What is best for your child is to be completely consistent. They need structure and organization; your course of action should always be the same. We've all heard this from the moment that the topic of parenthood was even introduced into our lives, yet I'm not entirely convinced that it is true. On the whole, yes. But there are times when breaking the rules is just how the game needs to go down. I'm sorry, but I can't always justify sending my kid back to bed when he gets out of it 10 minutes after he has been put down if he is legitimately carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and needs to work through a few problems to be able to turn his mind off and fall asleep. I think there is a difference between a stall tactic and the situations we as adults often find ourselves in, and as parents we need to sometimes slow down and be aware of that. Sure, 9 times out of 10 when he comes out of his room and neeeeds to talk to me, he really is just trying to stall. All 9 of those times he gets his butt scooted right on back to bed. But every now and then, he truly has a deep worry or serious thought that he can't shake. He needs help processing something so that his brain can slow down and let him drift off into blissful oblivion. That's when he needs a parent, not a drill sergeant. This is a part of him that is no different than any other kid.
I've come to the conclusion that part of Johnny's uniqueness is an ability to visualize some things that not everyone can. When you ask him what something looks like, he puts his hand up and draws a picture of it in the air. It wouldn't seem so off-kilter from what another kid might do, except from the fact that it is always how he handles showing you something, and it seems as though he continues to see the images suspended in air. He draws other things next to them, then refers back to the first one, pointing out similarities and differences. I can't see any of it, but obviously he can. It's like he has a huge invisible canvas that floats in front of him at all times.
I decided to do an experiment. With his permission, I drew for him. If I draw to show him what I'm talking about, (visually showing him my feelings, "I'm sad" -- something he often does for me, as we have talked about the fact that an upside down smiley face symbol means "sad") he has a very hard time seeing my picture. I have to be very specific, and even then he has a hard time seeing it as more than a set of scribbles. What dawned on me is that he can't see me picking up my "pen" and changing strokes. When I decided to write several versions of what my picture might look like on a piece of paper and ask him which one I had drawn, he picked out the one where I attempted to draw a frown without lifting the pen, not the actual frown. When he is drawing things himself, he can mentally see himself lifting the pen because he is the one doing the drawing. When someone else is doing it, there is no way of telling. I had been drastic about bringing my finger toward me to try and infer the moments when I was doing just that, but between his age and the general sense that it would only take the drawing into the third dimension, (he has drawn 3-D shapes for me in the air before) we ended the experiment before he could get too confused. The only time I know I can do it without confusing him is when I draw something that doesn't involve lifting my pen or that retraces/overlaps areas in order to never stray from the original figure (namely, letters and shapes). No art for mama!
Whereas so often I feel as though I have a good grasp on what goes on inside his mind, this is one area where I don't have a clue. I really wish I could see what he does.
Edit: 8:32pm: I amend my post from earlier today...
After reading what I wrote, my husband decided to sit down with Johnny himself. He found that by simply curling his fist into a ball every time he wanted to "pick up the pen" while writing in the air, Johnny saw it as exactly that. Without telling him what he was going to draw, Johnny instantly saw the stick figure person with the hair, eyes, nose, and frown. Whereas I had simply tried a circle with eyes and a frown, much like our circles with eyes and a smile, Steve had gotten him to see a much more complex picture by simply finding a way to signal to the kid when to assume he was using the pen and when he wasn't.
Mama may have been slow on the uptake, but daddy figured it out! I still want to be able to see through Johnny's eyes, though. I feel like he is seeing a whole visual plane that we aren't.
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I decided to do an experiment. With his permission, I drew for him. If I draw to show him what I'm talking about, (visually showing him my feelings, "I'm sad" -- something he often does for me, as we have talked about the fact that an upside down smiley face symbol means "sad") he has a very hard time seeing my picture. I have to be very specific, and even then he has a hard time seeing it as more than a set of scribbles. What dawned on me is that he can't see me picking up my "pen" and changing strokes. When I decided to write several versions of what my picture might look like on a piece of paper and ask him which one I had drawn, he picked out the one where I attempted to draw a frown without lifting the pen, not the actual frown. When he is drawing things himself, he can mentally see himself lifting the pen because he is the one doing the drawing. When someone else is doing it, there is no way of telling. I had been drastic about bringing my finger toward me to try and infer the moments when I was doing just that, but between his age and the general sense that it would only take the drawing into the third dimension, (he has drawn 3-D shapes for me in the air before) we ended the experiment before he could get too confused. The only time I know I can do it without confusing him is when I draw something that doesn't involve lifting my pen or that retraces/overlaps areas in order to never stray from the original figure (namely, letters and shapes). No art for mama!
Whereas so often I feel as though I have a good grasp on what goes on inside his mind, this is one area where I don't have a clue. I really wish I could see what he does.
Edit: 8:32pm: I amend my post from earlier today...
After reading what I wrote, my husband decided to sit down with Johnny himself. He found that by simply curling his fist into a ball every time he wanted to "pick up the pen" while writing in the air, Johnny saw it as exactly that. Without telling him what he was going to draw, Johnny instantly saw the stick figure person with the hair, eyes, nose, and frown. Whereas I had simply tried a circle with eyes and a frown, much like our circles with eyes and a smile, Steve had gotten him to see a much more complex picture by simply finding a way to signal to the kid when to assume he was using the pen and when he wasn't.
Mama may have been slow on the uptake, but daddy figured it out! I still want to be able to see through Johnny's eyes, though. I feel like he is seeing a whole visual plane that we aren't.
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