Nurturing your Amazing Child to Lifelong Happiness

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All right, all right. Yeah, so, um, what's news this week?

Well, um, been trying to, uh, well, we made a goal, although we didn't meet it, of, uh, playing more board games. We kind of gotten away from that, reason being is that, you know, Logan being 14 months He is a terror around any board game or set of blocks. And I realized that I've not— I mean, we have kind of gotten away from that. Alana does a lot of workbooks and reading and art, but we haven't been doing that one-on-one time aside from reading that we were doing before Logan was of destruction age.

Yeah, well, I imagine even though the board games are sort of slowing down, she's very happy, engaged, and flourishing.

Yeah, no, she is, she is. But it's just something that we need to do more, one way or the other, I feel.

Yeah. So what's, what's Logan doing? Is Logan I guess he's walking at this point?

Yeah, Logan's up and walking. He was a little slow to crawl, and then he picked up walking real fast. Very strong, very sturdy. Logan's very smart. He cannot be parlayed. He insists on equal treatment with his sister and his parents, i.e., he wants to eat what we eat, end of story. And he's, I would say, more assertive, or at least louder. Than Alana was. He definitely has his own personality. He seems to have a pretty long focus, like when he's into something, whether it be blocks or a toy or something, he'll just be at it, you know, with full attention for about 20, 25 minutes sometimes, which I think is longer than even my attention span, much less my daughter's.

Yeah, no, that's phenomenal. That's phenomenal.

But he's very smart and he's very verbal. He's trying to communicate. He has a couple of words. He says mommy and daddy and Alana. He says ayaya for Alana.

And did she try to understand him and talk to him and so forth?

Yeah, definitely. Although it's pretty clear, no translation necessary for Logan. He's he gets his point across, and I think very quickly he'll be having words. Alana is a great big sister, um, and he loves hanging out with her. And his favorite thing— nothing makes him laugh harder than Alana being silly. It's really cute.

Can, can you have conversations with her about, uh, Logan's development and about how he's gradually learning words and kind of develop some consciousness with her about the process of becoming, um, articulate?

Yeah, definitely. Although the conversation we keep having about Logan's development with her is trying to explain why he is a little rough. I don't know if it's a boy thing or what, but he thinks her hair is just the funnest thing in the house to pull. So he's constantly pulling her hair, which is frustrating. Sometimes, like, he goes up and he just kind of hits her on the face. He doesn't mean to. And it's really not cool. I'm not sure where he's getting it from, but that's something that we're working through. So that's challenging to her. So we do talk about that, how he's younger than she is and he's still learning. And we all have these phases and we all have to learn to be nice and be gentle. But they get along great. And he really loves her.

I assume that because she's older, she can protect herself from him, that You know, if he grabs her hair, she can grab his hand and take it off firmly and that sort of thing?

She can. She's a little slow to do that. Alana is not an aggressive person. You know, she's never been around children or around an environment that rewards or accepts aggressive behavior. And she's a little soft in that regard. She gets pushed around a little bit at the playground. Children will cut her in line and she'll just stand there. She hasn't really learned yet to stick up for herself. Although she's getting better. And, you know, and we definitely encourage her to.

Yeah, no, I would say it is. And I think there are some personalities, and I do think tends to be more likely with females, where not as assertive as they need to be to protect themselves. And I guess my concern would be for her to gradually become more and more annoyed at Logan And yet if she became a little bit more assertive and a little bit more, you know, clear about her boundaries, then she's less likely to become frustrated and annoyed with him.

Yeah, hopefully. And she does a good job with Logan speaking. She's so gentle to him, you know, she's never responded in kind and hit him or even grabbed his hand in a very aggressive fashion. She prefers to just try and recover her hair and stand up, you know, so that he can't do it.

Is she becoming frustrated with him?

I mean, only in the moment. It's not like it's a thing at this point. It's just when it happens, it's frustrating. Typically only happens when he's very tired.

Yeah, I would, and you may be already doing this, but I would coach her to just do it as quickly as possible. And she's smart enough and mature enough, I think she could explain that, you know, he doesn't know what he's doing. And, you know, if she lets him do it, she might become a little bit more frustrated with him. And there's nothing wrong. You know, one of the examples I like to use is if you look at a, you know, mama cat and a baby cat, when a baby kitten is annoying the mama cat, the mama cat will, you know, swat the baby kitten, you know, get off my— don't bite my boobs, you know. And so I think it sounds like she is She's such a tender soul that she's trying to kind of go overboard on the mothering thing already. But yeah, I see this as a lifelong battle. I think so many women, if they don't become more assertive, then dominant people walk all over them. So may as well.

Yeah, no, no, we are definitely going to have Alana in a martial arts class at some point in the near future. I think she'd have a lot of fun. It's the one sport that I watch on TV now and then, mixed martial arts. So she likes it well enough, but it is important. I mean, Elan is just so nice. I mean, she's just such a nice kid.

Yeah. How old do they have to be to start martial arts?

Well, I don't know. I mean, there's classes that I'm sure take 3 and 4-year-olds. I looked into it a little while ago, kind of thought she was too young for the more— I want to say formal, but I'm more interested in a program where like she learns real practical skills and life applications of it rather than just, you know, McDojo, get earned belts or what have you.

Right, right. So better to wait till she's a little older and can be serious.

Just a little bit. Yeah. And she's very close. I mean, she's going to be 5 in August. And speaking of her being 5, so I was always the youngest child in my class any given year just because my is at the end of June and cutoff is in August, so very close to being the youngest person all the time. Alana, her birthday is just a couple of weeks before the cutoff, so she will be the youngest person in class. And there's a big difference between a 5-and-a-half-year-old and someone who just turned 5. What do you think about that? And, you know, is— are there any advantages to— I don't know, not holding her back necessarily, but, uh How should that influence our decision-making?

That's a great question. You know, of course, on the other end, there are parents who want their children, especially boys, to be athletes, who delay them simply so it's the biggest kid in the grade. So, you know, one of the biggest kids. I think Alana is so socially and intellectually mature. I've known— and again, generally females are sooner than mature and sophisticated. So that I would think that, you know, as long as she can be adequately assertive, will be— I would expect she can take on the 5-year-olds, no problem. You know, the other thing is, insofar as levels go way too slow for a bright child, being a little a little bit younger, even if it's a— it'll be— I bet she'll be— advanced kids in her class. Better, again, better to be challenged occasionally than to be bored all the time. So I would say, you know, especially because of who she is, you know, just make sure that— I would say the bullying thing is the scary thing, and hopefully there will be little to none of it. But as long as there is little to none of that, or if there is a little bit of bullying, you guys can just catch it right away. And the school's really supportive of stopping it, you know, I think she'll be fine. I've seen, you know, young females that are just so bright, articulate, and, you know, mature that they can kind of walk all over older kids sometimes.

Yeah, you know, Alana is— she is adept at speaking and engaging with adults. Both strangers and friends alike. She's actually a lot better at hanging out with adults than she is with, I think, children her age because, well, she's around adults more. She's with Marlo and myself and our peer groups.

And that's why in some ways, I think in some ways the whole issue of the one hand, setting boundaries with Logan, but also I bet there will be kids that are arbitrarily mean even in a go to a good charter school with motivated parents, sadly she'll probably encounter kids that are arbitrarily mean. And so I think— and again, it's not that they're bad kids at all, but kids can be mean.

Well, it happened yesterday. She was at the playground and there was a girl, 5, seemed nice enough, and then I see Alana walking away from her sniffling. I said, "What happened?" And she said the girl looked at Alana, poked her on the shoulder and said, I hate you.

Wow, for no reason. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I would assume the child is just projecting a lot of self-hate and whatnot, but right.

And then, not that a reason would make a difference, but so yeah, I would say Alana is so bright. I would say start to talk to her. And we talked about this earlier about, about the fact that there are meanness in the world and misunderstanding. And you know where it is, this is great Socratic conversation. Why is it that some people are mean? You know, Logan Logan doesn't understand it. Sometimes they're mean animals, you know, the animals can be mean without understanding it. Are there people that are mean because they know they're being mean? You know, I bet you can have lots of these kind of conversations. What is mean? Is somebody bumping you over by accident mean? No, probably intention. How do you know if somebody intends to be mean? You know what I mean?

Yeah, so absolutely. And it's just so frustrating to, I mean, It's so hard watching your child be hurt.

Well, I know that's why I say it's heartbreaking. In some ways, I think we all have— we all want to keep them in the cocoon of warm family forever. But yeah, it's gonna happen sooner or later. And so my approach to all these things is rather than necessarily to even pretend to try to avoid exposure completely, it's more coaching them on how to deal with it. And some of it is practical. Standing up for yourself, but some of it is just understanding. Because I think Alana is so pure and loving and helpful, sounds like she just doesn't even understand why people act this way.

No, not at all. She can't comprehend it. It's not in her world view. And she gives these kids the benefit of the doubt. They'll be mean and she'll just kind of take it on the chin and a couple minutes later try and re-engage them. She thinks the whole point of playgrounds and children is making friends and having fun. She's just not aware of things like cliques and mean people and, you know.

Yeah, and I would say that the art is to give her, give her confidence and also the cognitive understanding so that she doesn't take it personally. So ideally, if she understands that, you know, as you say, this, this hate thing, that it's not about her. And I think, you know, a lot of these sorts of ideas that people think of as, you know, maybe, you know, therapy or personal growth or, you know, success orientation. There are lots of different ways of thinking about it, but Alana's ready to start. You know, it won't happen overnight, but by means of having these conversations over the course of 3, 4 years, she will become so sophisticated at understanding all the various reasons, and you guys can have rich conversations about for why people are mean.

Yeah, yeah, all right. Speaking of which, yeah, go ahead.

Um, one of these mornings I'd love to, uh, I'd love to catch up with Alana in person. Yes, she's usually around on Sunday morning.

Yeah, no, she always is. Uh, she's, she's here right now if you want me to go and grab her real quick.

Well, my, I'm, my camera doesn't seem to be working and we kind of already went through some time. Um, but maybe, uh, maybe next week I'll get my camera working and I'd love to catch up with her.

Absolutely, Michael, sounds good. I'll look forward to it.

Okay, thanks, Ryan. Take care.

Take care.

Bye-bye.