A Parenting Moment

They have a love-hate relationship.  My son (K) and a boy the same age (let's call him D) at daycare have known each other since they both started going to daycare a year and a half ago.  Now that they're 2.5 years old, they're into the hitting, pushing and scratching.  One minute they will be playing with each other and saying they're each others' best friends and a minute later, one of them will hit the other because they want to play with the same toy and inevitably, my little K will cry.

For the past few weeks when I have been picking up K from daycare, the following scenario (in one way or another) seems to unfold.  They're both putting on their outside shoes while D's mom or granfather (who often picks him up) and I wait.  Something happens (it could really be anything) and one of them will hit the other which results in the kid who has been hit to hit the one who hit him.  The adults try to diffuse the situation and then eventually they have their shoes and jackets on and we're ready to go.  D will say "I want to go out with K" and will hold his hands as we head out the door. 

Last week, while my K was crying because D hit him, D comes right up in K's face and says "you're a bad boy."  I was so proud of K when he responded by saying "I'm not a bad boy" especially since I've been trying to teach him to respond with words...and then whack, K hits D.  They leave the daycare holding hands and I continue the same conversation on the way home...."why did you hit D?  Now we don't hit, ok?" and so on...

The next day when I come to pick up K, I am greeted by D's mom and another mom of a younger boy.  I go say hi and hug K and this is followed by D putting his arms around K in a very loving way.  The hug ends up getting tighter and tighter and I can see K getting upset and saying "don't do that."  In the background I hear D's mom (who is chatting to the other mom near the door) "he doesn't want you to hug him" and continues to chat with the other mom.  In the meantime, K (who is now being held even tighter by D) scratches D and I quickly pull them apart.  K begins to cry and and I grab him while he's wailing, say "don't do that" and put him on the floor to calm down.  D's mom is still chatting at the door and acting like what just happened is not worth doing anything about.  At this point I am livid....am I the only parent here?  I decide to stay behind to talk to the caregiver about this.  When it's time to put on their shoes and jackets, D says "I want to go out with K" and I say that we're not leaving right now because I want to talk to the caregiver.  We wait till they leave.  The caregiver agrees with me and tells me that when we pick up our kids, it's not her responsibility anymore to deal with such situations.  She said she would talk to the mother but not say that it came from me.

That evening while K is doing a puzzle at home, I see that he is struggling to fit a pieve of the puzzle.  He's getting frustrated because he can't do it and then I hear him say to himself "I'm a bad boy" in the same tone that D used when he said that to him the day before.  My heart just sank as I put 2 and 2 together and saw that what D said to him had really affected him.  I comfort him and tell him he's not a bad boy and help him put the puzzle piece in the right place.  The next day I tell the caregiver what happened and how this is affecting my son and how it's even more important to talk to D's mom now.

I'm so proud of myself for sticking up for my son.  I know kids will hit each other and say these kinds of hurtful words to each other and they'll need to figure out how to deal with it.  But right now my son is only 2.5 years old and needs someone to fight for him...and that person is me!

Going to Tajikistan

We finally booked our ticket to Tajikistan!  I'm so excited for Kimran to meet his family (grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and a lot of extended family) for the first time.  We're going for a month in September (can't go that far and not stay for a while) when Kimran will be a little over 3 years old.  We've been preparing him and getting him excited about going.

One night before going to bed, we told him that we're going to Tajikistan and asked him if he wanted to go.  At first he said "no" but when we showed him how excited we were to go, he said "I want to go" in the tone of voice he uses when he wants something now.  The next morning when he woke up, he said "I want to go to Tajikistan."  Of course he said that - how does he know what September is and why are we talking about this so early in the year?  As we walked out the main door of the house to go to daycare, he stopped at the entrance, held my hand and looked up at the sky and asked "where is the plane?"  And I just said, "if it were only that easy that we talk about going one day and go the next day and how wonderful, that the plane comes and picks us up at the door."

And then a few weeks later while putting him in his car seat after picking him up from daycare where he heard me telling his teacher that we're going to Tajikistan, I told him we need to take 3 planes to get to Tajikistan.  He looked at me, then at the sky and in a very contemplative manner said "mommy, I don't know how to go in the clouds."  "Oh, Kimran" I said, "the plane will take us in the clouds."  And now everytime we see a plane in the sky (which is very often since we live about 10 minutes from an international airport) I point out that the plane is going take us in the clouds.

We've had a look at our travel route on the map...from Canada (Vancouver) to the United Kingdom (London) to Turkey (Istanbul) to Tajikistan (Dushanbe). 

I've already started thinking about the things we can do when we're there...like baking a cake with his grandmother (whose cakes are amazing) and looking at rocks with his grandfather (a geologist). These are some of the things Kimran loves to do and won't it be great for him to be able to do this with his family in Tajikistan?

Algeria!

Today during sports class while the teacher took attendance she asked the kids to say their favourite thing to do and gave examples (playing on the playground, watching a cartoon, playing sports, etc.) to get them started.  She called Noella's name who smiled and said she loves chocolates as her mom watched on.  Then it was Alex's turn who raised his hands to indicate he was in class - his answer, watching Thomas the Tank Engine.  Before my son's name was called out, I asked him what his favourite thing to do was and he looked at me sheepishly and whispered "countries."  I immediately knew he was talking about looking at countries on the map hanging on our dining room wall.  And then it was his turn and I wasn't really sure he was actually going to answer and even more, if he was going to say what he told me (I was hoping he would because I just loved his answer and was so happy he came up with it).  He paused for a few seconds and then blurted out "Algeria!" in a high pitched tone.  I smiled and explained his answer - "he likes to look at countries on the map." 

Some months ago, I went to a work event about international development and got a free world map developed by the Canadian Development Agency (CIDA).  I remembered an Ellen Degeneres episode a while back where a little girl, not more than 4 years old, was on the show.  Her talent - ask her where any country was on the world map and she could tell you.  She was amazing.  It all started when she was about a year old and her dad showed her where Thailand was and said "this is where your uncle is right now."  He showed her the map the next day and she pointed to Thailand.  And then the next day he asked her where Thailand is and she pointed to it on the map.  He figured she was really enjoying the map and he spent everyday teaching a new country till she learned them all.  My son is a mixture of his two parents from different parts of the world (his dad from Tajikistan and me from Canada but whose parents and grandparents are from East Africa and great-grandparents from India) and one of the things I would like to instill in my son is an appreciation of different cultures around the world.  So I put the CIDA map on a wall in our dining room (where we spend a lot of time eating meals and pretend cooking and playing in my son's toy kitchen).  The first two countries we taught our son were Canada and Tajikistan - where his family lives.  And then we moved onto Nepal where Zack the Yak, a character in a book we sometimes read before going to sleep, lives.  And when we found out that a friend was going to Egypt, we showed it to him on the map and said “Salima is going there.”  So far, at 2.5 years old, my son knows the following countries: Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco (when I showed it to my son, he said “it’s behind Algeria”), Kenya (where a friend was born), Papua New Guinea (my son just loves the name), Australia, China, Russia, Mongolia (next to China and Russia), Tajikistan, Belarus (where Rosie’s mom in the book, How Mama Brought the Spring, lived), Tajikistan, Canada (where we live), India, Brazil, Nepal, Argentina, United States (where his cousin lives), El Salvador (where my son’s daycare teachers are from) and New Zealand (where an earthquake happened; my son has learned and continues to practice going under a table for an earthquake drill he learned in daycare one day).

Since spending time looking at countries on the map, my son has asked me where certain things are on the map.  When we were about to go to a friend’s birthday party one day, he asked me where it was.  I told him it was in Port Coquitlam and he asked “mommy, where is Port Coquitlam on the map?”  And then one day he was playing with an empty roll of toiled paper and said “it looks like a spaceship” (we had been reading a book about astronauts and space the previous few nights) and he asked me “mommy, were is space on the map?”  I have even shown him where his sports class and his daycare are on the world map.

I want my son to travel the world and I think he’s on his way.

90 Minutes For Me

I started Bikram's hot yoga this week - I've been twice and although I feel sore in my legs and arms this morning, I feel good.  Exercising in 40 degree temperature and feeling like you're going to pass out is not anyone's idea of a fun time, but as skeptical as I was about the whole thing (a number of my colleagues swear by it), I think I'm sold for a number of reasons.

First of all, doing yoga is a nice change from the swimming I've been doing for the past year and half.  I guess I was feeling like I wasn't getting the same out of swimming like I was when I first started after returning to work post maternity leave.  While I love the early morning before work routine to jump start my day, I needed to stir things up and work different parts of my body.  I was getting bored and not looking forward to swimming each morning, so this is a nice way to get over that.

Secondly, doing Bikram's yoga is a challenge for me.  I've never been one to like heat (let alone exercise in heat) and never really understood the benefits of the stillness of poses, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth and that whole downward dog thing everyone seems to be doing nowadays (even my son when he's procrastinating going to sleep at night and wants to play with me "one more time, mommy").  As I sit here typing this before starting my work day, I feel energized and calm - ok, so maybe there's something to it.

Thirdly, I am so proud of myself.  Not only have I driven the 30 minutes to get to the yoga studio each way, I have gone by myself.  Yes, it would be nice to go with a friend to motivate me but I guess there's some kind of inner voice in me motivating me to go and enjoy the solitude of being by myself.  And even though there are 35 or so other people in the room sweating, stretching and breathing out loud all around me and an instructor talking through all the poses on a microphone, I feel like I'm all by myself.  There's no time to think of the outside world - work, wondering if my son is sleeping or giving his dad a hard time, what I'm going to cook for tomorrow's dinner or to remember to pay the rent when I get home - when you're so focused on getting through the 90 minutes in the heat.

This is really the only time I feel like I am focusing on myself, completely.