My Boys Can cry.

It always bothers me to see adults jumping around and waving toys in front of a crying child in a ridiculous attempt to provide a distraction so the kid stops bawling.

Crying makes us human. It's one of our defining characteristics. Think of another mammal on Earth that has the capacity to cry. Drawing a blank? Me too. So why does our society have such an issue with it?

This member of society has no problem with crying and I had no intentions of conditioning my boys to suppress such an important characteristic of our human nature. I saw no point in it. How could I tell them not to cry without sending the message that their pain was not important? They hurt, so they cry, but Mommy says don't cry, so Mommy doesn't care that they hurt? That's the reasoning I would take and I'm a lot older than 3.

Crying is such an effective means of communication that I would argue we spend a large part of our adult life trying to find socially acceptable words to replace it. A baby cries. Any Mother who has spent more than 24 hours with her child will easily name 3 to 4 different types of cries and in seconds she will know exactly what her baby is saying: I'm hungry; I have a stomach pain; I'm uncomfortable; I'm tired. Perfect communication in one crying sound.

Even though the type of crying and the reasons for it has changed over time, my response to the boys hasn't altered that much.  

• if they are upset enough to cry, then in their mind it's justified. Whether I'd be laughing on the inside or not, I always took their emotions seriously. I can't count the number of times the younger one came into the house holding his head and tell me he'd hit is eye on the van....
• acknowledge their reason for crying. Talk about it. Help them work through their emotions. Sometimes the tears were caused by physical pain and I'd tell them I knew how much it hurt, and sometimes it was emotional and we'd talk about their behaviour that lead to the crying. Whatever their reason, talking about it as the tears flowed let them know that I knew their pain was important to me and by extension, they were important to me. 
• give them time. I always let them cry sitting on my lap while I wiped their face. I'd give them as long as they needed. And usually it wasn't long. They wanted comfort and validation and they got it. They would calm down and we'd talk about what happened. They would recover quickly then be off and running again, all upset forgotten. 

When the boys were young I didn't react to their 100s of falls and when they saw that Mommy wasn't going to come running at every little bump, they'd just pick themselves up without a peep and continue playing. Even at the ages of 6 and 7 they will have some wipe outs that make me cringe but they think nothing of it.

When they cry though, I'm not telling them Shush Shush. I'm not bouncing them on my knee. I'm not trying to get them to talk or think about something else. I'm not running off for a favourite toy to jingle in their face. I'm not offering them a cookie or the chance to watch tv.

They want my time and attention and they've got it.

My Boys Can eat what I eat. Not being a double standard parent

I've always been bothered by the expression "do what I say, not what I do". I didn't hear it a lot growing up thank goodness, but when I did I always thought it was ridiculous. The divorced marriage counselor, the overweight dietitian, the chain-smoking medical intern. Do what I say, not what I do.

I'm not a double standard person and I certainly wasn't going to be a double standard parent.

This was easy of course when the boys were very small. After all, a diet of breastmilk doesn't call for a lot of variety. But when they were older and teeth were visible and diets expanded to suit their growing bodies, there was potential for two sets of rules around food; one for my husband and I and one for them. Not the direction I wanted to go. I also didn't want the boys to develop any "food issues" that could lead to skewed perceptions and stresses and insecurities around eating. As far as I was concerned there were no bad foods, just bad amounts.

I've always had a sweet tooth, I've always eaten when I was hungry and I've always eaten whatever I wanted. None of that was going to change just because the kids were around. On top of that I was preparing for Ironman Canada so my calorie intake was impressive and constant. How could I tell the boys not to eat a row of cookies or a bunch of chocolate before dinner when that's exactly what Mommy was doing? 

Not being a double standard parent AND being a Yes parent (see my earlier post about being a Yes parent) went hand in hand rather well:

• when I ate, the boys ate. No matter what time I was eating I always offered the same food to the boys. At night after a ride, mid-afternoon after our rest, while we were making dinner, it didn't matter. If I was eating I was also offering the same food to them.
• no restrictions were placed on food. The boys would see me eating all sorts of things at any hour of the day. Any type of food was fair game and they had the same opportunities.
• most of the time, they would have a little of what I was having to "keep me company". But if they needed a proper meal, I would have them put their treats out first so they knew they could have them later.

And the result of doing this for years? Amazing. Neither one of my boys over-eats. They stop when they are full and since they eat the healthy things first, the stopping usually happens after a small bite of cookie or a few spoonfuls of ice cream. No foods are coveted over others. Since there were never any restrictions related to food and the boys always had access to whatever they wanted (though I would control the AMOUNT they had), things like chips and chocolate or cookies never developed the currency value of gold to be stolen and hoarded when Mommy wasn't looking. Even now when I'm eating these things and offer them to the boys they are more likely than not to say No Thanks.

In our house, food is not a bargaining tool. It doesn't control our schedules. It doesn't dominate our thoughts and emotions. It doesn't control our behaviour.

In our house, Food knows it's place. 

My Boys Can Read

With all the fooferah in the news about boys and their inability to read and how they are always years behind the girls and we must change our teaching methods and what about using comic books to teach them or even better put all the boys in separate boys schools, Society had me convinced it would be a miracle if my kids knew their ABCs by the age of 10.

Of course none of this changed my approach to raising them in their early years. I had also heard some research that said children who received no teaching prior to school reached the same academic level by age 7 as those who did receive intensive teachings in daycare and preschool. Me and my boys were having too much fun out in the mud during the first 4 years of their lives for things like letters and numbers to get in the way.

When I registered the first one for Junior Kindergarten, a package arrived in the mail 2 weeks before school was to start. It detailed expectations for the child at the beginning of the year along with goals they would hopefully attain by the end. The child was expected to know their name, ABCs, count to 20, know basic shapes, colours, body parts, print, the list went on and on. 

I hauled him inside. "What's your name?" I said. "I'm STUPID!" he said and fell over laughing. I never called him by his first name and he knew 'stupid' was a bad word so of course this was hysterical to him. 

I was in big trouble. My kid was going to fail Kindergarten. 

For the next 2 weeks we all sang the alphabet song and when we weren't singing we were counting. I called him by his first name constantly and he constantly thought I was mad at him. We practiced our address, colours, printing, we crammed for JK. By the beginning of school he wasn't exactly up to speed but he wasn't a blank slate either.

During the first 2 months of JK the teacher thought my son was deaf. He didn't talk and he didn't respond to her. She told me later if he hadn't improved by December she would have talked to me about him but she knew he'd never been in day care and those kids tend to take longer to warm up to the classroom setting she said. 

JK was 2 days a week. The ABC books came home and he learned his letters. Books with sentences came home and he read the sentences. We'd sit together for reading time, he'd sound out the words following my finger where I pointed to only those letters that made a sound. After he read, I would have him practice his printing by writing out some sentences. By the end of JK, he was reading at the level where they were expected to be at the end of Grade 1. By the end of Senior Kindergarten, he was reading at a mid-Grade 2 level.

I now realize that my first boy's ability to learn to read so quickly was a little unusual. But I also think the method I used helped immensely. English is a tricky language and many words rely on sight recognition. When your child is reading to you,

• point only to the letters that make a sound. Explaining rules of grammar to a 5 year old is too overwhelming, assuming you remember the rules yourself. At this age they need to practice recognizing the same word on many pages.  
• when they have finished reading, have them print out some (or all) of what they have read. Printing reinforces their reading and when they see the same words over and over again (and, the, went, came, etc.) they quickly learn to spell them without looking and read them without sounding them out. Result; their reading becomes more fluent.

With a little one-on-one your boys too can surpass Society's expectations.