How do kids make sense of the world?
There is a point in a parent’s day when they feel like they’re banging their head against the wall. The logic and life experience of the parent is humbly shared with a child who ignores the lesson.
My house is experiencing the early stages of a civil war. Children fighting against adults.
There’s no violence, but tensions are rising. Our one-year-old twins believe they have rights to the couch. This includes kicking the dog off and using the elevated surface in unique ways. The adults in the house were vigilant once the little ones learned of their new ability to climb the couch without support. Children were swiftly airlifted to another location in the living room as a distraction. Solely monitoring the couch could easily consume 90% of our time. Being referees to couch activities was not sustainable.
So we compromised.
Kids are allowed on the couch. Aria can be asked to relocate (mostly for her own safety). We have one rule that we enacted to encompass many of the concerns we have: no standing.
When kids stand on the couch, they can easily pull on a plant that is normally inaccessible because it’s been gated (yes, houseplants are guarded in my home). If kids stand, they can get a little too close to the window. When kids stand on the couch, we have typically safety issues you might expect when a child is at a height twice their own. Sienna has already rolled off the couch and split her lip open when her face hit the rug.
Leila seems to know the rule, but tests my resolve.
Leila will stand on the couch and look at me. I’ll say “sit,” and her fear of being relocated to a high chair where she’ll be strapped in for a few minutes is the only indicator I’ve found that shows how quickly she’ll get her ass to the cushions. The amount of times she’ll do this exercise seems to be directly correlated to my current frustration level - the less cool I am, the more she wants to stand.
While my fear of injury may be impacting my frustration level, I’m still aware enough to know this may be a learning opportunity for her. She’s exploring her interaction with me, and (oh so slowly) learning the consequences of her actions.
I’m convinced the challenges parents face with young kids is a result of experimentation. Children sometimes first learn about gravity by throwing food from a high chair. Before that, they’ll learn that mom and dad are attentive when crying can be heard. Simplistic learning is the cause-and-effect type. As a child develops, new types of learning takes place.
Sophia, our eldest daughter, has an obsession with autonomy. “I can do it” is verbalized multiple times everyday. For parents eager to move closer to the independence side of the scale, this can be a wonderful thing. Of course, there’s learning involved.
Sophia seemed to grow out of her high chair quickly. She’s above average for height, which allowed her access to things that other kids can normally reach. Take our barstools, for instance. She learned to climb those easily. Early on, similar to our couch scenario, we opted for autonomy. Let’s move the barstool to the rug and if she falls off, at least it won’t be directly on a hard surface. She could get up but had a hard time getting down, this required some teaching and refined body mechanics to pull off for a two year old. She eventually mastered this. She was up and down on her own!
The problem, we found is that kids don’t sit still.
To this day, Sophia will fidget on the barstool against our pleas. We warn that she’ll fall and bump her chin on the counter on her way down if she isn’t careful. With too much distraction, she’s moved herself to the end of the end of the stool again and is ready to fall. Our teachings are short lived, and she now sits in a booster seat when she cannot be monitored as closely.
This type of learning happens when the dots are successfully connected by the child. There’s more than one variable that may be contributing to the lesson being learned. Too many data points for a young child and learning doesn’t happen. There’s the Goldilocks Zone of learning that finds lessons that are just right for a child’s development.
With more rigor, we’re trying to teach Sophia how to learn. Offering her some tools to perform spaced repetition on her own. We also give her tasks that are just outside of her comfort zone and test for when she’ll ask for help. This works great for multi-step tasks like washing dishes.
We encourage questions being asked. The types of questions being asked are a good gauge for understanding and critical thinking. She’s began to ask for the definition of words.”What does damp mean?” This has been a little challenging for me. I often use words without much consideration. And this young kid is anxious to expand her vocabulary. I’m now being mindful to use correct words when describing things for fear that I’ll be called out on their usage.
What’s difficult is having kids at developmentally different stages of learning. On one hand I’ll have a kid ask what means to be “squabbling”. On the other hand, I may need to perform a diving save to protect a one-year-old from falling off the couch. It’s quite difficult to employ so much brain power on any given day.