Mommin' It Up!

June 9, 2014June 8, 2014

Summer School

Well friends, by the time you read this I may be somewhere vomiting (or worse) in fear: today is Jonah’s first day of summer school. I know what you’re thinking: “Dang Jenny! You hate spending time with your kids in the summer so much you signed your baby up for summer school? That’s HARSH!”

I can promise you that’s not exactly what’s happening here. Having Jonah at school fully-dressed in the summer at the crack of 8 a.m. (when his regular school starts at 9:10) and having to drag the big kids along with me to drop him off is not exactly for my convenience. (His teacher is going to see two very different Jenny’s every day, “Drop-off Jenny” who will look like she just rolled out of bed because she DID, and “Pick-up Jenny” who will be perfectly made-up and coiffed, naturally.) But when his regular teacher told me about a free 5-week summer science lab our school district offers for preschoolers, I knew I had to apply for him to get in. Because A) He would LOVE IT and B) the absolute best thing for his language development is for him to be with his peers, and 3 months without that was going to be a LOOONG time and a void that I simply cannot fill no matter how hard I work with him.

SO – for the next 5 weeks, Jonah will be in class from 8 a.m. -12:15 p.m. Monday-Thursday. This is nerve-wracking for me because it’s 90 minutes longer a day than he is used to being in school. It’s also at a different building, but it’s the one that is closest to my house, like, 3 minutes tops, which is convenient but still will be an adjustment (he will still go back to his regular class in the fall.) He will have a new teacher and 2 new teacher aides, and there will be more kids in the class than he’s used to. Also, his regular class is made up of half “typical” kids and half with IEPs, and this will just be a mish-mash of whoever signed up. The other thing I’m a bit worried about is his food allergies. He will eat breakfast and lunch at school but I’ll most likely just have to bring his food I think (he eats breakfast at his regular school and I always just bring him a banana) but I am going to have to find that out for sure tomorrow.

ANYWAY. I am excited for him because I know he’s going to love it (if he gives it a chance. He LOVES going to his regular school), learn a lot, and have some really fun hands-on science-y experiences and hopefully pick up a lot more social language from his peers.

But today, the first day, I will spend 4 hours and 15 minutes worrying my head off while he’s there.

On the positive, side, though, the big kids have VBS this week so I will also get to worry for about 3 of those hours BY MYSELF. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

If you read this in the morning, say a little prayer for me and especially for Jonah. I am praying he loves his 5 weeks of summer science lab and learns a ton!

March 24, 2014March 23, 2014

Such a Turn-Off

I’ve always been a kind of “everything in moderation” Mom, so what I am about to say may shock you.

A couple of months ago, I stopped letting Jonah watch TV. Like, at all. For awhile previously I had him down to one show a day, and used that mostly as a reward for potty training. But soon I realized even that was too much. Even though he was only allowed to watch one a day, he obsessed over that one show, and he talked about it all day long. He has a really good memory, and he’d memorize parts of shows and walk around reciting those parts instead of talking and interacting with me and our family.

For a language-delayed kid, this is just not healthy.

So, we pulled the plug. We knew it would be hard, and it was, at first. But it wasn’t hard for very long. I was surprised at how soon he just stopped asking to watch. I was also surprised at how soon we saw an improvement in his language. Very, very soon we were able to see that we’d made the right decision. After a couple weeks, Jonah stopped talking about his shows and started talking about the world around him. Instead of re-living scenes from a Leap Frog adventure, he reminisces about our special “Mommy-Jonah” speech time we have together every day, or about what happened at school. And he observes and comments more on what’s happening around him as it’s happening.

It’s been kind of a bummer for the big kids never to be able to watch TV or play Wii upstairs in our living room, so we created a play area for them in the basement where they can do those things (on designated days). When Jonah’s older and past his delays, we’ll all be able to do those activities together again one day, and I hope then we can keep it moderated.

Because now, honestly? It’s really nice. Sure there are some days when I have a TON of work to do and I WISH I could just plop Jonah down in front of Netflix and buckle down, but the truth is, and I have SEEN this with my own eyes, that even doing that once in awhile is not ok for Jonah. Whatever work I have to do, or think I have to do, what’s best for him is vitally more important. And so I work around the inconvenience of not having a digital babysitter. I make it work. I stay up later, work in small spurts instead of one nice big chunk if I have to, and I hustle hustle hustle when he is at school. I make it work. We make it work as a family.

Bobby was more hesitant at first, he said to me, “I feel like we are taking away everything he likes.” (Because some other things that had a screen, even electronic kids books on kindle or an app, were also a problem). And he was right. But even he agrees that we immediately saw results – and now Jonah has NEW favorite things that are better for him.

I certainly don’t think screens are evil – like I said, my big kids still use them. But I don’t think they are good for kids with language delays, and I DO think they are probably used too much among kids under 5 today.

I wanted to share this with you because this is working for us. It was a hard decision to make, but I am SO glad we did. Jonah still watches a movie with us when we have family movie night, but other than that, he doesn’t watch TV at all. And it’s pretty great!

So, if this is a decision you’re mulling over in your house, I encourage you to commit to it and give it a try. It may not be what’s right for every kid, but it sure was the right thing for ours!

Have you ever done a no TV experiment? What were the results in your house?

March 7, 2014March 6, 2014

Jonah Speaks Up

jonah hat hair — Epic hat hair after returning from school one day last week.

I know I just wrote, like, a week ago about how I was having a rough time with Jonah…maybe that is why we had such a good week this week! I am happy to report that I am feeling awesome and optimistic about my baby boy…even though he’s officially given up his nap (oh, I am very sad about that!)

One of the things he’s really started to do this week is talk about school. A couple weeks ago he started going through their schedule, he’d randomly say: “We go to school. We have breakfast. We have circle time. We have centers. We have story. We have music. We have scooters. We have snack. We go home!” And then he’d smile triumphantly. I love it!

Then last week he was walking around going: “Sit down. Sit down. I said sit down!” in a very STERN voice, and it was CRACKING me up. “Jonah, what are you talking about?” I said. He grinned and reported: “I’m talkin ’bout school!” I then cracked up even more – let me just say preschool teachers are my HEROES! This week, he’s still been saying it, I realized he was saying someone’s NAME before he said “Sit down.” Of course I had to know whoooo’s name. So we began a guessing game.

“Jonah, what name are you saying? Is it ___?” I went through a couple names and then he said “How about Austin?” (not his real name.)

“Oh!” I said. “Austin needs to sit down?”

“Yes!” he said triumphantly. “Austin, SIT DOWN! Sit down Austin!”

(Let me just insert here, part of the reason it took me awhile to figure out he was saying a name is because this kid’s real name is pretty unusual. Come on people…)

Anyway…we are COMMUNICATING here people!!

Then today after school, he was kind of talking about circle time I think. There was more talk of sitting down, but, he was saying “Jonah sit down on the carpet, Molly sit down on the carpet, Miss Miller sit down on the carpet…” etc. Pretty cool. Maybe one day he will start telling me more – like what and who he plays with. I can’t wait!

He also sings songs from school. It’s pretty adorable, and he’s also been reciting nursery rhymes, which he definitely did not get from me, so I have to assume that’s from school, too. Oh, how I wish I could be a fly on the wall!

(He’s also in a super-obsessive One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish stage, and he quotes it all the time, and bursts into verse from it every time you say any word that is IN the book. Words to avoid: red, blue, fish, hat, bird, old, hold, told, sad, bad, mad, glad, wink, yink, fox, box, and of course gox.)

Anyway. I’m super proud of him, and I think he’s really coming along. I really enjoyed this week with him and I hope he keeps up the conversation and the happy moods. (And maybe starts napping again? Yeah, I doubt that’s happening. 🙁 )

Conversing with my cheerful boy was definitely the bright spot in my week. Tell me, what was yours?