Self reliance
August 15th, 2012This past Saturday S and I took care of a pair of little ones belonging to our friends S&Z. While it solidified, for me, just how quickly one forgets the routines of an infant, it also impressed on me just how incredibly self-sufficient their 3.5 yr old was. He was chill, polite, mild mannered and incredibly self sufficient. So much so that when they left I kind of felt like there has been this whole world of self-reliance I’ve been denying G and myself… and I’ve been implementing some changes since.
I can’t really tell you why exactly we do as much as we do for the kids. A big part of it is, quite frankly, pure convenience. It’s faster for me to feed S2, not to mention cleaner, or to get G dressed for bed. It’s easier to get G in & out of the car rather than plead, count and threaten while he sneaks up to the front seat and insists on honking the horn and push every single button on my dashboard. But, it’s also, partly holding on to this “littleness” of theirs. They’ll be big and going off to college in, what feels like, a few days and I’m not ready for them to be that grown up. And me so old. Yet, at the same time when they DO go off to college, I’d like to know they won’t be relying on someone to be taking off their jammies each morning… or at least if they do for me to NOT know about it.
As of right now, G gets out of the car by himself, and is in charge of closing the door behind him. He also gets dressed for bed-time on his own. He needs help taking off shirts, more specifically getting the base around his shoulders, but he’ll get it. For the moment, he still thinks doing all this stuff on his own is super cool, and he really IS very proud of himself for doing it. I’m sure in another week this will be an old hat, and I’ll go into the begging, bribing and frustrated sighing routine. Which is why my approach is to start the bedtime dress first. Since he wants TV before bed, and bedtime doesn’t change, the more time he takes getting ready, the less TV he gets to watch. Ha! Morning? I have a feeling he’ll be going to class in his pajamas forever. Or he needs to get dressed in his next day’s clothes the night before. G wakes up like S, which means a whole lot of tardy for first period slips coming our way. Ugh! Maybe I’ll make S sign those and the two of them can commiserate about getting out of the house on time 🙂
So yeah… I know self reliance is a really good thing for the kids long term, even though the frustration that comes with it probably will take a few years off of my life. They better become rocket scientists, is all I’m saying!