Plan for today: drop the kids at camp, go get Herceptin infusion (just a few more left, will be so glad to get those hours back in my life!), should be done with that around noon. Come home, eat lunch, send Jaggery and SLF checks. Meant to do yesterday, but there was some camp drama with Anand that ended up eating a critical hour, sigh; hopefully he’ll have a better day today.
He’s having a hard time with the idea that things he finds funny, other kids do not always find funny. Also the idea that he actually has to listen to the counsellors when they say it’s time for everyone to clean up, given that he HATES CLEANING UP with the passion of a thousand suns. Hoping he gets over that soon, or first grade is going to be challenging. It’s a fine line — we don’t want to teach him that he has to do what adults tell him, no matter what. But he gets super-defiant sometimes, when he doesn’t want to do what they want, especially when it doesn’t seem reasonable to him. It’s an issue in a big class setting. Hoping he grows out of it.
This afternoon, redo Tremontaine chapter outline, get through another 25 e-mails (under 75 now!), read more Survivor subs, read to prep for writing workshop tonight. Make dinner, including enough for Miriam and Ellen who are crashing here tonight after their London trip. Make bed for them. Host workshop (luckily, have plenty of cheese, crackers, nuts, and fruit on hand already) from 7-9:30 or so. Going to be a long day…
Perhaps you need to talk about things that it is ok for adults to require – such as cleaning up? As adults, we have to follow laws whether or not we find them reasonable. It’s not terrible for kids to know there are rules they have to follow (such as cleaning up) whenever they are told. This is different, of course, than simply obeying anything an adult says which I agree would be a bad thing to teach.
On a more philosophical note: I think we’d be better off teaching our children not to hate doing things, just as we teach them not to hate other people. Hate is a terrible thing. And let’s face it – Anand is going to get stuck cleaning his whole life so he might as well get over it. The trick is how to teach kids not to hate. I’m musing on this for my daughter as well. I think school often teaches kids to hate things that they wouldn’t otherwise hate. I’m always trying to figure out how to reverse it. Right now my major strategy is “failure to recognize” hates. I don’t debate it and I don’t commiserate. I’m just matter of fact about what needs to be done. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, which is why I’ve been musing on the topic.