even my husband sings my tune.) Similarly, he liked Moo, Baa, La La La and we would always sing the "la la la" part with gusto. Even my one-year-old sings it now, which is adorable! When my son got a little older, his favorite musical books included The Wonky Donky and Coat of Many Colors (both songs now stream conveniently on Alexa). My husband loves to beatbox his way through The Pout-Pout Fish and Chicka Chicka ABC. These sing-song books have stood the test of time, and my daughter loves them, too! A few books that we love for dancing include Hokey Pokey Elmo (my one-year-old recently learned to turn herself around during this song, which is amazing) and From Head to Toe by Eric Carle. We also love rhymes at our house. We started our son on the beginner Dr. Seuss books (gifted to us by our neighbors when our son turned 1), but have since moved on to various intermediate Seuss Books (all hand-me-downs from neighbors), even though some of them are significantly longer than the beginner books. He loves the stories, the pictures, and the rhymes. For his recent birthday during COVID shelter-at-home, I actually executed my idea of drawing Dr. Seuss's Birthday Bird (a character from one of his intermediate books) on our sidewalk during his nap. He loved it and was able to enjoy the chalk drawing for weeks before it was washed off by the rain! The rhymes in Dr. Seuss's books were so good for his language development, that he began making his own rhyming phrases using non-real words by the time he was in preschool. Intermediate Dr. Seuss books also have pretty sophisticated vocabulary, which I try to remember to highlight from time to time. As a toddler, L liked to multi-task while listening to our reading of books and would crawl around instead of sitting on my lap while I was reading. To check in on his attention, I began to purposely switch out words, "We looked! And we saw him -- the dog in the pants!" and he would immediately correct me, "No, the cat in the hat!" It quickly became a running joke; every day, with every book, we would read with so many intentional errors, and L would keep correcting each one. At some point, he became impatient and would recite entire pages to us from memory. Around age 3, we started talking about the feelings of the characters, because I realized that although L could memorize the text, he often could not articulate the characters' motivations. With some encouragement and modeling, he began to use words like "mad", "sad", "happy", and "scared" to explain what is happening in the books. Sometimes he said "frustrated", but I was not sure he actually knew what it meant. I loved the Busy Bus books for this, as well as The Giving Tree and Giraffs Can't Dance, but pretty much every book we read, it was possible to ask him about the characters' emotions. This was when I began viewing picture books as a means to an end, as a lens to understand the world around us. Since then, we have used picture books as a launchpad to talking about: racism (Knock Knock by Daniel Beaty and The Case for Loving by Selina Alko); election (Amelia Bedelia's First Vote by Herman Parish); homelessness (Trupp: A Fuzzhead Tail by Janelle Cannon); and blended families (Tumbleweed Baby by Anna Meyers). I have some books coming from the library that are about gender roles and sexual orientation (I am Jazz and Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress). As I discussed in my previous post, I have also used picture books to open doors to mathematical discussions, and I find that books are great at all ages for opening dialogues to new topics. When we potty-trained, I loved Super Pooper and "Bloop, Bloop!" Goes the Poop from the huge stack of potty-training picture books I picked up from the library. Similarly, in transitioning to big brotherhood, L really loved reading Where do Babies Come From? by Jillian Roberts and Hello in There by Jo Witek before his sister was born; after she was born, Ginger by Charlotte Voake and Babies Ruin Everything! by Matthew Swanson were favorites in our house. We read Babies Ruin Everything! so many times, that I felt like L was definitely affirmed in his angst toward the new baby, while we were both able to laugh about it.
I also enjoy reading some books with L that challenge him to think beyond the literal text. You would think that metaphors are too abstract for kids, but L seems to understand when I talk about the stories being actually about something else. Some examples I can think of include: Yertle the Turtle; The Giving Tree; My First Kafka; and This is Not a Picture Book! Upon my nudging, L was able to appreciate the figurative language used in the gorgeous writing of Owl Moon, and told his dad that the book uses words to "make it feel like you are there." In Every Moon is a book whose text is a beautiful poem; it is a bit abstract but imaginative. My son likes it, and we have talked about the recursive nature of the book. What If... by Samantha Berger is a book gifted to us on L's second birthday; the author's note at the end is so special and re-frames the book to be about both creativity and perseverance, that L asks me to read the author's note to him every time. I also enjoy reading occasional books to the kids in other languages. We had a hand-me-down Clifford book that is bilingual in both English and Spanish, that is a hit with both of our kids. They actually love hearing me read the same book in Spanish and Chinese! We have a copy of The Color Monster pop-up book in French that was a gift from my sister, whose partner is French. I translated the book into written English (a tedious task -- I should have probably Googled earlier to find that there are already English versions online) and then I translate it orally to Chinese on the fly. I generally read all story-heavy English books by translating it into Chinese on the fly, but now that L is reading some English chapter books on his own, we often alternate reading different pages, and usually I do that in English in order to keep the flow going. Other books that have been well-loved in our house include classic series like: Elephant and Piggie; Knuffle Bunny; Olivia the Pig; Clifford the Big Red Dog; Corduroy; and Alexander (a la Judith Viorst). L loved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day so much that I ended up checking out all of the Alexander books for him from the library. A couple of the later books were twice as long as the first Alexander book and were clearly intended for a slightly older audience, but L loved them all the same. (Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday also has a lot of wonderful references to coin values. Great math link, even though the items are priced way too low by today's standards!) L also loves We Hate Rain! by James Stevenson, and that was among his first exposure to graphic novel-style books. We have also read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Magic School Bus: Inside the Human Body, which L liked but I thought were meant for an older reader. I have particularly enjoyed watching L looking closely at pictures in books over the years. Some of his books have almost no words, and the entire story is told through a carefully crafted sequence of pictures! The first such book that both of my kids love is Higher! Higher! (currently one of my daughter's favorite books) by Leslie Patricelli. When we read it together, my daughter has opportunities to high-five me and to wave at the different characters that appear. She also says, "盪!" ("swing") and "高" ("high"), because she loves the swing theme in the book. The books I like for close reading of pictures include: Oops by Arthur Geisert; In the Town, All Year Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner; and Busytown by Richard Scarry. My husband does not have enough patience for In the Town, All Year Round, but it is one of my favorite books on the shelf. It was gifted to my son by one of his classmates' mom, and it is just a marvelous book. There are a couple of dozen scenes of the same town throughout the entire year, and you can trace the storylines and friendships of a dozen characters through those scenes. In each season, there are also some vehicles and themes that tie the whole season together, and there are usually elements of surprise tucked away at every turn-of-page. It is exquisitely illustrated. Maybe because L is used to looking closely at pictures, he often astonishes me with his attention to detail. For example, once when we were reading the book Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, he stopped me on the page when the bulldozer was tucked into bed to tell me that, actually, the digger sleeps on the other side of that wall. He proved his point by cross-referencing different pages of the book to show me that the illustrations on all the pages are all spatially coherent. Recently, I noticed (after reading Sheep in a Jeep for like 300 times) that one of the sheep has a brown head through most of the book. I asked L if he knew where it was from, and he said matter-of-factly, "Yeah, it was because he fell (head-first) into the mud in the beginning of the book." Similarly, in A Hippo's Tale, he cross-referenced pictures from multiple parts of the book to tell me that the initial setup of the beach already showed where Mrs. Hippopotamus's hut is located, because you can verify the details from later in the book to know that that is her hut in the corner of the page spread. I am always pleasantly surprised by his attentiveness to the pictures. I am sure that is good pre-academic practice for school somehow, like for the sense-making that we want our kids to have across all the courses. Recently, I have been thinking about how L is ready to learn science through his books. By chance, we came across two neat science books from Little Free Reading Libraries near us: The Open Ocean, a delightful pop-up book by Bernadette Gervais and Francesco Pittau and Benny's Animals, a wonderful chapter book by Millicent Selsam about classification of animals. Eric Carle has a book Pancakes, Pancakes! that has a page that illustrates how water and a pair of gears work together at the mill to turn grains of wheat into flour. As he grows, I look forward to how his books will grow with him. Once L got through the 100 reading lessons and all of the Bob books and the few beginning reader books I bought for him (What This Story Needs is a Pig in a Wig; A Pig, a Fox, and a Box; Elephant and Piggie set; and The Cookie Fiasco), he has been dipping his toes into reading some chapter books that I have checked out from the library. For chapter books, L has been reading the Mercy Watson series, which I feel lukewarm about, but my son apparently adores. I think that he likes the series partly because I made up a musical jingle for Leroy Ninker's silly "Yippie-I-O" rhymes. It has been a challenge balancing reading Mercy Watson with L and not neglecting his little sister, however, because each of those books can take us 20-40 minutes of continuous reading. (If he co-reads with me, it can take a long time, but even if I read it straight-up, each book can take 20+ minutes.) As soon as we finish one of them, he wants to pick up another one. I feel both happy that he is now emerging as a mature reader and sad that my first baby is growing up. What books do you love for your kids? In my previous post, I talked about how I noticed that my son had stagnated or maybe regressed in his math development at school for about 6 months, by the time he turned 3.5. I began taking an interest in working with him on math at home. I started with counting practice, and since he loved being read to, I wanted to look for some books to encourage and elevate his interest in math. Here are some books that have emerged as my favorites and a little bit about why I liked them. The first is One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. Here is a kid reading it out loud, so you can see what it's all about. My son loved how silly it is, and he began to pick up on the pattern that if you are looking at 60, you can peek at the first digit to know that 60 is 6 crabs! He was able to look at 100 and say, after a couple of times through the book, that it would be ten crabs, because if we cover the last zero, what remains is 10. The book was an excellent bridge to us doing some practice on the western abacus. After we had read the book consistently for a few weeks, I got a free hand-me-down abacus from my neighbor, and we started playing with each row of ten on the abacus being a "crab." My son was able to say, "28 has twenty, and that is two crabs, or two tens!" and we would move two rows of the abacus over to get 20, and then count up single beads 21, 22, 23, 24, ... until we get to 28 (see picture of abacus below for 28). A lot of repetition later, he now understands both how to quickly represent any two-digit quantity on the (western) abacus, and how to look at the abacus and identify the quantity numerically. This practice has helped him to understand the magnitude of two-digit numbers, not just how to sound them out (which, if you recall, he mostly learned from being interested in riding busses). As the child grows, I can also see One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab growing with them, because the book actually also includes principles like counting-on from a known quantity and the commutative property of multiplication. The child in the video I linked to above does a stellar job explaining those mathematical connections. I would say this book is worth buying, even though I checked it out from our local library (and coincidentally got to keep it for several months, during their COVID hiatus). Another really great book that I have enjoyed is Press Here, which we also picked up for free, I think from a Little Free Reading Library. It is such a wonderful book that even my one-year-old daughter loves to flip through it and to read it with us. The book is highly interactive, and takes you through almost a video game-like series of interactions. It has some basic event counting, like, "Press the yellow dot 5 times," or "Clap 3 times!" and some qualitative math, like when you clap, the child can see that the dots grow bigger. It also has some pattern recognition, because on one page, it briefly mentions that two elements in a pattern got mixed up in the dark. It was a really great discussion with my son about how we can figure out which two elements are mixed up. Overall, we love this book and I would recommend buying it. My son learned to count collections of objects up to ten in school, mostly, but in terms of reinforcing counting at home, the books that I like are the following: Tumble Bumble, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and Spot a Lot Vehicle Adventure. I love Tumble Bumble because it does counting-on, which is basically the idea that if we already know how many items we have (say, six), and we add one more, the child should be able to increment the existing count instead of counting all over again starting at 1. When I first started working with my son at home on counting, I noticed that no matter how many fingers I put up on my hands (say, I put up 5 fingers on one hand and 2 more on the other), he would always count starting from 1, even though he could already tell me that one full hand is 5 fingers. It took us a lot of consistent practice to count-on from known quantity, instead of starting over from 1 every time. Tumble Bumble counts the total number of animals without starting back at 1, so it makes a good math discussion, once your child is developmentally ready for it. I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar because it is a beautiful story that even very young kids can enjoy (we love many Eric Carle books here, mostly or all gifted by the grandparents, and even my one-year-old loves this particular book), but I also appreciate how the book is so cleanly laid out, so that on each page, we can count the objects in a different order (left to right, or right to left), in order to emphasize that the count remains the same no matter the order of objects. It is also very clever that the fruits being eaten in subsequent days physically overlap in this book, because you can visually see that 4 strawberries is just one more fruit than 3 plums, and that 5 oranges is just one more fruit than 4 strawberries. Developmentally, that understanding definitely comes later than simply counting the number of objects in a collection. Spot a Lot Vehicle Adventure is a good resource for daily practice of counting. The pictures are vivid, and there is a lot of stuff to count on every page, actually too much to get through in one sitting for a young child. My son loves vehicles, and for a while he wanted to read this book and count the objects in it every night before bed, and he would actually always count until he was exhausted and expired. There is not much of a story line in this book, and on some pages the objects are a bit tough to keep track of (because the instances don't all look the same), but it was still really good practice for him to try to stay organized by counting from left to right or from top to bottom in a page. Overall, I would recommend it if your child likes transportation and needs a little encouragement to count regularly and carefully. When my son learned to read, I bought him some beginning reader books to celebrate his accomplishment, and one of the books that I saw on a beginning readers' list is a math story called The Cookie Fiasco. I remember once gifting this book to a friend's child, so when I saw it on the list, I immediately ordered it, excited to have an excuse to add it to our collection. It has been fabulous for us! My son loves reading this book with me, and he now reads it to himself or to his dad. Because we have been regularly using the terms half and quarter with him while eating bagels at home, he is able to follow the math in the story and can tell me at the end of the book that each friend eats 3 quarter pieces of the cookie (even though the book never mentions the word quarter). Amazing! As a middle- and high-school math teacher who has seen so many kids intimidated by the idea of fractions, I love how this book contextualizes fractional division in a really fun way. Other math books that we enjoy include: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, which talks about zero and the idea of subtraction; Five Little Monkeys Make a Birthday Cake (there's not a lot of math in it, but my son enjoys observing that they definitely used too many eggs); and Round is a Mooncake, which is about shapes and has references to Chinese culture, which I appreciate, of course. We don't have this book, but obviously Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed is also about counting down, contextualized in a story so the child can see that counting down corresponds to having one fewer. I think a lot of times young kids get exposed to counting up, but not as much to counting down in their preschool life, so anything we can do to encourage their facility with counting down is going to be great for their mathematical development. (For example, when we are lifting our two-year-olds out of the bath or out of the high chair, we can always count down, "10, 9, 8, ...., 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.... blast off!" We can make it fun, but this helps them to internalize the sequence backwards, which will make subtraction operations easier down the road.) Honestly, books and math -- what's there not to love?
Growing up, I was always extremely close with my mom. I have so many memories of talking to her for an hour at a time, while she was cooking in the kitchen every night. I would tell her every small thing that had happened at school, and she would help me to reflect on who I am and what my observations and opinions said about my values. Even though I moved away from home after high school and proceeded to live in different states, countries, and even continents than her, I always maintained a very close relationship with my mom. After she was diagnosed with cancer in 2013, I made it a priority to visit her regularly, in order to spend as much time with her as possible; I did not want to feel any regret after her passing. I wanted to make sure that she felt loved and appreciated by me, and selfishly, I also wanted to make more memories with her before it was too late.
When my mother passed away in 2018, it was the end to five years of surgery and treatment. She had missed physically being present for the birth of my son and her first grandchild (in 2016), because she had been undergoing chemotherapy at home. By the time she passed, she had been confined to her couch and bed for a while; she had grown incredibly thin and could not stay awake for long stretches of time, and it was terrifying to wait for the last goodbye that could come at any time. In that slow, excruciating journey of loss, we had said goodbye both explicitly and emotionally so many times, that I felt there was simultaneously nothing left unsaid, and yet everything still to be said, once she was actually gone. When I read Michelle Obama's Becoming, one of the parts that hit me in the gut with raw emotions was her description of the loss of her father. The slowness of that loss, the incredible resilience of her father, and the way that loss forced her to reflect upon her own mortality and legacy, were very real experiences that I had myself in experiencing the loss of my mother. When my mother passed, besides feeling a deep sadness and trying to smooth over a gaping hole in my family, what I felt was an immediate question about my own life choices. When it came to the end of my life, would I feel satisfied with how I had lived my life? The loss of a parent forces this question upon you. In uncertain times like the one we are living in now, I both draw strength from the strength that I witnessed in my mother, and question sometimes my own decision to have children. I have a feeling that I might not be alone in questioning this. Well, I share my thoughts on that reflection here, to perhaps assuage your guilt in being a parent. 1. Human kind has always faced great adversity in different periods -- famine, war, poverty. If our ancestors had decided that they would only have children when everything seemed smooth-sailing, I can be fairly confident that most of us would not be here today. To have and rear children is both an act of radical hope and a commitment to pass on our humanity. I think there was a dystopian novel The Children of Men, where the premise is that no more children were being born on earth? I never read that book, actually, but I think it is true that children serve a very important purpose in our society. They are both a symbol of radical hope and they bring more hope and joy -- not only to their parents and family members, but to the greater community, whoever gets to witness that hope and joy. Until the last generation of humans on earth, I believe that each generation will continue to make and raise babies, against all odds. As they should -- else, what are we fighting for? 2. Humans are resourceful. My extremely optimistic husband believes that humans have the tools necessary to solve the great challenges we are facing currently. No, it is not all solvable by one person. The climate change problems we are facing are huge and complex. They require hundreds and thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of people working collaboratively to solve. They require a tide of public pressure for the government to change its agenda and priorities at all levels. And even then, it will likely take generations of work, in order to reverse the harm that has been done. If today, all of the left-leaning, science-believing friends decided that they will not raise children, we have already lost that fight. It is our job to raise human beings who are willing and able to move that dial and to continue that fight into the next generation. 3. Maybe this is just me being sentimental, but I think the three main components of my own humanity are: my relationship to my parents/sibling; my relationship to my greater community; and my relationship to my own created family (eg. my marriage and my relationship with my children). Through those three elements, my life gains meaning and is worth living, which comes back full circle to losing my mother and the reflections that I have had since. In being part of this long line of human existence, we are like a butterfly that goes through its own life cycle. It seems silly to question why a butterfly should procreate, simply because we don't know what life will look like for the next generation of butterflies? It was my hope that this post could bring you at least some comfort in these uncertain times. I am not sure if it accomplished that or was actually a downer, but I wanted to say simply that I see you, all the struggling parents out there. It is not easy balancing work, marriage, our own mental health, our idea of justice, climate worries, a pandemic, and trying to raise healthy and happy kids. I see you doing your best and holding on to radical hope. You are not alone. When I read Trevor Noah's book Born a Crime, one of the things that resonated deeply with me was the fact that although Noah does not look like folks in any of the South African tribes (as his dad is white and his mother is black), his ability to speak the tribal dialects was what qualified his belonging in all the groups, which possibly saved his life on at least one occasion. This resonates with me because my kids are biracial. By physical appearance alone, white folks think my son looks Asian and Asian folks think he looks white -- a foreigner by all measures. (Even as a baby, when I took him by myself to a bakery in Monterey Park, CA, the store clerks asked me whether his dad is white, because he is so fair.) Noah's story reinforced for me the necessity to teach my children to speak Chinese. If they could speak Mandarin, then they will share immediate kinship with others who speak the same dialect.
Ever since my son L was born, I started to speak to him in Mandarin almost exclusively. For a long time, I was not sure it made any difference. My parents lived out of state, and because my mom was terminally ill, she was never able to travel to us, and my son had only limited exposure to his grandparents during our brief visits. (I visited regularly, but since my mom was often in the hospital, I usually left my son at home with my husband and travelled solo.) I was the only person who regularly spoke to my toddler in Mandarin. I remember the first time he responded to a Mandarin command to hand me a ball. I was elated! From that point on, I continued my commitment to read to him in Mandarin as much as possible. Whenever we would get a new English book, I would read to him initially in both languages (English and Chinese), and then slowly transition to reading solely in Mandarin as I ironed out the most natural translations in my own head. Recently, I started following a Facebook group of parents who are teaching their kids to be equally fluent in Chinese and English. I was surprised by the kids' fluency in Chinese, even after being raised abroad! Some of their children can debate in Chinese and read and memorize lots of academic facts in Chinese, seemingly on par with their peers who grew up in Asia. It forced me to reflect about my goals as a parent. How much fluency do I want for my children? How much am I willing to push them in order to accomplish that goal? Short version (this is no judgment to anyone else, just my personal view for my own children): I think it is most important for me to facilitate an interest and a basic oral foundation of the language. I want to lay down a foundation so that if either of my children were to be interested in becoming fluent in Mandarin, they could do so without too much barrier. But, if they decide that it is not something that is important to them, like anything else in life, I cannot force it upon them simply because it is my hope for them to achieve proficiency. This is already a long post. In a future post, I will follow up with what I have already tried to do and what I have seen in L, my oldest child. I would also love to hear from you, if you are also a parent of a bilingual household! What are your long-term goals for your children? |
About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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