Last Sunday morning we all woke up to a bright morning…. and to our surprise, Xavier sang “Twinkle, twinkle little star”… It was out of the blue, no one had really even talked yet, it was just such a beautiful surprise…. Simon and I didn’t say a word but just looked at each other while he sang each word and didn’t even make a mistake. I didn’t even know that he knew the words…
At 3 1/2 this was the first time that Xavier sang a song… he has been “dah.. dahing” the Star Wars theme song for a while (though he has never seen the movie) and recently started filling in the blanks when I sang a song and would stop mid sentence but has never really sang…. I have amazing feelings that go through me when I hear him sing now, he has done twinkle little star a few more times and today he sang the alphabet song for the first time too (he even got most of the letters right!!)
I am starting to see a shift in him… he is growing up… today we watched a mini documentary on dinosaurs on the computer and had a great conversation about carnivors…. he is also starting to show a big interest in letters and numbers….
He also loves playing games on the computer and can get around a site very well… His favorite games right now are the ones that are on the Nick Junior site… especially the Max and Ruby dress up game….
We are trying to watch less TV and I have been doing very well actually the last few days… Since I like having a background sound I put the TV to the Montreal Talk radio station that I listen to (and I can’t get on the Radio) and that way the TV has a black screen so if the kids turn it on or off it doesn’t really matter… if the TV is just off though and at any channel they will turn it on and watch whatever is on…
However, Xavier does have a few “favorite” shows that I really don’t mind him watching…. Max and Ruby is his favorite, Little Bear is another… They are two shows that I just can’t see anything wrong with….
Oh…. another first.. a little weird and disturbing though….
Yesterday… Xavier told me his first story…I did a kind of “fill in the blank” story… it went a bit like this…
Me: Once there was a little boy named…
X: Xavier
Me : And one day Xavier….
X: Went walk in the woods….
Me: and then what happened?
X:Â He met a witch!
Me:and then what happened?
X: He asked the witch to turn him into a truck!
Me: A truck! huh… and did she?
X: Yeah…
Me: and what he do when he was a truck?
X: He went up, up, up the hill into the clouds?
Me: Then what happened?
X: He saw his mom!
Me: and what did his mom do?
X: She brought him home…
Me: and did she know that he was the truck?
X: Yeah…
Me: Then what happened?
X: She put him in the toilet and flushed….
Me: Why did she do that?
X: Because he’s dead…
Me: Really, maybe she brought him back to the witch to turn him back into a boy?
X: No… he’s Dead…
Well…. Yeah…. didn’t even know how to respond to the that one….
Maia makes up disturbing stories, too. When I try to stear her in a direction I’m more comfortable with, her story just gets more disturbing. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s an exploration of social boundaries thing. She’s recently been using the theme of eating her enemies.
Thanks Sara…. makes feel better that he is not the only one with the disturbing ideas… lol…
I do think it’s an exploration thing. For a while DD was flying pretend “birds” (lumps of clay) through the air saying “Whee! Dead.” where the bird would fly through the air then fall over dead.
Children don’t know social constraints, it is us “civilized” people that teach them to them! It is one of my biggest struggles to keep from “socializing” DD too much.
Do you think that this could also be because we don’t hide such facts from our kids.. Most parents that I know are horrified at the fact that I talk about death with Xavier… Like it is something we shouldn’t talk about and kids shouldn’t know about….
We did it early because he lost his “Pops” a bit more then a year ago… and I think he had the right to know… He didn’t understand for quite a while and it was only over last summer that he clicked on to what “dead” was through his exploration of bugs…
Oh absolutely! We raise chickens for both eggs and meat and DD definitely knows where her food comes from. We don’t try to hide or sugar-coat death and she seems to view it as part of the natural process.