Toddler Time Attack

Dear J,

Everything takes longer with you now. You only want to play. And you refuse everything that isn’t play… like coming back inside, nap time, dinner time, bath time, bed time, …

So, the latest battle with you is a battle against the clock. You have no respect for time. You’re oblivious to it. We grownups, on the other hand, have a schedule and try to impose it on you.

If not for us, life for you would be much slower. But we rush you through your day – morning breakfast daycare, daycare schedule, rush home, rush to the park, rush back for dinner, rush upstairs to potty time, rush to bath time, rush through bedtime routine to get to bed, rush you to sleep.

This is the conflict. If we lived in the wild, I’m certain you’d take at least twice as long to do anything, because if left to your own devices, you’d be happy doing this like squatting under a tree for 20 minutes… then moving to the next tree and exploring that for another 20, and so on.

And so I call this challenge Toddler Time Attack. The following are my list of tricks for keeping my time. If you ever have to speed hack your toddler, maybe these might come in handy one day:

1) Since you can’t tell the time, you have no idea what “late is”. “It’s time to go home” is meaningless to you. So instead of making it a “my word against yours” tug-of-war, I decided to teach you how to tell “late”, in a way so simple a toddler can understand — the sun. I told you, “When the sun goes behind the trees and houses, it’s time to go home. It will be dark soon.” After a week or so, you’re estimating how much time you have left to play: “The sun is still high”, and on some days you’ve come to tell me it’s time to go and that you don’t want to be in the dark.

2) Ever since you got obsessed with Kimi doing her business outside, you stop every few steps to “Make Kaka like Kimi.” I guess you never get to see any of us doing it, and since it’s one of your life mysteries you’re currently investigating, Kimi is your biggest breakthrough. To get you to move along faster, I made a game of jumping to touch the leaves. I help you, of course. You’ve since learned that you must stand right under what you’re trying to touch, and that some are too tall and some are low enough to touch. There are trees along the whole path, so I keep dangling the next carrot ahead: “Let’s try the next tree! *run* jump! Let’s try the next one.” The only time we got home faster was that one day you decided to run all the way home (~15 minutes) without stopping.

I’ve been teaching you to stop at the “Square” at the sidewalk and wait for all the cars to pass before crossing. And we have a system to let you help me walk Kimi with the leash. I make you hold the end, I hold the middle, the other end is attached to Kimi. Being in the middle, I insulate you from Kimi’s rowdiness and I can walk both of you together.

3) Bathtime – I realized you were bored with your bathtime toys, so I made up a new one. I had finished my clear bottle of gummy multivitamins, so I used it to lure you to the tub. Works great so far… so great that you’re ditching potty time. (You previously wanted to read 4 books on the potty and would squirm your way out of bath time any way you could.)

4) Bedtime — instant sleep. Again, the key piece of information all of this is based on is that all you want to do now is play. And you want to play with me. This is no different at bedtime. Before bed, you run around, insist on playing with your cars, then read book after book… anything to avoid having to sleep. Even if we manage to get you in bed, you sing, talk, jump up and down, hang over the edge of your crib and call DADDY DADDY DADDY DADDY asking for milk, water, my soul, etc.

So one day, I said screw it, if you’re going to take 30 minutes to fall asleep, I’m just going to smuggle my laptop into your bedtime so I can use it while waiting for you to fall asleep. But I didn’t want you to know I had it, or you’ll “persuade” me to play your Lion King – In the Jungle song. So my trick is to stick my head and laptop out the door, but leave my body and legs inside so it looks to you like I’m laying motionless. What I didn’t expect was… you fell asleep instantly!

I tried again today, without my laptop. I tried just sticking my feet out. Didn’t work. Because you could see my face, you’d stand up, stick your hands out, feet out, go “HI DADDY what’re you doing?” So, I turned around so my head stuck out the hallway. Instant sleep again.

Teaching you Consequences (commitment and consistency). You’re becoming rebellious. When we tell you No, you tell us No louder. You no longer take what we say without question, so that free ride is over. Now, again, it’s either we resort to physically overpowering you, or we figure out a way to reason with you.

Especially since you’ve picked up a few habits from certain animals at daycare, like hitting. You chase and hit Kimi, then laugh.

One thing is still precious to you — making sense of things. You want to find the order and meaning in things, and you need for everything to be consistent with what you know. For example, you don’t like Ice because it violates your knowledge that things aren’t supposed to just disappear.

So to get you to stop hitting Kimi, what worked better than shouting louder is asking you to think about what happens when you hit Kimi. Your manaical smile turns into a serious face as you start to think about it. Then you acknowledge, “Kimi will break…” Then I lead you through the logical chain:
Do you want Kimi to break? “No.” Then you shouldn’t hit Kimi. If you hit Kimi, she will break. “Yea…” Then you run away to play elsewhere. A few minutes later, you’re chasing Kimi again. We’re still working on it.

You’re pushing your boundaries, as we all do, constantly. We all lie, and we all think it’s not lying if we can tell ourselves a story that makes it okay. You’re starting to cheat now, like telling us “No, I don’t need to change because my diaper is clean.” Or, “I am not warm anymore, so I don’t have to take off my hat.” Or, “I didn’t eat it yet so I can have another.”

It’s not a matter of morality. You’ll say whatever you can because you know it’ll get you what you want. But each time when I point out the facts, force you to remember what happened, your need to stay logically consistent overrides your ability to create stories. I bolded this sentence because thinking more about that statement will reveal to you many things about human “morality”.

Rebelling is a good sign. It’s a sign of confidence. Just like how you’re very confident with your speech now. You know what you know, you know we undersetand you, and you can understand us enough to yell at us when we’re not saying what you’re trying to tell us. The other night, I heard you say, “Julia was crying today.” So I asked, “Julia was crying today?” You said, “NOT JULIA! Julia!” That’s what you said! Julia! “No not Julia! Julia!” Jilia? “No!” Jivia? “No!” Finally, I guessed right: it was Divia. Abu doesn’t like when you correct her accent: “Abu, it’s not Trangle – It’s TRI-ANGLE.”

You’re also getting good at explaining things to us in different ways now. You asked me about the bunny book the other day. I didn’t know we had a bunny book. So I probed for more clues. You said it was green, blue, yellow, purple and orange! I knew only one thing with that many colors. Rainbow book? “Uh… Yes!” It was a book about a bunny asking his friends about what makes a rainbow.

You’re also using my tricks against me. I taught you the days of the week. I knew you could count, and I knew you could remember things visually very well. So I combined the two, by teaching you the days of the week using your fingers. 1=Monday, 2=Tuesday, etc. How do make use of this new skill? You now ask me innocently, “Daddy. What day is it today?” I say Sunday. “Sunday! So you can give me bunnies!” Yes… we did say you could have your bunny crackers on Sundays…

It turns out daycare is like prison – it’s conditioned you to fend for yourself, keep a close eye on your belongings etc. Kids are always trying to steal your things and your snacks that Abu brings for you. Some even hit. I dropped you off the other day and I was wondering why you weren’t following me to put your things away. I looked down and saw you gawking at something. I looked at what you were looking at, and one of the animals was bashing your friend Natalie on the head over and over and over with a yellow ball as she was crying. Eventually the teacher broke it up, and I realized you just saw something you must be struggling to understand, so I explained it. I took you over to hug N to make her feel better, but she said “NO! I don’t want a hug!” So we said feel better, and I said it’s not nice to hit. It hurts.

It hurts when I hear you pop up in your bed at night and you tell me, “Someone pulled my hair and pushed my body… I pushed them back.” I want to say it’s not nice to push, but no, that’s right, you stand your ground. But I didn’t want to encourage violence. So I just said “Okay.” Another night, you said your shin hurt. I asked you why and you said someone kicked you. Then you said, “I’ll feel better soon” and went to sleep.

I lost my temper at Kimi today – she jumped on Julia’s changing table and dragged all her wet diapers to the ground, and ripped them up. I realized that I behave a lot like my dad when he got mad. Parents are patterns. It’s up to me to break it so you don’t end up like us. But inside, I thought about finding out who hurt you, and giving his parents a reason to keep him out of school for a week.

Anyway, we’re trying to get you out of there. The more expensive a place is, the more likely it is to be a place for children whose parents place a higher priority on their careers than their children — those who delegate the responsibility of teaching their children to strangers.

Mama and Abu visited Stanford’s lab school there. They loved it. I’ve already mentioned that Abu’s a psychology prof but I haven’t mentioned that Mama went to a lab school. It’s a school run by the university, often the university’s Psychology Department. A nice benefit is it’s run by people who know how to create the perfect environment for a child to grow and play (learn), and the other bonus is the school gets funding from the department, in addition to the tuition from the parents. In other words, they’re rich enough to create a child’s paradise. Every class has its own backyard, and every class has a piano. Among other luxuries. The only trouble is it’s tough to get in. There are many big-shots in Silicon Valley who want to get in (as more of a status and parenting delegation thing as opposed to actually a proponent of the philosophy), but competition’s not the problem. The problem is simply that they do not have many spots to give, and most spots are filled by their “family” (faculty, staff, etc). So, we hope that with Abu and your mom, we’d be adopted as their “family”. Turns out the director was from Puerto Rico too. She said Abu is welcome there any time. I helped mama with the application, and fingers crossed!

Funny moments…

In a hurry to grow: “I need too eat sleep play then I can grow up and my feet can touch the floor at the table.”

Backseat conversation: “Car eats gas. Not me. I make gas. It comes out into my diaper.”

Even parents need emotional support: “Daddy! I want to give you a high five because you did it! (A puzzle)”

Brother and sister. You two came home together one day. J2 was crying and Mama & Abu couldn’t soother her. J1 said “It’s okay Julia.” It worked. Julia quiets down and searches for J1 everytime she hears his voice.

Another time in the car, J2 was crying. Mama asked J1 to sing the ABCs and she calmed down. When she started crying again, J1 sang to her again without anyone asking.

But you were just kidding, because Mama woke up one night to you sucking her mouth. J2 was looking for the darkest circle she could find and that was it. By the way that shows you how active J2 is now.

Freefall faceplant:

Jumping:

And lastly, here’s a story I sent mama to tell her how our morning routine goes, and how much better you are handling drop offs:

Good drop off

As we were pulling out of the garage, he said, “You forgot to say Hello Outside!” So we said Good Morning Outside! Then “Good Morning Trees too!” Sky! Cars! Sun!

Then he talked about how cars eat Gas. And Trucks too. And Bus, Trains, …

Then I made fun of him and called him Old MacJoshua. And before he could answer, I said, “EIEIO!” Old MacJoshua EIEIO! And a Josh Josh here and a Josh Josh there… and he replied… And a not Josh Josh here and a not Josh Josh there.

Getting out of the car, I said let’s look for something fun to play with at Starfish.

On the way in, we had a game of touching the lanterns. Again, I reminded him that I’ll be touching them on the way out.

When we went there, we said HI EVERYBODY. And we went to put things away. He wasn’t as clingy this time, I picked him up, but he didn’t fuss as much.

Things put away, I said let’s look for something fun. He was actually searching today. He held my hand and pointed and shouted “TRAINS!” Sit over here daddy! Come over here daddy! So I sat down, and we played, Arjan kept bringing us more trains, then cars, then a cow, then a bull… There was one kid who was crying who saw us playing, stopped crying and joined us. Then he showed me all his cars. Once again, soon we had about 4 kids playing with us, and Natalie came by to ask me to help fix her crown.

Since they were having breakfast, I asked J if he wanted pancake. He said yes, so I took him to the table. I sat him down, and the new teacher brought him a quarter pie. I’m like wtf is this so while J was happily eating, I went to grab him a whole piece and gave it to him.

I looked around, and Ms Gina wasn’t there, Ms Ditte was wrangling the animals and the newbie was setting up breakfast. So it was up to me today. I wasn’t sure if he would be okay by himself.

After a while, instead of saying I’m going to work, I said I’m going to touch the lanterns. Surprisingly, he didn’t complain. So I asked for a kiss, and he gave me a kiss. Then he said DADDY! HUG ME! So I hugged him. I asked him if he was okay. He nodded.

I took a few steps and I went back to him when I noticed, “Joshua, I have you brown truck Mater in my pocket!” I gave it to him, but he asked me to put it in his cubby. So I said again I’m going to touch the lanterns, Are you Okay? He nodded.

So I put his truck in the cubby, waved bye, went out, and showed him me touching the lanterns. He didn’t cry or anything. He just sat in his chair eating and seemed to be much better. He said bye all by himself today 🙂

Love,

Dad

P.S. – You’re ready to start reading. Your Abu Vicky told mama that after observing you, and I was like pshhh yea of course. Let me tell you what he’s been reading already. 1) When we go to school, you don’t know the location of your cubby spatially — at least not until I started making this a routine. I’d ask you where we put your lunchbox. You still don’t know this yet because you just moved to your new class. So the first time we did it, instead of pointing to the location (like you do for your personal items cubby, you leaned over to read the name labels. You went from one to the other, until you spotted your name and said “THIS ONE!” Then you noticed Max’s lunchbox and said, “Next to MAXIE!”

2) We pass by the same stop sign on the way to the park every evening. And every evening, you say “S-T-O-P… SSSTOP! P-O-T-S… SSSTOP!”

3) Our house number, 2171. Mama disputed this, saying “That’s not a word.” And I said, look, the kind of reading at this level is about pattern recognition and letters. It’s not about phonetics or whatever. And because of that, recognizing “2171” is no different from recognizing any other word. I knew you were “reading” it because we took a different route on our walk the other day, and you got spun around and disoriented. We took the opposite way back to our house — a way you weren’t familiar with — and since we live in cookie-cutter townhouses, every courtyard was identical. So for the first 2 courtyards, you thought it was ours, but when you saw the numbers next to the garage, you said “NO! This is not our house.” And when we got to ours, you peeked and said, “YES! 2171! This is our house!”