Language development. Perhaps the most noticeable way in which Q has grown is in the area of language. He repeats everything, uses personal pronouns, and puts up to 4 words together in phrases (i.e. "I wanna play ball"). We are excited that he has also learned "please" and "thank you." We are not so excited that he also has an arsenal of curse words, which are actually just other words slightly mispronounced (i.e. beach, clock, sit- can you guess what those sound like from a toddler learning to talk?).
Procedural understanding. It is quite nice that he now understands when I say "Mommy is going to take a shower first, and then I will give you a bath." It is also amusing when he walks us through his daily routines, such as bedtime during which he will tell us he needs his bear, then his jammies, then his prayers, then his song, etc.
Logical reasoning. As a math teacher who wrote a masters thesis on the development of logical reasoning skills, it is very gratifying to see my own child develop reasoning skills! He understands if/then statements well and I can tell him, "If you eat your chicken, then I will give you more grapes" or "If you clean up your books, then we will go to the playground" or "If you do not give that toy back, then you will have a time-out." I love that this enables me to help him connect his actions with rewards/consequences.
Categorical thinking. He is learning to differentiate between people and animals. Mommy, daddy, and Quinn are all "persons," dogs, cats, and fish are all "animals." He also differentiates between different types of balls (pretty much soccer balls versus all other balls- haha). And he breaks people into their families. If we talk about his friend Dawn, he will also talk about "Georgie" (Dawn's brother), "Stacy" (Dawn's mom) and "Pop" (what he calls Dawn's dad). He does the same for his other friends and their families completely without our prompting.
Discipline. In the past couple of months we started using time-out with Q and it has been extremely effective. We do the super-nanny technique (as was described to me- have never actually seen the show...) of having him stay in a designated place for 1 minute per year old (Q stays for 1.5minutes) and not speaking to them or paying attention to them until after their time is up. At first he got time outs if he intentionally hurt someone. He doesn't often hit or pinch, but when he gets frustrated and sometimes if he just gets too excited playing it will happen. Time-out has almost eliminated the problem all together. Each week or so I would add a new offense to what was acceptable to have time out for. First it was physical aggression, then taking toys away from others, and now that he has mastered those things such that he gets no warning prior to going straight to time out, time-out has expanded to general obedience. If I ask him to do something and he doesn't do it, I will warn him that I am going to give him 3 seconds to decide and if he hasn't done it then he will have a time out. Though I have flashbacks of my own mother from when I was a kid when I count, "1... 2... 3!" it is very effective. At 1 I can see him thinking about it, and I rarely get past 2 before he is doing what I've asked. Time out has been so effective with Q that even if I don't say anything about time-out, if he does something he knows is wrong or if he chooses not to do what I ask him, he will often put himself in time-out before I even get the chance to! And we heard him ask his friend to do something the other day and when she didn't do it immediately, he started counting at her, "1... 2..." It sounds like our child is in time-out constantly, but in reality he generally only has time-out a couple of times a day and sometimes not at all. The frequency has definitely decreased since he has learned what is not acceptable.
Monkey see, monkey do. Q mimics everything we do. Just tonight as we were putting him to bed I was resting my chin on my hand and rubbing my lip and I noticed him watching me and awkwardly doing the same thing. He watches literally everything we do and mimics it which is a huge responsibility for us as parents to act how we want him to learn to act. We also have to be extra careful about how he perceives our actions. For example, if the dogs are underfoot and in the way I will gently push them out of the way using the side of my foot. What Q sees is mommy "kicking" the dogs, so then, he does it too. Ai Yi Yi!
Favorites:
- Animals and animal noises. His favorite animals are fish. He loves to go to the aquarium and he will point out any fish he sees anywhere.
- Helping. He likes to help us roll suit cases, carry things, unload the dishwasher, and clean. Today he helped daddy hang baby sister's curtains by handing him tools.
- Music. Or as he calls it, "sic." He is always requesting to turn music on and he likes to sing and dance along.
- Fruit and pureed veggies. It is tough to get him to eat anything else :-/
- Climbing. He climbs everything and really enjoys figuring out how to climb new things at the playground. He also enjoys the swings, the big twisty slide, and the balance beam. In fact, he likes to pretend that every curb or narrow raised surface is a balance beam which made for a slow trip through Sea World last week.
- Picking flowers
- Playing daddy's guitar
- Being outside (preferably kicking the ball with dad or climbing something)
- His friends, whom he talks about incessantly
- Coloring (and sometimes taste-testing the crayons...) at his activity table (he really likes having a table and chairs just his size)
- "Finding Nemo", "The Little Rascals" and "Veggie Tales: The Wizard of Ha's" videos
- Hugs and kisses which he asks for (especially from daddy) and which he gives when saying goodbye to his girlfriend Dawn (not really sure where he picked that up from... we didn't teach him)
- Big boy bed (i.e. mattress and boxspring on the floor). He likes the freedom to get up and play in his room if he isn't ready for bed and to play in his room in the morning before mommy is ready to get up.
One final sweet thing Q has learned; "Where is baby sister?" after which he points at my belly and will give it a kiss. To be fair, I don't think he really understands because if daddy asks him where baby sister is he will generally point to daddy's belly... but it's cute none the less :-)
I am sure I have forgotten a zillion other things Q has learned recently, but regardless, this is just such a fun age! We are so enjoying getting to really communicate with him and to see him learning new things every single day. He just amazes us with his capacity for learning!
No comments:
Post a Comment