Archive for August, 2008

Sienna and Orange

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

When our son Oren starting using lidded cups instead of bottles, I had a great idea. To make sure that we didn’t confuse Oren’s cups with those of our daughter Siena (spelled with one n), I invented a simple rule: “Orange for Oren.” If neither the cup nor its lid was orange, it would be Siena’s cup.

After about two years, we broke the rule and gave Oren any color he wanted for himself. Siena did this too, though she never seemed to choose orange. Our “Orange for Oren” guideline had inadvertantly evolved into a self-imposed limitation on Siena. This change is made immediately and instantly clear when I attempt to give Siena a cup with an orange lid. She bursts into whiney tears. “Noooo! That’s Oren’s cup.” I try to explain it was okay, but she refuses to listen, her grief quickly progressing into a tantrum.

As modern-day, open-minded parents, my wife and I have always been uncomfortable color-coding our daughter. Before Siena, we swore we would never dress our daughter in pink. That rule failed, but to my mother’s horror, we’re not afraid to dress Siena in boyish colors and patterns, even military-green camouflauge. Her name may be a color, but we’ve tried to keep color bias out of our home … only to end up engineering our own, for orange.

Today I asked Oren what his favorite color is. Blue, he says. I ask him what else he likes. Purple. Green. Yellow. Black. “What other colors?” Red. White. Brown.

Oren has no orange recall. It’s as if he’s desensitized to it. And Siena still adamantly refuses all things orange. No orange plates, no orange cups, no orange clothes, no orange toys.

Single-handedly, I have destroyed an entire color.

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Thinking Inside the Box

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

For a long time, my kids’ favorite game was “Get in the Box.” We used a giant cardboard box, sturdy and as big as the file cabinet once inside it. The rules are simple. I say, “Get in the box.” They get in the box.

George Carlin, among others, have griped that today’s kids go to all sorts of specialized summer camps — not just hockey camp, but goalie camp – and don’t just play any more. Carlin thinks kids need to get back to sitting on the grass and playing with sticks. There’s a ring of truth to this, because I can remember (with nostalgia, maybe) digging holes in the dirt with a fallen stick.

When the kids get out of the box, I pretend to be angry. “Get back in the box!” I love this game because of how horrified my neighbors would be if they overheard me yelling this way. “What do you think you’re doing? Did I say you could get out of the box?”

The real message is that kids play with anything. If they have nothing, they play with sticks, or even trash. That they’ll play with an empty box is almost a cliche today; all the time I hear stories of presents discarded and boxes beloved. Chalk is another favorite, which Oren uses all over the house, and on every surface. Grapes are fun, because they’re round. Compact discs are shiny. Keys are jingly and open stuff. And sticks are, well, they’re always available.

After a while, the game gets tiresome for everyone. They wait longer and longer to come find me. They grow comfortable with the box, no longer anxious to jump out and find me. And eventually, finally, they don’t come out of the box at all. They stay in there, talking and still laughing.

Kids don’t need sticks. They can play beautifully with nothing, too.

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Yes, Please, Door

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

Our please-and-thank-you training is a bigger success than I thought.

When she was starting to talk, I played a bib game with my daughter. “Does the bib go on Daddy? Nooooo. Does the bib go on Siena? Yessss.” At a very young age, then, she grew comfortable saying yes, and in fact I don’t hear that word from many other kids. Oren, too, picked up use of the word. In their tiny voices, the word is adorable in its slides and sibilants and makes our kids seem very polite.

Games are the best (and most fun) way to teach them positive habits. We have all sorts of silly politeness games.

I get them to say please to inanimate objects. When we’re about to enter automatic doors, the kinds that use sensors to detect our approach, I always say “Open, please.” The doors, as if responding to my voice, open quietly. Now the kids do the same. It works like magic.

My wife taught them to say “no thank you” instead of ewwww or yuck when they’re offered foods they don’t want. “No thank you, peas,” says Oren. “No thank you, potatoes.” It sounds as if they’re talking to vegetables. I’ve taken the game further, saying no thank you to the thunder, or a bad smell. Keeping them from practicing their toddlers’ rant – no no no no no — has been great.

As much as these games accomplish something positive — I’m surprised by how people say our kids are so polite — I also wonder if the exaggerated usage makes sense to them. It’s a game to us, a joke, but I know irony doesn’t work with kids that age. Do they think the rain hears that rain-rain-go-away song? I’m not worried, of course; a slanted worldview is a small price to pay for genuinely good behavior, at least at this age.

And then today, as we were leaving the mall, Oren beat me to the heavy glass door at the exit. Instead of trying to push it open, he simply stood before it and spoke politely into the air. ”Open, please.”

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