Category: Parenting

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When He Was Six

In just a few weeks, my now six year old will turn seven.  I am not one of those moms who mourn their children growing older.  I can’t, simply because of circumstance. I celebrate the milestones, the independence, the sheer miracle of a child growing up.  What a blessing.

I also savor the fleeting nature of childhood, knowing that it is not a given or something to be taken for granted.  If you have a healthy, developing child, you did it — you won the lottery of life!  Hooray!

As six morphs into seven, I wanted to take a few moments to remember those things about my boy being six that I have treasured.  What an amazing age, full of curiosity, willfulness, stretching, and the wee glimpse of separation that will be his task to come in the next few years.

Six is still about unmitigated affection.  The spigot of hugs and kisses is still flowing freely.  You cuddle me at night, even though you prefer your Dad’s singing voice, justifiably so.  You happily hold my hand, and not just in parking lots or crossing the street.  You love to nuzzle on the same pillow together, reading books or brainstorming activity ideas on Pinterest.  I smell your hair and it is wonderful.

You draw me hearts even when it's not Valentine's Day.
You draw me hearts even when it’s not Valentine’s Day.

Six is about straddling that gap between being a little kiddo and simply a kiddo.  You now prefer showers over baths.  You are just as likely to want to read to yourself before bed as have Mom or Dad read to you.  You go to places like arcades and don’t require constant supervision anymore.  This stage is like the teeth that you have started losing — just as the little kid leaves or falls away, the big kid is right there, pushing in, ready to take his rightful place.

Six is about starting to navigate relationships outside your immediate family.  You have school friends now, and cousins, and neighbors.  Your world is growing and you are thirsty for it.  You are proud to think of yourself as the “playground peacemaker,” not picking sides and wishing everyone could just play together.  This was the first year Mom and Dad weren’t enough at Halloween.  You wanted to be with your friends, but knowing Mom or Dad was close nearby.

Six is seeing you absorb so much of the world around you.  You ask more questions now.  You have opinions and think Donald Trump would not make a good president (smart boy!).  You pay attention, now, when Mom and Dad are listening to morning radio.  We try and protect you from the bulk of it, at least for a wee little while longer, but those days will soon be gone.  You are more attentive to this larger world you will inherit.

Six is about grumbling and stumbling.  You make mistakes.  You require lots of reminders for basic things like changing underwear and brushing teeth and putting the book down.  That  world you’re creating in Minecraft might consume you if we didn’t require some non-screen time.  The idea of homework ticks you off.  Limit setting is not your friend.  Sometimes, you think Mom and Dad are the worst parents ever.  We get it.  We still love you.

Six is about expanding those proverbial horizons.  You’re hoping Santa will bring you a baseball glove for Christmas and for the first time ever asked for a Chicago team shirt.  Any team would do, you said, as long as it was from Chicago.  Those doubts you had about the old man in the red suit seem to have been addressed and your belief is sweet and innocent and precious. That water that terrified you just a couple of years ago is now one of your greatest pleasures.  You love to bounce and toss on the waves.  You haven’t conquered the bike yet, but that will come.  My bet is on you, six year old, and all those places you want to go.

Dice

I love you and I have loved you being six, my boy.  I love that when I told you that my elbow had knocked the tip off your most prized Lego creation yesterday your first response was to say, “No problem, Mom.  Thanks for telling me,” followed quickly by welling eyes and tears when you realized the fix would not be as simple as you thought, finished up with a sense of victory when, after a few moments, you got to concentrating and figured it out all on your own.  You are learning every day and watching that unfold is one of my supreme gifts in this life.

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In Defense of Caillou

Poor Caillou.  Seriously.  Poor little bald headed animated child.  People hate him the world over. Not dislike him, or feel mildly irritated by him, or, you know, turn the channel when he comes on the TV dislike him, but hate him, loathe him, and wish very, very bad things upon him.  Him being a fictional character.

What's not to like?
What’s not to like?

I don’t get it.  I never have.

The level of animosity reserved for this little guy astounds me.  You would think that a fictional four year old would push a few buttons, what with the whining that goes along with being four, but man, it would be easy to confuse him with, I don’t know, Hitler or ISIS, for all the hate and venom he incites in parenting circles.

Here is a sample from Urban Dictionary under Caillou:

A fucked up kid’s show about a spoiled little turd who gets upset when he doesn’t get his way.  If Caillou was real, I’d kill him.

Caillou is a soiled little shit TV show on PBS. Caillou can’t grow hair, not because he has cancer or progeria, but because he sucks, and even his own body recognizes that he does not deserve hair or food or love

A children’s show featuring an aggressive bald kid who is easily irritated and agitated when things don’t go his way.  Caillou made me search for my virginity.

Then there was the anti-Caillou smackdown Buzzfeed ran last week.  Um.  Okay.  Well. It seems more than a few folks take their PBS really, really seriously. In other circles I have seen Caillou referred to as a prick, douchebag, cocksucker, asshole, uterus killer, fucker, and the list goes on and on and on with some decidedly unfriendly language not typically associated with kid’s TV.

If the point is that Caillou acts like a typical four year old, well, then, sure, I totally agree.  Most four year olds (at least the two I have parented to date; I still have a two year old in the pipeline) can be whiny and entitled at times.  It’s just part of the package.

Full disclosure, if you haven’t already noticed, I kind of dig the little guy.  I first started watching him in 2007.  Eight years and two toddlers later, I’m still watching. So are my kids.  Our brains aren’t bleeding.  I haven’t gone insane from the whining.  My kids don’t seem to have experienced any adverse effects of too much Caillou.

And laying all my Caillou cards out on the table, I actually like the show, especially compared to some of the other offerings in the kids’ entertainment arena.  Here’s why:

1. Caillou gets to have emotions.  Yes, he is whiny and entitled at times, but he also experiences guilt, regret, anticipation, joy, fear, curiosity, annoyance, gratitude, frustration, confidence, impatience, relief, and boredom.  I complied this list after watching just one 30 minutes episode.  Even better, the grandmother narrator — a kind, nurturing voice, labels Caillou’s feelings for those watching at home, e.g., “Caillou was upset his little sister took his favorite toy.”  Of course he was!  But then we get to watch him figure it out, too.

2.  I recognize the day-to-day family environment.  There is a loving mom and dad with grandparents close by.  You see the family doing chores around the house, and the grumbling that goes along with that.  The adults cook, clean, shovel, rake, grocery shop.  The adults get to complain, too, because, yes, it is a pain sometimes to be responsible, especially when your car breaks down.  The family eats together and celebrates together.  The show reflects my kids’ day-to-day and I get that might not speak to everyone, but it is a comfort to see your small world reflected on the screen.

3.  It’s quiet and simple.  There is a whole lot to mine from a kid’s simple experiences, a lot to learn from and consider.  When I think of shows like Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Sheriff Callie’s Wild West, or even the beloved Thomas or Dinosaur Train shows, basic lessons in social skills are encouraged through the use of robots, trains, dinosaurs, or animals. Caillou does all that through people.

Why is it more appealing to teach things like patience and sharing by adding an extra layer of difference?  Is it more palatable to learn about grumpiness or bullying from a train than from a kid who might act a lot like your own?

4.  Imagination is encouraged. In later episodes (admittedly, these are not my favorites), Caillou uses his imagination to explore being an astronaut or a rock star. Some of this is accomplished through reading books found in the library his Mom and Dad take him to — win win!

5.  The show features discipline.  This is one of my favorite aspects of watching Caillou with my little ones.  When Caillou acts like a jerk, there are consequences. When he grabs a toy away from his little sister or excludes a classmate on the playground, there is a price to pay for his poor behavior.  He can stomp his feet and not like the consequence, but they are still there.

As a parent, I love that.  And I honestly think it is productive and useful to see that 1) all kids misbehave sometimes; 2) there are ramifications to misbehavior; and 3) your parents are not the only ones who practice standards of behavior, discipline, and consequences.  Those are things other kids have to deal with, too.

Perhaps this post presents me as a Pollyanna.  Well, then, so be it.  I will own that shit. I’ve just seen the words “Caillou” and “cocksucker” attached one too many times for my liking.  And rather than tell all you Caillou haters to get a freaking grip, or, do as my husband joking encouraged, and theorize that anyone who hates Caillou really just hates their own kids, I will simply encourage you all to give it another look see, that Caillou show, and try and be just a teensy bit more objective towards him.

Honestly, he’s not all that bad.  And, more importantly, he probably resembles your own kiddos more than you realize.

Caillou2

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An Apple, a Knife, and a Six Year Old

This morning I woke up to my son running into my bedroom with a bloody thumb, scared, but not crying, and holding a Darth Vader Band-Aid.  Something was wrong. He told me, with certainty, that he had banged his thumb on the wall.  He was fibbing.

It took a few moments to realize that he had cut his thumb while trying to slice an apple. I should have known immediately, but it was six a.m. and I had had a restless night.  I sliced an apple for myself as a snack before bed.  It was an enormous Honeycrisp that we had picked the previous weekend right off the tree at an orchard in Michigan.

Apples that size can feed a family of six, so I left the remaining half on the counter thinking we would eat it in the morning.  What I didn’t think was that the boy would wake up and get the idea to cut the apple himself.  He’s six.  Six year olds don’t use knives.  Or do they? I don’t know.

I’m doing this whole raise a six year old for the first time here.  Sometimes I think I limit him out of pure unknowingness.  Other times I know I limit him out of pure ‘I don’t have time to teach you, so I will do it myself so we can get goingness.’  Sigh.

Apple

He had cut his hand once before while using scissors at his grandparents as a youngster.  There was a lot more blood that time.  I remember being unnaturally calm in those moments, especially seeing my son’s hand and arm covered with his own bright red blood.

This morning, even in my fumbling first moments of wakefulness, that calmness returned.  It turned out the cut wasn’t so bad.  Like a longer, deeper version of a paper cut.  The kid was lucky.  He could have done a lot more damage to himself.

As we sat in the bathroom together, washing his hand and applying a bit of pressure before the Band-Aid, I realized my boy was growing up.  Six is an interesting mix of little and big.  He tests his limits all the time.  He asserts a growing need for independence.  He is doing exactly as he should.

It honestly never would have occurred to me to teach him to use a knife properly.  But he’s ready.  It’s time.  My boy is growing up.  He knew it before I did.

We ended up, my boy and I, having a lovely heart to heart in the bathroom.  I asked after why he felt the need to lie, telling me he had banged his thumb on the wall.  I acknowledged that I thought he was ready to start using a knife himself, albeit, with adult supervision.  We both agreed that as he got older he could take on more and more responsibilities.

And try as a might, I couldn’t stop myself from remarking that if he was old enough to learn how to use a knife, he was probably old enough to know to pick up his dirty laundry from the floor.  What?!  I saw an opportunity and jumped on it.

It is a beautiful thing to have a growing child, learning and pushing his limits.  I am new to all this, so will take it as it comes.  It seems we both have much to learn.