Kids Are People Too.

When I picked Little One up from school yesterday he was, in fact, fully-clothed in clothing that were not his jammas. Including socks. And boots. And all the other necessary parts of “being dressed”. His teacher reported that he did it all by himself and that he was perfectly cheerful all day.

He ran out of the classroom door and attacked me in a bear hug (as he always does) and started jabbering away about his day and his friends and who didn’t get ready on time and then he said, “.. And TOMORROW I will get up and get dressed in CLOTHES for SCHOOL!”

This morning he was up and dressed before Coffee and I got out of bed.

Clearly he was SERIOUS about that getting ready thing.

It never stops amazing me, seriously, how transient kids’ moods are from moment to moment and day to day.

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Speaking of clothing, Middle One came home wearing his teacher’s gloves after school.

When asked, he asserted that his hands were cold (from not wearing mittens) and so his teacher had offered his own so Middle One wouldn’t be cold during lunch and recess.

Each of our kids own at least 2 pairs of gloves/mittens that are theirs alone – they’re responsible for not losing them, for not wrecking them, and for knowing where they are each morning. If they manage to lose the gloves/mittens, they are expected to use their allowance to purchase a new pair.

In addition, we have about 8 pairs of “family gloves/mittens” that can be borrowed when personal gloves are lost in a heap of dirty laundry or still wet from sledding. These are kept in a container in the living room.

Every day, Middle One is reminded that it’s cold outside and there is snow and that it would be a good idea to wear mittens or bring some with him in his backpack in case he gets cold. He chooses whether or not to wear them or bring them or just leave without them.

(The other kids are given the same reminder and choice, too, but in Little One’s case we put them into his bag for him.)

This is part of our “natural consequences” parenting style. We make sure they kids have their own items, then we remind them when it’s appropriate to use/take them, they choose and then they live with consequences. They can always make a different choice the next day – and sometimes they do. Other times they decide that they really didn’t need the mittens or gloves or warmer sweater (or whatever).

I wrote a note to Middle One’s teacher thanking him for caring about our kid’s cold fingers, of course, and gave him a rundown of the glove situation around here. I asked him to please not assist Middle One beyond telling him to “make better choices the next day” if need-be.

Middle One is, without question, the least organized kid I’ve ever known and he has absolutely no worries about it. He’ll shrug off losing almost anything. We are working really hard to help him learn to keep his stuff in the right places, where he can find it again, and to teach him how to be responsible.

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We have yet to have a full school day with no tears.

Every day Middle One either cries on the way to or from school – for a variety of reasons that include “Older One is looking at me”, “The snow is too cold”, “I broke my X or Y toy”, “I fell”, “I forgot my X or Y at school” and other, more creative, offerings.

The kicker is that he won’t TELL me he’s upset; he’ll just slog along the sidewalk sobbing until I notice (he’s one of those people who cries quietly until he gets really worked up) and then be offended that I didn’t notice him crying a block earlier.

And every day I hear myself say, “Middle One? Why are you crying?” and “What would you like me to do?”

Yesterday we made it all the way to school without tears. Then we made it all the way to our backyard before he found a reason to cry.

I call this progress.

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On the flip side, Little One used to cry several times each day. If he was frustrated, he’d cry. If he was mad, he’d cry. If he was tired, he’d cry. If someone breathed his air, he’d cry.

Lately he’s gone a whole day here and there without any tears at all. And yesterday was just ONE cry.

And the best part is that his tears are no longer epic dramas of hysterical shrieking – they’re two-minute bouts of tears, a few sniffles, and then he comes for a hug and feels better right away.

He is using his words to tell me what’s wrong. He believes me when I say we can fix the problem together.

I call this progress, too.

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Oldest One is getting into the swing of this “homework thing” each day. I’ve been helping him with math, in particular, and I’m stunned by the crap they’re forcing the kids to learn. Yugh.

Every day that I take him to school I feel worse about the education he’s getting.

We live in a world where facts and figures are easily discovered on the internet and where calculators exist. I want my kids to know how to use the tools that are available once they have the basic concepts under their belts.

Basic concepts? Well, I believe it’s important to know things like multiplication and division. I believe it’s important to know how to spell. I believe it’s important to know how to research things and find answers much more than I believe it’s important to memorize stuff.

I’m just not sure that multiple-page worksheets in which he’s expected to convert the size of mountains in kilometers to millimeters is useful. Or decimeters, for that matter. When was the last time YOU used decimeters for.. ANYTHING?

So he scrawls his answers and I bite my tongue and he asks me, honestly, if I’ve ever needed to do this sort of math in my adult life. And I tell him, honestly, no.

The homeschooling concept looms ever-closer.

Let me be clear – I do not fault his teachers. They have curriculum to follow. They work hard to make that curriculum interesting, engaging and appropriate. And, god knows they can’t customize every lesson to each individual kid.

I know a lot of people who have attended regular ol’ school and excelled and learned well and gone on to be very successful. I’m not knocking the public school system!

I’m just not sure that it’s serving MY kids very well. Coffee and I need to discuss this. Figure things out.

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One of the concepts drilled into our heads in our adoption-parenting-training was the idea of “raising adults not children”. That we, like all parents, need to focus on teaching our kids how to be good adults and not how to be good kids.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t let them play or have fun or enjoy themselves. They ARE kids.

But they will someday be adults. And they will need to have the right skills to be successful adults. Childhood ends and the kids need to be prepared for things like “going to work every day” and “taking care of paying the bills” and “things cost money” and all the rest.

Kids are people. They’re not a special brand of people – they’re.. people. They need to be treated with respect and to have their feelings and thoughts and opinions count for something. I think the best way to treat them with respect is to help them get to adulthood in one piece and to learn how to work with the mind and body they’ve been given.

One size does not, in fact, fit all.

Balancing three kids with three different personalities/needs/desires is difficult. I don’t think it’s impossible, though.