Doing the laundry used to be like riding a bike. I could work on it all throughout the day (yes, there is enough of it in our house that we usually have about 6-8 loads) and not really pay much attention to the fact that I was doing it. Sort into piles, listen to music. Fold socks and type a term paper at the same time. Now, I have a preschooler. He wants to help! Gathering all of the clothes and sorting them went from taking 5 minutes to 15. Granted, he contributes a good load and a half to the laundry, but that doesn't really take more than a minute longer to gather and sort in addition to the other clothes, towels and sheets. Hand Johnny a sock, point to the correct pile. Hand over a shirt, point to a different pile. Throw my own underwear into the appropriate pile and stop him from chasing after it yelling, "But I want to do it!!!" and convince him that there is plenty of laundry and that he should only sort what I give him to sort. He has gotten a pretty good hang of which item belongs in which pile, but I still have to keep a close eye on things as we go so that he doesn't misplace daddy's work/church shirts that have to go through a "special wash". While he can identify those shirts when hanging up or on daddy, they're hard to pick out of a crumpled-up pile on the floor, especially when they're big enough to fit two of him in.
Folding laundry has gone from a streamlined process that I could do practically without even looking at the clothes to a 15 minute-per-basket ordeal. Johnny isn't interested in folding his own clothes, (which are at least his size and would be conceivably easier to attempt) he only wants to fold daddy's. That's kind of like having every item I fold all day be a set of fitted sheets. They're huge, awkward, and require his entire body to work with. There is a lot of grunting and fussing involved, as well as a little red tongue poked out the side of his mouth. He is determined, though! Then I have to wait until he is out of the room and distracted with something else to refold everything. If he catches me or notices that his work has been disturbed, he becomes highly offended.
My most recent Laundry Monday was yesterday, and when it came time to sort and fold socks, Johnny became lost in thought. I was asking him to find me two that were "the same". After putting together several pair over an unusually long stretch of silence, he paused and put his hand on my arm to stop me. "I wanna talkacchew!" (Talk to you -- which sounds more like talk at you, and that is honestly a more accurate description 99% of the time) I squatted down to be at his eye level.
"They aren't the same. None of them are same, they can't be. They match. This one has a spot on it here and this one doesn't," he held up two Lightning McQueen socks, "but they are a pair. They match, but they aren't same. Nothing is zackly the same. There's always something different."
I explained to him that the phrase "the same" is usually used to describe pairs or things that appear to match. Technically speaking, they don't perfectly match if one has a spot and the other doesn't, but they are a matched set of socks because they were made to go together. We bought them as a pair. He seemed to understand, and we chatted about his Memory game (the one where you flip cards over two at a time until you find all of the matches) and Go Fish. Neither of those have cards that will ever be exactly the same; some were printed a little crooked, some will get bent, some were made with a little spot on them and the matching one doesn't have a spot, but they can all be put into pairs that are "the same". The new word of the day: identical. Even at that, he is a bit picky. He still isn't convinced that anything can be identical. However, he has accepted that people call things "the same" when they're pretty close to being identical. We've settled on that.
Johnny turns will turn 4 in 2 weeks.
To focus his mind on something less intense, we put some of those socks to work...
Folding laundry has gone from a streamlined process that I could do practically without even looking at the clothes to a 15 minute-per-basket ordeal. Johnny isn't interested in folding his own clothes, (which are at least his size and would be conceivably easier to attempt) he only wants to fold daddy's. That's kind of like having every item I fold all day be a set of fitted sheets. They're huge, awkward, and require his entire body to work with. There is a lot of grunting and fussing involved, as well as a little red tongue poked out the side of his mouth. He is determined, though! Then I have to wait until he is out of the room and distracted with something else to refold everything. If he catches me or notices that his work has been disturbed, he becomes highly offended.
My most recent Laundry Monday was yesterday, and when it came time to sort and fold socks, Johnny became lost in thought. I was asking him to find me two that were "the same". After putting together several pair over an unusually long stretch of silence, he paused and put his hand on my arm to stop me. "I wanna talkacchew!" (Talk to you -- which sounds more like talk at you, and that is honestly a more accurate description 99% of the time) I squatted down to be at his eye level.
"They aren't the same. None of them are same, they can't be. They match. This one has a spot on it here and this one doesn't," he held up two Lightning McQueen socks, "but they are a pair. They match, but they aren't same. Nothing is zackly the same. There's always something different."
I explained to him that the phrase "the same" is usually used to describe pairs or things that appear to match. Technically speaking, they don't perfectly match if one has a spot and the other doesn't, but they are a matched set of socks because they were made to go together. We bought them as a pair. He seemed to understand, and we chatted about his Memory game (the one where you flip cards over two at a time until you find all of the matches) and Go Fish. Neither of those have cards that will ever be exactly the same; some were printed a little crooked, some will get bent, some were made with a little spot on them and the matching one doesn't have a spot, but they can all be put into pairs that are "the same". The new word of the day: identical. Even at that, he is a bit picky. He still isn't convinced that anything can be identical. However, he has accepted that people call things "the same" when they're pretty close to being identical. We've settled on that.
Johnny turns will turn 4 in 2 weeks.
To focus his mind on something less intense, we put some of those socks to work...
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