Bike Riding with Nanny & La La

Just when you thought it couldn't get any more risky than having Nanny & La La on the loose on bikes in an adult community, we added Jakey into the mix. This was, BY FAR, the longest he has ever shown an interest in riding and even in spite of a few spills, no tears were shed (other than laughing) and no pedestrians were harmed...LOL

I had thoughts about trying to remove the training wheels in the near future, but when I mentioned this to Jake he was quick to inform me that he wants to keep his training wheels on FOREVER. Hmmm...we'll see how long that lasts, eh?

Here are some shots of the biking extravaganza...sort of like a three ring circus on wheels! LOL

In an effort to maintain "fair balance" in these updates...we've been having a little trouble at school these days on the listening front. Although I always thought that children were born knowing that THEY are the child and that children must listen to adults, including parents and teachers, etc., it seems this is not the case...or maybe Jakey was missing this gene (obviously from the donor's side...LOL). This equates to a total lack of understanding of WHY he needs to be the one who LISTENS and why everyone else gets to tell him what to do?

I've exhausted many, many attempts at describing how this whole "I talk, you listen" thing works and last week, in a last ditch effort, I broke it down into the simplest language I could come up with (he is, after all, only 4). I told him that a parents/teacher's job is to TEACH and that involves telling children what to do and a child's job is to LEARN and that involves listening and doing what you're told. He thought about this for a few minutes and then said "Then I choose to be the parent". Oy vey. When I explained that that was not possible right now, but that some day he would actually be the parent, he had two questions for me. First, how long till we can switch? And then when I explained about his OWN children, he asked how that was possible since I had told him that boys could NOT have babies. Double oy vey!!

I had to have a special meeting with his teachers and the asst head of school and all joking aside, this really has me TOTALLY stressed out. Bottom line, the boy has a total lack of respect for authority. He feels that he is among equals and expects that he TOO be listened to and that HIS opinion can, at times, outweigh mine or his teacher's. He is frequently heard saying "you're not listening to me". During the conference, one of the teachers was telling us about what had happened just that very day. Jake was sitting doing his work in his kindergarten book (what he does when the other kids his age are napping) and a little girl from kindergarten walked in and was working with the teacher on learning some new words. Well, it seems she was struggling a little bit on the words, so Jake started saying the words for her before she had a chance to say them. Needless to say, the little girl was NOT happy about this, so the teacher asked Jake to please stop and explained that the girl needed to practice/learn them herself. Well, mr. stubborn proceeds to continue to say the words and the teacher threatens to move him to another table...long story, short, he gets moved. (Who among us didn't know that was coming?)

So, he moves to the other table and proceeds to write a note in his workbook that says "Mrs. Byra is a nauhty (his spelling) girl. She was rude to me. She doesn't listen." As the teacher was telling us this story, she stopped and said, I have to tell you, I was just so impressed with how he wrote those sentences that for a minute, I forgot that I needed to respond appropriately" and we all laughed, we just couldn't help it. Even when he's being a TOTAL buster (Bad to the Bone), he's amazing.

Over this past week, I've tried taking away his TV priviledges, but that didn't seem to bother him too much. Then finally, one night, I hit on what might be our saving grace... I told him that instead of the 5 books we read at night, he would only get 3 if he didn't have a good listening day. Talk about a TOTAL meltdown!!!! You'd think I told him he couldn't have ice cream for a year...oh wait, that would be me who would get upset about that, not him. So that's the new rule and since that night, at the risk of jinxing us, we've had 2 GREAT days in school in a row. Which effectively doubles our previous longest streak!!!!! LOL

Now, as you would expect, he's negotiated some modifications to the arrangement and he now has the ability to earn 7 books if he's able to have 5 great listening days in a row. God help me if we hit that, because I'm going to be reading for hours. But, at least for now, we may have found something that works. And for those thinking, hell, the belt/shoe/wooden spoon worked just fine for me when I was growing up...believe me, I'm right there with you. But that's just not "in vogue" these days and besides, I hate to hear him look up at me and say "you hurt me". Now, it's just "you hurt my feelings"...and that, I can live with.

Bye for now...