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| From https://www.emuparadise.me/ |
Our heat has been off in our condo as the boiler is being replaced. With the temperatures closer to freezing than we would like there is a little more bundling up. A few nights back we asked our son if he wanted pyjamas with feet or without feet.
"Yes!", he replied.
We asked again and again -- I could inflate this to 7 repetitions of the question -- and each time he replied, "Yes."
Finally I said, "You know, if you can't answer an A or B question, we might have to hold you back a year."
His response, which I admit I clearly had coming: "You already did!!"
He's 5 now. Going on 15 in November.
Despite the lad being in school now and rounding out his truncated days in kindergarten ("Oh, when I was a boy...") with sessions at Out of School Care (OOSC), I still have the opportunity to walk him home.
The changes may have been gradual but they are significant and noticeable at this point. Our walks on the pedestrian overpass that straddles 14th Street are far more amusing now as he essentially turns it into his version of the old video game Frogger. He pauses strategically before racing over each lane of traffic to avoid getting exploded. I'm slower to catch on but he assured me on Monday that even though I got exploded I still had two lives left. (Obviously he is getting exposed to video games somewhere.) Today he added a variation to the game by telling me that the northbound cars were marshmallows and the southbound bombs. Or was that the southbound were marshmallows. The strategy has changed and he is less likely to adopt the full on sprint across the overpass to smash himself into the chainlink fence on the other side of the bridge. He has not, however, developed a clear scoring system.
The conversation has opened up a little more. He still tends to give accounts of the people who contributed to the scrapes and cuts on his knees. This month, however, the stories have been of real conflict over sharing or not sharing and I have taken the opportunity to share with him my simmering observation that one of the hardest things to decide is whether it is better to be patient and tolerate a situation or to impose your will on someone and make them concede to you. At his age the second scenario may result in a fight, though there may be a chance that will or personality can assert some influence as well. I told him my tendency has been to be patient, though I have wondered from time to time if that was the best strategy. Despite my doubts, I told him that I preferred that he be patient and try to talk things through -- the third way that I have yet to get full command of.
A chance encounter with his uncle on our way home today also gave me the opportunity to talk about walking. His uncle is involved in a conference on walkability here in Calgary this week and after we had a brief chat about the conference, my son and I continued home talking about how much we walk. I did not bother to trouble him with kids who have to be bussed to school and just reminded him of entire weekends we have gone without using the car. I pointed out the advantages for his health and safety when there are fewer cars or more time spent walking. Today, though, I could have added that it is a good opportunity to clear your head at the end of the day.
