Holding Him Back

"So, what have you decided?"




I'm in the dentist chair, puzzling over the question. My dentist adds that he read my post about whether or not to send Gabriel to school this year and I muster a nod of recognition. The topic of when to start a child in school is an exhaustively discussed one and, for the most part, the advice I've received is a chorus of, "What's the rush?... I waited... My daughter was fine early but... my son was... well... uhm..." Or struggled, or what have you.  Parents of the autumn-born who were particularly experienced and informed on the subject and the advice was all valuable. There was also a serendipitous barrage of articles on childhood and education that advised us to sit tight and hold him back a year more. Last week, we even encountered a parent who had found her 18-year-old son foundering and dropping out of his first year of university -- an account that made me ponder the math if her son was still only 18 years old in the spring after his freshman year.

Unwittingly, he is looking forward to the graduation from day care that the rest of his classmates will celebrate.  He is not, however, going to graduate with his friends. The social disruption for him will be a challenge. Close friends that he has had a lot of history with will be moving on and his friendships with those kids may end or require a lot more work to maintain as routines change. The social connections are already changing form as this fork in the road emerges.

Still, we have to look long term rather than reinforce the social expectations.

As great as he is in our eyes (except for when he is too tired to listen to us or insists that his diet consist exclusively of starches, or as I put it, "his whites") we would rather not have him spend the rest of his childhood and adolescence pressured into playing catch up. If we made the move to include him with the older peers who are moving on over the next little while we will be doing him an injustice. With an extroverted only child, who is at turns a nurturing leader of younger kids and displays great vulnerability trying to find a random kid to play with or be accepted by, we suspect that he will play to his strengths if he stays behind with kids who are a little younger than him.

While his daycare suggested there was a risk of Gabriel getting bored while in the same room for another year, I recalled a concept from my studies in Education - over-learning. If he is covering similar topics or themes in the coming year, I am fine with that. I get the impression that Gabriel is more of an analytical mind and that he may continue to process familiar knowledge in different ways. (Recently he wanted me to "play" with his Hot Wheels with him. For some reason our play consisted of sorting out all his dinkeys and separating the Hot Wheels from the non-Hot Wheels cars.

If he grows bored with too-familiar lessons and stories, perhaps there is an opportunity for him to play more of a nurturing or empathetic role. Since making our decision to keep him in daycare for another year, we told the daycare that we are prepared to adapt what we do at home to ensure that we are on the same page as the staff at the daycare in encouraging the leadership, empathy and social development that we would like to support in the coming year.

We have been conscious from day one of Gabriel being big for his age and my wife and I still tell one another that he was never that small when we see newborns. We have always seen his size as presenting a mixed blessing when he is in school and it is probably better for us to embrace that and get him accustomed to that size distinction rather than try to get him to blend in with a group of kids who are three to nine months older than him. When he is with younger and smaller kids we can prompt him to be gentler with them and perhaps he will get the sense of the responsibilities that come with being the big kid and take the opportunity to protect with his size and maturity.

All in all, we have concluded that it is better and lower stakes to hold him back now rather than pressure him throughout his school years to keep up or hold him back later in life when the stakes are a little higher than they are now.

The Discovery of Calm

For about a month now I have been trying to figure out an option to my overwrought urgency whenever Gabriel is on the verge of endangering himself. Usually it is nothing more than an attempt to keep him from wandering off a berm by the side of the road and into traffic. I will begrudge the admission that I might let paranoia get the best of me when it comes to Gabriel's well-being.

Another inner dialogue that I have been having of late surrounds my tendency to postpone Gabriel squirrel away a moment to myself before giving him my time. It is a bad habit, even though it is nothing more than me saying, "Let me get my glasses," when he asks me to read, or a chore of some sort I want to do first. I have made the vow to not blow him off anymore. May be not quite anymore but nudge that up the requisite six or seven dozen percentage points that are easily in range.

And so those two things converge...

Music class is finished and we are looking at a 15-minute wait for our bus. Gabriel normally fills the time in the best ways he can dawdling through the garbage, balancing himself precariously on slabs of concrete and exploring whatever the landscape might provide - a range of activities that empties my quiver of "Stops," "Come here's" and "Look out's" that I try to deploy in the face of preschool curiosity and boredom-busting. Impact: zero.

On this occasion, though, I've taken a more relaxed approach. I'm still immersed in a novel -- Andrezej Stasiuk's Dukla a jaw-dropping novel of breathtaking imagery and writing, by the way. The novel is just a diversion for a deliberately relaxed vigilance.  Gabriel does his thing and I keep my attention divided between him and the book. Given the chance to utterly endanger himself in the face of my restrained silence, he does not. He diverts himself with ryegrass or indian grass (I believe), which he yanks out of the ground and stacks.

"Can you help me?"

My cue.

I put the book aside and join him, without delay, taking directions on how he wants me to proceed as we address the stack he is building. I show him how to strip the spikelets - those little bits on the end that evoke the thought of bran or wheat - off the stalk of grass and add them to the pile. I offer to take direction from him and determine if a grass with a coarser, larger set of spikelets would suit his purposes for his pile or construction of grass.  We passed our block of time in this fashion and when the bus arrived I reminded him to pick up the toy truck he insisted on toting along throughout our Saturday.

And I learn to lay off and ease my vigilance to something more detached. I give Gabriel a little more room to roam and more independence and I get a little more calm (and reading) to myself. In that moment, I get the calm island that I have, to this point, failed to squirrel away to myself time and time again. Control relinquished and a balance between father and son is struck as rarely before.

A Lesson to Save

A month ago, I took a shot at achieving a goal that I had been targeting for a while: qualifying for the Boston Marathon. I had spent much of the winter preparing to meet my Boston Qualifying (BQ) goal and headed to Vancouver with the hope that the climate and altitude would give a further boost to my pursuit of the target. The race proceeded well and I was at a promising pace up until the 35K mark when cramps set in.  "Set in" seems a bit too euphemistic actually for the pain that stabbed through my left calf. I tried to run through it a few times, but I resigned to caution in the face of the pain and the looming mid-morning heat.

I walked most of the last 7K, watching the Boston Marathon qualifying time tick away and then the possibility of a time in the 3:30's and then eyed the threat of finishing in over 4 hours.  I picked up my feet and jogged in the last kilometre or so, to summon up a bit of pride that took a particularly hard blow as some idiot in leather thongs trotted passed to glory and the serated stigmata of the leather's carve through his naive feet.

Toward the end, I just wanted to see my son for a welcome smile.  We have been in the habit of finishing together.  The first time I did it, I carried him across the line with me and since that time he has been eager to grab my hand and run through the finish gate with me, thrilled to get that feeling and my medal to boot. Like Jim Valvano, I'd like my son to get practiced in the rituals of victory and celebration and visualize the thrill of the finish line.

On this occasion with disappointment blooming, I wanted to see him for the comfort if nothing else. I slowly scanned the crowd for my wife and my son and thrilled to see them along with my brother- and sister-in-law, who were wary of the mild insanity that congregates around marathon courses. My wife hoisted my son over the high fence and despite everything, he felt light and we were ready to run it in for the finish.

We crossed the line together and my son beamed up at me as he does at the thrill of running as fast as we can when we are coming home from school and he has asked me to hold his hand and run as hard as I can until his spinning legs cannot keep up and he either slides or takes flight upon giving up the effort to keep up.  For him, these few hundred metres to stop the clock are perhaps just another occasion for that thrilling, everyday ride with his dad.

I stop as soon as we cross and I give him a hug and I ask him, "How'd I do?"

He replied, having heard that I would have been 35, not 62 minutes getting to the finish from the point when he last cheered me on, "It was really long."

"You proud of me?"

"Yeah."

And I told him that I too would be proud of him in the face of his disappointments just as he was proud of me and that no matter how bad he would ever feel, I would always have his back.

It might be a lot to lay on a four-year-old, so the picture helps.  I'll be able to remind him or show him that moment when he feels that way and tell him of how disappointment can burn and linger and that in the end it doesn't change anything about the way I feel about him.  Actually, it would likely just make me prouder.

A Dystopian Little Prince

Over a year ago, the first trailers for an animated adaptation of Antoine du St. Exupery's The Little Prince first appeared and promised an enchanting film that I had told myself would, along with Inside Out be a pair of movies that my son could turn to for wisdom for years and years.  Throughout the months that followed the promise of a blockbuster bringing the hordes to the theatres fizzled and left me puzzled. There were delays and delays for the English language version to be released.  In March 2016 it made a brief appearance in Canada while news came out that the film would go direct to Netflix. Odd harbingers all.

Still, I was eager to take my son to the movie whenever it would be released.  I tried reading my son a chapter a night for a few nights and then when the movie tie-in book came out I resorted to that for the sake of having a one night read. When the time came to see it in March, I headed out to see it on my own.  He was tired that particular day and the showings were scheduled so sporadically that it suggested that it would be better to see it alone if I were to see it while it was still in the theatres.

I had only come upon The Little Prince when I was in my late 20's. It immediately had an impact on me and since reading it I have probably purchased at least a dozen copies whether as gifts or replacements for leant copies that remained wayward. I currently have three copies, including a French-language version and the film tie-in I mentioned. I was going in informed and with a vested interest in how it turned out.

It was evident in the trailer that the movie was going to lean toward a telling of the story hat would indicate it's telling and themes rather than directly tell the story in the manner that St. X wrote. There was a clever reference to a modern single mom's ambition to get her child into Werth Academy - named after dedicatee Leon Werth and I thought that was an interesting sign that every corner of the book was going to be mined for its potential. As the story moved back and forth between the pilot's interaction with the modern world and his recollection of the story in the desert as he first wrote or experienced it, the story was true to its source and as enchanting as hoped.

The distinctive animation of the desert scenes had a delicate element to it which reflected in a small way the illusion that St. Expuery's story was of those drawings that he shared and keeping alive a shallower roman a clef truth to what he concocted out of his experiences when his own plane crashed in the desert. The animation lends itself to the profound and ancient rather than mere whimsy and in these scenes of the movie, the novella's wisdom is respected and delivered effectively to the screen.

If only the whole movie were presented in that delicate manner. The alternating "modern" scenes about the now-ancient pilot's efforts to befriend and enlighten the high-achiever-to-be girl next door, are of a more contemporary CGI look and the efforts there eventually test the patience of those more familiar with the original story. The framing emphasizes the importance of the story and its messages in our modern world but the reality is that the source is an exceptionally deep 108 (illustrated) pages. 

This interpretation of the story for screen ultimately fails on the dark turn the story makes during the concluding act. The filmmakers discard the fragility of the desert scenes for a dystopian sequence that calls to mind George Orwell's 1984 or Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall." The sheer menace during these scenes would have prompted me to leave before the film ended if I had been watching it with my son. I finished the film on my own, but felt disappointed at the end result. Given the responsibility of adapting The Little Prince, the filmmakers blew it with their third act and that would provide some reason why the film had such an odd route to (home) screens in North America.

Parenting and Play

Last Friday afternoon, I was out with my camera and drifted into a rather quiet, verdant area that invited passers by to muse over what flowers were intoxicating with the particular scents of spring that were emanating.  I had popped my macro lense on for a few close ups to file away and to muse quietly in the state of mind that a well-crafted and maintained garden can inspire with and get into that zone with the camera.

I was not in complete isolation there. I was a few minutes walk from English Bay in Vancouver and there was the pop and twang of tennis nearby to draw my eye in that direction. Cars were circulating in range of the tennis court and, a little closer to me, a mother was with her friend and her child. From where I stood, I could tell from the toddling stride toward the road that the child was around 15 months old. From the bucket hat and overalls I assumed it was a boy. As he tested his stride and the limits of his independence, his mother got up from where she was and managed to get him to play peek-a-boo.  If I were in that situation, I would have bounded toward the boy in headlong pursuit, panic and over-protectiveness getting the best of me. Peek-a-boo would have been well done the list of interventions to keep the boy out of traffic, no matter how light it was.

I too was rapt in this moment of play and watched as mom escalated her hiding in the game and the boy, giggling, started coming back towards his mother. I am still blown away. From the moment I saw that, I tried to think of ways that I could use play instead of panic to get Gabriel to "get" what I'd prefer him to be doing.  The first thoughts are that it is too late for some of those things where he is too headstrong or rambunctious to settle down and get my point. My attempt at role-playing him through the situation where he bit a classmate at daycare was one possibility and while it was a calm and rational moment for me when trying to discipline or teach him, it is one of those things that I'll have to file away and try to use with him later.

I'm sure there is always a type of play that will help you make a point to your child when teaching certain things and the key is to keep calm and figure out what types of play work best when trying to teach your child the things that you want them to know. When it happens, though, it is magical.

Instead of Anger

Once again at daycare, I caught a more stern countenance from the staff as I arrived to pick my son up at the end of the day.  There is an element of performance or ostentation to the communications and the most important or obvious part of the dialogue at this point communicates to me, "Something's up," or "We didn't have a good day." I brace myself and call him over as I'm told there is a report for me to sign. I review the report and add my ink in my assigned task. My face is all scowls and furrows as I shed all desire to nudge in an additional few minutes of play time before we roam home.

He has bitten one of his classmates. I have edged toward livid but know that a rant is not going to get me anywhere. I still approach the border of rant, with the litany of the base questions that get me through the walk home. Does Mom bite you? Do I bite you? How would you like it if N bit you? I dread writing them down again for their utter lack of originality or constructiveness, but that is what I was left resorting to.  From there I get a sense of needing a different approach, a strategy that will give him a different approach or outlet rather than urging greater and greater levels of self-control.

The conversation turns and we get into the details of what happened, which I already gathered from the report. Earlier on in the day, he bit a girl in a fight over a spoon. For clarity and context I have to add -- despite it making me sound like a 4-year-old -- that he had it first. For whatever reason he was expected to give the spoon over and in the escalation over said spoon, he bit the girl. The conversation lead to the topic of sharing, but it was clear to me that sharing was not quite be what I would be encouraging. In reality it would be capitulation that I would be insisting upon: keep giving you her her way and... well... she'll walk all... over you. Everyone would. 

No Gabriel, sharing is a little more complicated than you'd like or hope it to be. Your conflict-averse father knows that all too well at his age.

By the time we got home my mind was onto the topic of what he ought to be doing.  I ushered him to his spot at the kitchen table and brought out the green plastic IKEA spoon that is core to his breakfast rituals - green being his favourite colour.  I gave him the spoon and tried to role play what happened this morning. He didn't play his role with the emotion that he had in the morning. It was loosely gripped and it was easy for me to pluck it out of his relaxed fist rather than take him the brink of the conflict he was in prior to the bite.  I never quite got him to act it out as vividly as I would have liked, but I did make the case that it was time to inquire when something was leading to conflict or disrespecting his boundaries.  (The boundaries conversation will be for another day.) I tried to instill in him the question, "Why are you doing that?"

In the role play, however, Gabriel didn't abstract well enough to pose the question to me. Instead he felt compelled to answer it and he never quite got around to asking it.  We discussed it again when my wife got home and tried to coach him on using the question throughout the evening and we will do it over the coming days and weeks as well. Hopefully he will be able to employ it and make the effort to defuse a situation before it gets to the point that it did in daycare yesterday morning. My hope is that the question will bring about another level of consciousness on the part of both protagonists in this rite of childhood. I would dread Gabriel merely receiving the response, "Because I want it," and flounder with the challenge of coming up with the appropriate follow-up question. Perhaps the question would give his friend the chance to ask herself the same thing or give him the time to tell her to get another spoon elsewhere rather than insist on the one he had.

On the topic of daycare, I hope this is not too jarring a transition, last night I wrote our daycare to inform them of our desire to keep Gabriel there for another year to ensure he is more developed before thrusting him into kindergarten and onto a gerbil wheel of perpetual catch up throughout his schooling.

Should He Stay or Should He Go

As a November baby, Gabriel's timing or age or development -- whichever of these terms best serves to define the question of when he ought to start school -- is fraught with more reflection and inner debate than if he were born in the first half of the year. We have, revisited the question many times and each time nodded to ourselves that the best course is to keep him back one more year rather than rush him along. It is not a decision we have come easily to. I may have come to it a little more easily and my unwillingness to sleep on the decision to enrol him in school in September may belie a stubborn streak that I am very reluctant to acknowledge otherwise.

Gabriel is a big kid for his age. That was the story from his arrival and when I compare his size to my own during childhood, he is seven months ahead of me in his height and weight. The first things that come to mind are the expectations that will be thrust upon him because of that size. His peers will look up to him and expect him to do some of their heavy lifting on the playground or in other venues of uneasy childhood detente. Teachers will over look the birthdate in the class register and erode him with expectations of superior development and performance to go along with the size of the child. Those things are obvious, and there is a part of me that acknowledges how old his mother and I are and would like to hold on to him a little longer and at the same time do all we can to ensure that he is as independent as possible when he finishes his public schooling and comes to that cross road.

Earlier this year, Nadine had asked the question of whether he ought to start in September 2016 rather than 2017 and we mulled it over one more time. Four years and 10 months is a bit of a lag behind everyone else and it would be better to have him over-prepared than under. There may be those questions of him being bored if he waited a year longer and there would be the fact that he would be that much bigger than his peers when he finally gets into the queue but I would feel better prepared to talk to him about the advantages and onuses of his size than rebuilding confidence on a regular basis as he tries to catch up.

Earlier this week, the conversation emerged again at his daycare. We had a parent-teacher meeting at the daycare where the teacher in his room indicated that he had a hard time focusing and staying still in class.  I've noticed this in his music class on Saturdays as well. Despite this challenge with attentiveness, however, his daycare teachers feels we ought to consider enrolling him for kindergarten with the rest of the kids currently in his daycare class. Comparisons were made to another boy in the class who have had same problem with attentiveness and another who is slightly younger than Gabriel, but surpasses him for focus and calm. The daycare teacher asserted that she would be able to settle him down within a few months to the point that he would start working on his penmanship a little more, but that remains some distance off. We have witnessed him calm and focused to play with Lego or construction trucks, but my experience of late has been that it has been a slightly more difficult to retain his attention for books at bedtime. He has always been a challenge to settle down for bed; from day one he has seemed to have felt that he would be missing something while he slept.

One question we did not ask during the interview was whether her timeframe was accurate if Gabriel was only in class three days a week. On his days off, he has had the opportunity to go to gymnastics and rock climbing classes. The other thing that is obvious is that he has a lot of energy to burn off. He does have plenty to burn off and I have often joked that our efforts to wear him out are actually just improving his endurance.

I am not sure how much Nadine has given second thoughts to enrolling him early, but one indicator is her comment that the daycare wants to fill his seat with someone else. Further to that it would be a challenge for them to have Gabriel in a group when he is with a group of peers that are that much younger than him. There is the threat that he would be bored during the coming year of daycare, and that it would be a challenge for the teachers there to keep him engaged when they would be, focusing their energies on the majority of the kids. It would be an opportunity for him to take on a role to further develop his social skills and still pursue the valuable task of getting him to focus a little better.

And with that jumble of confessions and contradictions, I have shared the dilemma of when to enrol the lad in school and disclosed enough background for an "expert" to diagnose him with something and reach for the prescription pad. We are not, however, looking for a diagnosis to over-label or to simplify, medicate and discard what is first and foremost "boyhood."  We'll keep modelling calm.  I'll see if my intermittent practice of kanji prompts him to sit and work on writing his alphabet.  I'll keep telling him to keep chugging hard and not to stop and cry when he sees someone he wants to catch up to or pass when he is running.  We will keep him on his path and at his pace.