learning to talk, learning the rules, we are all learning

Noah's cousin Mason: "Why is your penis so small?"
Noah : "Mine's not small! Yours is small"
Mason : "no, yours is small, mine is big."
Noah : "no, mine is bigger than yours."
This conversation continued, with the four parents sitting in disbelief, holding in their laughter, until both boys had whipped it out to prove whose was bigger. I have no idea where this all came from. Is it just the instinctive male ego? Something they learned in school? Wherever it came from it was one of those classic moments of comedy that never seem to end in the life of a toddler. This conversation happened when Noah was three, not long after he had began talking. It was one of his first "conversations".
Out of all the changes toddlers go through the most significant is the ability to talk. As a father this development has made things much more fun, interesting, and challenging. It is amazing what little kids come up with. The questions, funny comments, and incredible insight into the world around them. And once they talk you can really understand who this little person is.

One of the challenging parts is of course having to answer a million questions or sometimes the same question a million times. For a while Noah's question was "What's that noise?" He would ask this about EVERY sound he heard. And then of course the ultimate question "why?"
One time after fielding a million why questions I thought I would end the cycle by explaining to him that it isn't always possible to answer the question "why" to which he responded: "why?" The other spin on that he has done more recently is to make some statement like "monkeys sure are silly" and then when I agree with him for conversation sake and say "Yeah, they are" he follows with "Why?, Why are they silly?" And of course then I find myself having to explain something that he said that I may or may not even understand but that I agreed with just to be agreeable.
Of course the funny things Noah has said are endless. I wish I could have them all recorded. Noah is a talker, he can't even stop talking long enough to brush his teeth. And he is a total goof ball, he loves to be goofy and make people laugh. And of course trying to quote him here does not do him justice. But a couple off the top of my head:
Of course lately he has been into poop jokes. The other day we were saying what we were thankful for and he said "I am thankful for my daddy because he plays with me, for my mommy because she reads to me, my baby brother because he cries a lot, and my grandma because she poops a lot".
One of the funniest things he said , not trying to be funny at all, was one night when he woke up from a nightmare. He was screaming and I went in to calm in down. He rarely talks about his nightmares so I do not really know what they are about. But his time he was unusually upset. It must have been something bad. When he calmed down a bit he told me he had a nightmare. Then he said it was a REALLY BAD one. he then went on to tell me what it was. I was a little worried about how disturbing it might be based on the fact this was the first time he said a nightmare was REALLY BAD. He said " I dreamt that my ice cream fell in the fire!!!" Oh the innocence of a child!
One day while we were talking about Anke's pregnancy Noah said "what if she had 17 babies in her belly, their feet would be coming out her mouth"
Or the time he was with my mom and they looked at a piece of bark that had been engraved by beetles. Noah asked what was written on the bark and when my mom told him that no one wrote it, that beetles had made those marks he said surprised "I didn't know beetles could write!"

And of course the insight of children is incredible as is their attention to the tiniest detail. Noah will get down on his hands and knees to observe an ant, talking to it, and will be totally enthralled and in love with the living thing in front of him. One of the things he said when he first started talking that I remember was when he looked at a spider building a web and said "That spider sure is a hard worker". It seems simple now but at the time it was one of the first windows I had into his ability to express original thoughts.

Of course another aspect of language is trying to get explanations for everything as little kids are constantly trying to figure out how the world works. The other day we were parked in front of a church and he saw a statue of Jesus on the front. He said "look there is God, we are sad for God" I asked why and he said "because God is dead". I told him that lots of people believe God is alive. Noah said "but we cannot see him". So then I said lots of people believe that God is in everything. So Noah said "you mean the bird flying in the sky is God?" I said yeah and then that really got him going. For half an hour he talked about all the places where god was. When we got out of the car he said the concrete was god, the car was god, and that we lived in God's belly because our house was God.
He is also old enough to have discussions with his friends. I had stickers for "no on prop 8" the gay marriage ban. Noah, of course loves stickers and wanted some. I told him they meant everyone could marry whoever they want to marry as long as they were adults and both people wanted to marry each other. He told me his friend Jackson says only boys and girls can get married. So he other day when he went to school he saw a "no on prop 8" sticker in my car and realizing he did not have his he asked if he could wear mine. When I put it on him as I dropped him off at school he wanted to make sure it was in a place where Jackson could see it.

Also in the past year Noah's sphere of influence has grown greatly from that of basically what he has learned from us around home to what the rest of the world has to teach him. His exposure to things outside of our influence and his awareness of such things are another factor making parenting increasingly fun, interesting, and challenging. We have done our best to delay his exposure to the ever present evils in our society such as television, sugar, and violence, however slowly Noah is discovering these things as he expands his life experiences.

It can be a mean cruel world out there and seeing your child learn this lesson is a hard thing as a father. On the playground this lesson is learned fairly early on and it was a tough one for Noah. Imagine your first year or more of life everyone is nice to you and then all of a sudden, while blissfully playing with a shovel in the sand box, a mean older boy comes up, pushes you down, and takes your shovel. When something like this happened Noah was so crushed! As a parent you learn to identify different cries of your child like Hawaiians can identify different types of rain or the Inuit with snow. When Noah is confronted with intentional meanness he busts out his sobbing that he reserved for when he is truly upset.
One time he took this to a funny extreme. He was playing at the beach with a friend and Noah was running with a rope. His friend was chasing the rope and Noah was loving the game until his friend grabbed the rope and ran the other way with it, pulling it out of Noah's hand and taking off with it. Noah was so crushed that he began his deep sobs. His chest was heaving so heavily that he looked up and just fell over completely backwards into the wet sand where he continued to sob.
One day during a party at our house I saw Noah come out of the bedroom with the look of fear on his face. He walked into the kitchen and collapsed. I picked him up and he was unconscious with his eyes rolled back in his head. THAT is the worst moment as a father! I screamed call 911 and the party froze. Turns out after much detective work we figured Noah had been knocked by another kid and probably had the air knocked out of him. This upset and scared him to the point where he cried so hard that he could not breath and passed out.
Another cruel moment which made him bust out his sob happened one afternoon at an outdoor festival in Sausalito. It was dinner time and we were planning to go get something for Noah to eat soon. There was a group of adults near us who had some Oreo cookies. I don't think we had ever given Noah an Oreo so when these people did, he was of course thrilled to discover such a delicious food. Then they gave him another one. While not giving Noah such things ourselves, we have never wanted to deny him from having something if the opportunity arose. Especially if another kid his age has something, we don't want to increase his desire to have something by not letting him have it. We simply try to limit how much he gets. So after the second cookie I tell Noah that it is his last one. Not only does he not eat sugar but it is dinner time and I want him to eat something healthy. Then the people call him over and give him another one! So I remind him that I told him he could only have two and I took the cookie away. He was of course bummed. But what made matters worse was that all the adults who were giving him cookies looked at him and said "oh what a MEAN daddy! He won't let you have another cookie! What a bad mean daddy! He takes a cookie form his own son!..." well this was all too much for Noah and he lost it. The adults even continued on, one lady showing Noah cookies and telling him that she would give him one but his mean daddy wouldn't let her. This ended when I turned MEAN on them and told the lady to stop pushing sugar on my kid.
Sugar creates many such situations. Usually well meaning adults will offer Noah a treat and ask me "can he have one?" Noah's eyes look up to me for my answer. Of course I don't want to say no and crush Noah's little heart so usually I say yes and reassure myself with the standard, well at least he doesn't eat this everyday like most kids. But sometimes I have to say no and this is such a hard thing for Noah to understand. It tastes soooo good and he wants one soo bad and can't possible understand the reasons why I would deny him this pleasure. 'You can't always get what you want' is one of those lessons that is painful to teach a little kid but at the same time one of those lessons that you know you are better off in the long run the sooner you teach it. And in our society you have to constantly deny kids of things they want. Imagine a trip to the grocery store. All the candy in his face, toys, balloons, etc.
Lots of places we went in Europe had carousels. Well naturally Noah wanted to ride them but we didn't want him to expect that every time you see something like that you get to ride it. Same with those big jumpy things they have at places like the farmers market. Or pony rides. Of course I want Noah to experience things like that but I wanted to make sure that he doesn't come to expect that every time he sees something he can have it or do it. For many things it is simply postponing his knowledge that such things exist. Candy is a good example. We never introduced him to candy. Of course somewhere along the line he has learned what it is. Luckily the candy fairy visits our house after a candyful event.
After Halloween, b-days with pinatas, and parades where people throw candy Noah ends up with a bag full of candy. We told Noah that the candy fairy likes to protect little boys and girls from eating too much candy (which will give you a tummy ache and holes in your teeth) so she comes and takes the extra candy to fairy land. Noah is allowed by the candy fairy to keep one piece of candy for each year he is old. He has fun picking out the ones he wants and loves the pictures of the candy fairy that is left in place of the candy as well as the little toy she gives as a thank you gift.
One day after Noah's speech therapy class his teacher gave out lolly pops to the other two students. Then she asked me if Noah could have one following up with "I wouldn't want to give him one if the parents didn't want me to." What a set up! Noah's mouth is watering for that lolly pop and now I am put on the spot. My reply to her was " Well I don't want him to have one, but I don't really have much choice in the matter at this point."
Of course it is not like I don't ever say "no" to Noah but you have to pick your fights. When the two other kids are sucking on their lolly pops that the teacher gave them for being good in class, how could I tell Noah he can't have one. At least on that day over that lolly pop I was not gonna go there. And that has been one of the biggest lessons of discipline for me, knowing when to go there and when not to. It is SO difficult because you are being tested EVERY day on how you will react to different situations. Kids are like lawyers and they always have the parents on the stand. And they can be harsh interrogators let me tell you. And no matter how tired you are, sick you are, whatever your mood, you are always under oath. Whatever you say can and will be used against you.
Consistency to me is one of the most important factors in discipline. Kids are constantly testing the boundaries to figure out what is and is not acceptable. Kids need to know there are boundaries and look towards adults to set those. But it isn't like they just accept the ones you set. Their job in life seems to be to constantly try and manipulate those boundaries and continue to test them as if they are checking for weak spots that may have developed. And being a parent is so much different than dealing with other people's kids. I always thought that I was good at discipline while teaching. But children reserve most aggressive boundary testing for their own parents. Of course kids are all different. Noah is VERY strong willed and is a tester. When he is sick or in a bad mood boy, he will fight against everything! The good thing for us to remember is that it is all just a phase.
After Noah turned two he had the classic terrible two stretch for about 6 weeks. We thought "oh my god our kid has turned out to be a nightmare. What did we do wrong? Maybe there is something wrong with him?" From the time he woke up till he went to bed EVERYTHING was a struggle - you would have to hold him down to dress him or put him the car seat. During those struggles we would wonder what we should do. Should be establish our role as the ones in control and force him to wear clothes? Or will he struggle more the more we push our dominance on him and should we just relax and let him do what he wants - like going to school in his pajamas?
After those six weeks were up he turned back into the angle we know as Noah and was mostly good again. Occasionally he would turn into a monster and we would think those same thoughts about him being like that forever and then we would realize he was sick or hungry or something and he was just in a pissy mood. Then after his third birthday he had another month long stretch of being a total pain in the ass. We thought we were done with the terrible twos and only then did all the parents we know start saying "Oh yeah, the threes were way worse than the twos". "Great" we thought. But the phase passed and Noah returned to his old self. Then after he turned four he did it again. Fighting everything. It was only then that people told us, "Oh yeah, Four is a repeat of Two". Great the return of the terrible twos only now the child is more articulate and highly adept at drawing you into an argument and they are stronger so the chances of holding them down to get them dressed without someone getting injured are slim.
So what is the strategy to dealing with the monster child phase?
There have been stretches (more so than not it seems) when every morning is a challenge to get him dressed. Of course for every kid I am sure different things work. Some kids are pleasures and do things to make their parents happy. That is not Noah. Giving him some power over the situation helped a bit, making him feel like he had a choice in the matter. Rather than telling him he had to eat broccoli we might ask, do you want cucumber or broccoli? And for a while he would fight eating breakfast so we gave him the power to pour his own cereal and milk.
Now that he is five I gotta say he fights a lot less on these every day things. He is still VERY STRONG WILLED so we are never free of struggle completely. A good day is when he only fights us on a few things.
We have, however, developed some very successful strategies that work with him. One is making things a game. He loves to play. For a while we began "doing the opposites". Which plays into his character so well. This game is simple. I would simply say the opposite of what I wanted him to do like "don't put on your shirt" and then he would eagerly put on his shirt, doing the opposite of what I said. It is truly amazing how well this game worked. It pretty much had 100% success rate. Usually he would ask to play. "Let's do the opposite!" he would say. That game gave way to a newer game of us pretending like we don't think he will do what we want. So we would say "I am gonna go into the kitchen and when I come back I don't think Noah is gonna have taken off his clothes". Then when we come in and see that he completed the task we act surprised. The third game is the standard race. " let's see if you can put your shoes on before me."
These games work so well for the every day things that used to be struggles. But ultimately when Noah does not want to do something threatening him with a consequence is really the only thing that works for me. This is unfortunate because I feel like it is a pretty negative way to discipline. But asking him nicely just doesn't work. Noah is very strong willed and will push back against anything you want until you give him the "If you do not stop playing and come brush your teeth (whatever it is you are playing with) will get taken away." In the beginning of course he would test to see if we would follow through with the consequence which I always did. This is another time when you have to be careful what you say under oath! If you say you will give a consequence but then realize that enforcing the consequence is gonna cause a horrible reaction that you did not really want to deal with. Well keeping to your word is KEY so the best thing to do is to remember next time not to make threats you do not want to keep!
I also would always give him a count down. I would count down from 5 or 10 and this worked 99% of the time without even having to threaten a consequence. It is an interesting study in psychology. I could ask him to come to the bathroom ten different ways but not until he had a deadline would he do it.
So back to the follow through. I think this is one of the most important parts of discipline. Kids gotta learn that you follow through with what you say. The flip side of this is not to say things you do not want to follow through with. If you need to do your grocery shopping don't say you will leave the store if the kids behavior does not change. If you do not want to deal with the breakdown when they get denied the candy they want then you may need to think of a good excuse why they can have it. Sometimes I am in this situation so I will let him know that even though today is special and he gets to pick a piece of candy that this is not something we usually do. One example was the other day when we were at a party and he wanted some soda. I told him he could have some for desert. When I went to pour it he noticed there were cookies. He told me he did not want soda anymore because he wanted a cookie. Of course after the cookie he wanted soda. Rather than push the issue I told him he could try a little soda.
He has learned the desert lesson pretty well. One day we were going to a birthday party in the afternoon. At the playground a friend offered him a brownie. He said he did not want one but was obviously sad about it. Finally he told me he wanted one but he knew if he had one that meant he could not have birthday cake later that day. How could I not bend the rules for the guy, so I told him he could have two deserts that day and praised him for remembering the rules.
Anoher factor in all this is that the struggle and temper tantrums are usually more about mood and general programming than the actual thing they are fighting for. I have discovered this before when Noah will break down over the idea of not gettiing something he wants. So I give in to avoid total meltdown and say OK, this is howyou ask nicely, show me you can and I will let you do it... Then two minutes later he ends up melting down anyway over something else. So if the meltdown is coming it is coming and trying to avoid it is a poor reason to go against what you said. And the other side to that is we found often after Noah had a big break down and cry that he was actually much happier and better behaved after getting whatever it was that was makeing him feel bad off his chest.
That is one other lesson we learned: let them cry! Don't distract kids when they need to cry with jokes or candy. Crying is a way to flush out the bad feelings and start clean.

Now as the discipline thing is a struggle and it is hard to know what to do at each stage. Finding the right balance between empowering the kids and giving them limits and rules. Giving up your own expectations that say they will not want to pretend everything is a gun and shoot everything in sight or that they will follow the wise advice of their parents. Kids are kids and while we can guide them and give them tools, they are in control of much of their own destiny, this is a strange thing to come to terms with as a parent.

Now as those are the struggles the joys are also profound and bountiful. Noah is such an amazing observer of the world around him and it is wonderful to see him notice little details in nature and talk about things he learned like how bats echo locate their prey or how the dead bird we see will turn to soil. (oh that was a funny thing he said one day when he was 3 or 4 years old - he saw a guy smoking a cigarrete and he said "that guy cigarretting will die and decompose and become grass". I thought to myself - 'I taught him well') His fascination, love, and eagerness to learn about nature is one of my favorite things about Noah since I love nature too. I think most kids have this in them naturaly - makes sense since we eveoved over millions of years to be part of nature. I think I will make kids in nature a seperate patherhood blog.

Another aspect of Noah which has come out sonce he learned to talk is his (as all young kids) incredible imagination! This is also something that is refreshing as an adult and something we could learn from. They think outsid ethe box for the simple fact they have not been put in the box yet. For awhile Noah talked about his rocket. It was parked in a volcanoe in Costa Rica and he used to to travel around this world and into space. He even used it to travel to a parrallel universe where there was an exact copy of everything and everyone here. He loves fishing and this past summer he was able to fish all on his own is the stanislaus river where he used a spinning real with a fly and bobber to catch a trout. He was very proud that it was his first "fish he caught on a fly!" But going back to his imagination, he is just as happy fishingn with a stick and a string with any hook or bait and for him catching a bit of seaweed is an exciting event worth celebrating!

Definitely the joy and enthusiasm with which children, especially Noah, have towards pretty simple everyday things is another very wonderful gift kids can bring to the table. Just as Noah is strong willed and expresses his opinions; his sense of joy, adventure, and outgoingness are equally strong and expressed. He is a shining star amougn a group of kids his age and if you take him to a party he becomes the life of the party. He will run with the kids for awile, then sit down and strike up a 20 minute conversation with some adults. It is amazing how he chats it up with adults. Adults always come up to me to tell me how incredible Noah is after talking with him. I have seen him interupt our neighbor's bocci game they were playing during a "double date". Noah stopped the game and had the four adults laughing out loud for 20 minutes. I love how social Noah is and how you can really see the joy radiating form him. I have worked in a number of kindergarden and preschool classes since having Noah and I am always amazed at how dull and almost depressed the majority of the kids look. Few exude the confidence and joyfulness that Noah does.

Ok, I think I will stop now, there is so much more to talk about but I will try to write these thoughts in shorter separate essays.

peace