Barry has some impulse control problems. I know all kids do. But... (ok, I'm going to do a very wrong thing here) compared to Mandy, his is very very serious. And then again, it might be because his a boy.
I realised I just compared my kids and gender stereotyped them. Oh well.
Anyway, he HAS to do what you tell him not to do and no threats work very well. EXCEPT the threat to take away his sweets, or toy foods. You see, he has this precious bag of stuff. They'll be toy food carefully selected from the kitchen set toys or sweets collected. Recently, he had a windfall from Philson's birthday party. About that later. Or some other toys, say beads or bricks which he pretended to be food.
I cannot keep that bag of stuff. It has to be there on the mat, even when he naps or sleeps at night. His precious.
Sometimes, you might find books strewn open on the floor of our place. DO NOT close them. He has painstakingly flipped to a page full of pictures of food, and place the book on the floor, so he can see food everywhere. He'll scream if you close the book or take it away.
He listens to story quietly but when there's a page with picture/s of food, he'll snatch the book away from me and ask to hold it.
He hated drawing. Had never shown any interest. Until one day, I exclaimed that what he had casually doodle on the doodle board looked like a cherry. What do you know? He sat there for the next 15 minutes, drawing cherries, apples, watermelons, oranges. He has a drawing book. Inside there, you'll find nothing but pictures of food and vegetables (mostly drawn by me). He only wants to colour if the picture is a food.
Only just 2 days back did he go to bed without some 'food' in his hands. He used to insist on holding sweets to sleep when he got his hands on some. He would clutch the sweet/s tightly. In the middle of the night, he would jump up, asking for his sweets. Most times, he would have dropped them. If we don't find the sweet/s or get him a replacement, he would throw a tantrum and wouldn't sleep. Other times, when he didn't have sweets, he had to hug a food pictorial book to sleep. Either the Lunchbox book or the Fruit and vegetable book. Once, he took fancy to strawberry picture in a huge hardcover book and insisted he wanted to sleep with it. Gosh. Oh, the first night we got our Mother Garden picnic set, he brought the whole (very big!) picnic basket filled with toy food to bed. *faint*
When we go grocery shopping.... gee... he just HAD to hold something. I usually give him an orange since it's more hardy than most other fruits and vegetables. The moment we reach home. it's war because I'll need to get him to let go of the whatever food he's holding in his hands. Once he held lemon in his hands, almost 24/7, for 2 whole days. Until it turned brown and I threw it away.
And no, he doesn't even like the taste of lemons or many of the stuff he insisted on holding, Sweets? He's never eaten any before, except one candy at the Halloween party though his craze started way before then. And he's never asked to eat them. He just simply loves anything that's food.
So.... I thought very hard about how to get to him. How to teach him. Because I was really having a lot of trouble getting him to stay at one place to complete something.
Came up with.... FOOD ALPHABET!
I have a stack of worksheets collected from Mandy's and Barry's time at the playgroup. These were the ones the teacher kept for me when they were absent. There were so many! I had an almost complete set of worksheets for the whole alphabet! Haha. Tells a lot about their attendance.
The objective is letter recognition and their sounds. Every week, I get him to do one worksheet.
Then, for the week, I bring his attention to the letter of that week. I also ask him to pick out the letters from the alphabet magnets. We match the magnets to the worksheet on the fridge again.
The finale is his favorite. The food book,which I do with Mandy too.
I place about 8 food items on the table and recapped how the big and small letters look like by referiing to the fridge magnets and worksheets.Then, we make the letter sound. The kids, each holding a big container, are to take turns to find a food item that starts with that particular sound.
Then, of course, they have to eat one of the item. Ha. For A, they ate dried apricots which they love. For B, they ate biscuits.
Once found, they colour pictures of the foods and do their food book! We've done 2 letters so far
It's working pretty well. At least Barry recognises his As and Bs.
Alright, now I'm going to write about his windfall.
We attended Philson's birthday bash on Sunday. There was a pinata full of candies. The boy managed to squeeze 15 gummies, 3 chocolates and a jelly in his 2 pockets and brought them all home. How did he do that?
(I've already posted the pictures on FB so the captions are going to be the same. Hehe)
First, stand in line and wait for your turn to hit the pinata
Lastly, engage help.
On the way home on the train, he took out his candies one by one, to admire. Then, he held up the jelly and went JELLYYYYY gleefully. Just had to record it.
Ok lah, rest of the pictures from the party. Very few. Hubby didn't go so no sard sard camera, which also meant I had to jagar both kids myself.
I was telling Audrey that this is how a modern party looks like. A Wii party.
Mandy with the birthday 'crown'. I don't know why Dee's dad put it on her. Heh.
Mine have learnt the correct way of holding the uke. Although hubby kept saying it's too young for Mandy to learn but he taught her one chord today. And she played it! Ha.
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