Sep 24 2007
Ben Official Word
Click for bigger and sharper.
I’m amazed at how children can completely ignore a concept, but once you give it a name you can’t get it out of their heads. Benjamin has a new favorite word, and I’m afraid I’ve created a monster.
Just about the only remaining frustration for us while preparing Ben for bed was clean-up time. Still is, to an extent. Every night before bed, he has to put away all his toys, usually with an assist from us. Lately he wants to pick up each toy by himself, but his habit of walking across the room, and sometimes the house, with only one toy in his hand was making this process unbearably lengthy.
Most of the time I could get him to grab one toy in each hand, but on nights he pretended to be a kitty-cat (including the four-legged walking), this caused conflict. We simply told him that pretend time was not to interfere with things that need to be done. Many times he got frustrated at this or at some other detail of the process, refused to help, and consequently watched tearfully as we took away favorite toys. We said something that seemed clever at the time but that no doubt will come back to haunt us. Something like, “If you don’t help pick up your toys, then you can’t play with them.”
This produced a classic parenting backfire.
Very early on, he just said, “OK,” and did without said toy for the period we determined. Later, however, I guess this started to grind on his nerves, and the threat of a lost toy no longer sounded good to him. We remained steadfast, and he began participating willingly in picking up again, albeit still only one or two at a time.
I was quite tired of this, because I know he’s getting old enough to understand that he can stay up later if he makes things take longer. With no proof this was his motive, however, I couldn’t very well discipline him for it. He was, after all, following the vague direction “pick up your toys.” The few times I’ve tried the, “I’m going to start counting,” trick, I’m barely at two before he leaps into action.
I hear other parents who say 1) they just throw the toys in a pile and don’t worry about where they go, or 2) they just pick up the mess after finally getting the kid to bed.
I still like our approach, in large part because I feel Benjamin is learning something from it. Perhaps because we started this nightly ritual before he turned two, and maybe a little bit because of his genes, he always puts things in their proper bins and points out any failure to do same. It’s kind of cute when, after I tuck him in for the night, he points across the room and says, “Daddy, that’s not where the zebra goes.”
Of course, I want to say, “It’s OK just for tonight,” but instead I gladly walk over and move the toy. Encouraging him to get up and do it turned out to be a bad idea early on, but now that he’s older and a little more calm, I might.
So, he finally was putting away his toys, in the right places but very slowly. Tired of the full hour it took once we started the bedtime process (bath, pajamas, chewable vitamin, teeth, toy pickup, story time in the rocker, bed), I wanted to trim time somewhere. Of the non-essentials (if one can call them that), toy pickup was the only one I was willing to shorten.
One night last week while Shannon was out with friends, I squatted down on Ben’s level and looked him in the eye (this often makes a HUGE difference, by the way, for anyone who hasn’t tried it).
“Ben, if you pick up more than one toy at a time, you can put away your toys much faster. Watch me.” I picked up several toys in each hand and carried them to his room. “See? Now I won’t have to go back and forth as much.”
“I know that, Daddy,” he said. This has become a popular reply, even to things he didn’t already know.
“You know what you are when you do that?”
“What?”
“Efficient.”
He lowered his brow a bit, then repeated back, “Efficient.”
“Very good, son. You want to try it?”
He did, and he loved it. Now, every time we pick up toys, he combines his hands to wrap his ten tiny fingers around as many toys as possible, a car or truck barely dangling here and there.
He holds up the jingling mass and proudly declares, “Efficient!”
“That’s right. Good job.”
If I’m in a different room, he’ll come find me to show me how efficient he is. I need to work on that part with him a bit. When it comes time for him to go off to college, I don’t want him to fill every square inch of his car and then drive it from Dallas to Phoenix to get to Harvard (where he’ll be on full academic scholarship for his groundbreaking skills in minimizing wasted time and space).
On a less efficient note, Benjamin tells us he prefers his full first name to the more succinct, user-friendly “Ben.”
At dinner Tuesday night, when I used all three syllables, he said, “Thanks for saying ‘Benjamin.’ That’s what you guys named me.”
I resisted the urge to tell him that, since it gets the same result more quickly, “Ben” is much more efficient.
I have a friend of mine, that while helping him move once, his kids, had HUNDREDS of toys on their floor. He gave them exactly 10 minutes to start packing them, or he would give them to underprivileged kids.
After 10 minutes, he ushered the kids out of the room, and packed them ALL in big black bags, and the kids never saw them again. Period.
They lost a LOT of toys that day.
They learned that lesson only once.
We’re a little ways away from Norah really understanding the pick-up concept. But we’re working with it already. We have a big basket we pull into the living room and she helps us put the randomly strewn toys into the basket. It helps to keep handing her a toy to put in the basket, lest she forget the task at hand and start removing toys. Then, while I bathe Norah, Moonshot puts the toys in their proper home on shelves and in bins. But I’m hopefuly that the little girl will get into this concept of putting things away soon. She delights in putting toys on shelves or in her toy chest in the course of her play. It’s just the “let’s put them all away, now” repitition that looses her interest.
She detests the very concpt of efficiency.
Dave - That’s cruel…and inspired. I like it.
I like starting them early, like you have, Mark. It really will make it easier in the long run when you start habits as soon as you can. We get our older boy to help put the toys into the living room toy box, though my wife and I still do most of the work ourselves. But we like to see both boys enjoy the process of, as we call it: “putting stuff in stuff.” Of course they still like to dump the stuff back out of the stuff, but we have time.
I also think that it’s good for kids to learn some lessons the hard way, like in Dave’s example. For every action (or inaction) there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you’re a kid, that’s frequently called a ‘consequence’. Deal with it.
That eye level thing? Totally.
Stunning, side-lit pic, by the way…
Good technique. I find eye level and some kind of physical contact are almost necessary to get anything across (my oldest has extra trouble with focus).
I’m off to do my own brand of “cleanup duty”, whereby I document this mess of a project I’ve been working on for weeks (it’d be drudgery enough if I hadn’t stayed out late at Microsoft’s Halo 3 party last night).
“… and then drive it from Dallas to Phoenix to get to Harvard (where he’ll be on full academic scholarship for his groundbreaking skills in minimizing wasted time and space).”
Exceptional grouping of words there Mark :-) Almost as exceptional as the picture of Benjamin up there.
Oh yeah. “Ben Official”… witty beyond words.
Dave - I gotta say, I like that approach. We’ve, um… toyed with that idea, but never have gone all the way. Taking certain toys away temporarily isn’t much consequence when there are so many others to use.
MG - She’s getting there. I’ve somehow totally lost track of how old she is. I need to check your blog again. I feel like a dolt.
Simon - There are other things I feel we haven’t started early enough. Example: We hadn’t asked Ben to try wiping his own backside. At the mall on Saturday, I said, “When are we going to start having him wipe his own bottom?” Apparently Ben overheard me, because as I stood in the stall and reached for the toilet paper, he said, “No, no, I want to do it.” And he did.
Wish I would have tried for that one a little sooner.
Natural lighting is my favorite for pictures, and early in the morning and early in the evening are the two best times for sunny days. You get more leeway on an overcast day, which I was fortunate enough to get on our recent zoo trip.
Peter - You oughta know all about parenting challenges, considering your numbers. Good luck on that project of yours.
Linda - OK. Flattery will get you almost everywhere.
Ok, so that is the cutest pic of Ben to date I think. :) I love how you cropped it as well!
Anna - Nice to see you over here again (of course, you might have been lurking lately but just not speaking up).
The photo isn’t cropped, actually. I’m not sure whether by “cropped” you meant how I framed the shot, or used software to alter the composition. I added some sharpening, because I turned off the sharpening in my camera, but that’s it as far as post processing. I liked a few others from this backyard sandbox session, but this one was the winner.