Let's Active Listening

I had never really been a fan of active listening. My old boss was always a fan of "seek first to understand, and then to be understood." Whatever. To me, the whole reflecting what someone is saying to try to make it seem like you are guiding them seemed so patronizing. "It sounds like you are really upset." Well no doy!

But with young kids, especially Owen, who is almost 7, this works really well, much to my surprise. Mostly, this is because he doesn't really know what he is feeling, since he is still pretty new to feelings in general. It is a big deal of parenting, as it turns out, to be your kids' guide to what they are really going through.

So Owen has been having fits of late, and the gists of those fits are that he doesn't get enough attention, especially with respect to Nathan, who is 3 1/2. He is also pissed that Nathan gets away with more, which doesn't seem too unusual for an older child. This has been coming to a head.

One other thing about Owen is that he wets the bed at night. I am not particularly concerned about this, even at almost 7. I was the same way, and now they have these pullups (essentially a big boy diaper) that saves this from being a big deal. He is a really hard sleeper.

This was all ok until we realized that Nathan, much younger, wakes up dry each morning, and we started letting him sleep without a pullup. Owen completely lost it, literally, he was hard to understand through crying for 10-15 minutes. When I finally calmed him down (kind of), I started the active listening, pinpointing what he thought he was mad about:
Me: "It seems like you are mad about having to wear a pullup
Him: "Yes. You guys told me we'd work on it and we didn't and now Nathan gets to do it."
Me: "It sounds like you think it isn't fair that Nathan gets to wear underwear to bed."
Him: "Yes, he always gets whatever he wants"
Me: "It sounds like you think Mommy and Daddy treat you unfairly"
Him: "Yes, and he always takes away my priviliges"
Me: "He takes away your priviliges? Like with the pullup?"
Him: "Yes, and with you and mommy spending so much time with him."

I mean, it really can't be that simple, could it? Solution (for now), we worked out a plan to try to get him out of the pullup. More than anything, the kid was just desparate to be heard. You want to say to him "Why not just ask to work on this?" and then you realize that such a concept just wouldn't occur to a 1st grader.

Been awhile...

Yikes, so much going on. The real shocker was on the 14th, a 5th grader at Owen's school died. You might have seen it on the news... his heart stopped when he was hit with a football in the chest. Really random, really horrible. I really don't like talking to my 6 year old about death.

The kid turned out to be the son of the woman who runs a house cleaning business. Her mom cleaned our house. It brought it home a little more, but really, it was just a hug your kid week. Really depressing.

We have a new deck, which is nice, though now I wonder whether we should be spending any money at all.

Crazy weekend coming up with anniversary Thursday, Nathan's birthday Friday, Nathan's birthday party Saturday. Nathan is a good boy.

Please win Barack.

Game on

I'll gloss over the things giving me IBS this weekend, and get to the theme of the weekend: Games. Ok, it is a weak theme, and it is only based on 2 things, but here they are:

1) Showed up at Owen's soccer game Saturday morning (drizzle, wet field), and one of the coaches couldn't make it. I volunteered to be a coach for the day, which essentially meant being on the field and trying to help manage a 3 on 3 game. I had Owen, a boy named Connor, his twin sister Claire, Jillian, and Catherine. Owen can play, Connor can play, Jillian can even play, but Claire and Catherine... it isn't so much they can't play is that they can't pay attention. I also had to shuttle kids in and out while quelling my inner instinct to stick with Owen, Connor and Jillian. This was fine except for:
a) One point where I had the 3 girls in, 2 of which couldn't pay attention, and even served to distract Jillian to the point where the other team scored like 5 goals in 5 minutes; and
b) The Euro kid (Marcus), who seemed like he was on the Danish U7 team. No kidding, he slide tackled Owen. Kid was 6. Now if I'm on the sidelines, I'm not sure what to do, but when the kid is playing intense like this, it took everything I had not to yell at the other coach on the field. Also took a lot to get Owen not to smack him one (and Owen would have taken out the trash).

Anyway, I learned that coaching 6 year olds is exhausting, but also that I can set up a really good corner kick at this level. Almost the goal of the year.

2) Sunday, Owen has his quiet time after lunch, which usually involves him being in his room, listening to CDs of stories, and reading or making a fort. After quiet time, he came downstairs and shows me this series of 9 drawings he made on pieces of paper about 1" square. I have to say, they were pretty creative. Including: a) A globe b) His desk at school c) 2 trees (an apple and a pine) d) The "Ratmobile" e) A picture of a mountain with 2 guys going up the mountain, and 2 guys skiing down the other side; f) Another picture of mountain climbers; g) A "farm" (read: Garden) with vegetables growing, complete with little signs with pictures of carrots, etc.; h) A picture of a dog, with a leash extending off the picture (implying someone is walking the dog; and i) Of course I can't remember the last one.

So he explains all these drawings to me, and I'm just tickled with his creativity and initiative. Then he asks me to rank them in order of preference, and does the same with Katie. Then he decides he is going to come up with a game for these, and talks a completely convoluted nonsensical game that I kind of dismiss. But then he comes up with another game; which involved hiding each paper, then Katie and I try to find them. When you find one, you get the points associated with it, which are 9 if you find your personal favorite, 8 for 2nd favorite, etc. The trick is you get the points associated with your ranking if you find it. Anyway, he hides these and Katie and I spend awhile looking for them, and he's tallying up the points, and all I can think of is, well, WOW. This was done all on his own, with his own initiative, his own thoughts, his own creation. The game was even fun! And competitive (Katie accused me of shoving).

Good times.

Going to the chapel...

We are about to go to a wedding tonight... with the kids. We'll see how it goes, Katie is skeptical. But it is for one of our babysitters (who is a guy). We'll see. I think it is gonna work.

I went to the state fair in Salem with Owen yesterday, and in a real change, forced myself to spoil him and say yes a lot. We went on way too many rides and got too many snacks and had a great time. That kid is brave... we culminated the trip by riding on the Zipper.

If you don't know the Zipper, it is essentially a masochist dream... you get in a cage that jerks all around and flips upside down while the whole ride goes around like a ferris wheel. I believe it is the same ride my sister went on when she was about 13, and convince my grandmother to accompany her. Grandma Paul was never the same.

In fact, it was too much for me (and maybe for Owen). When it started Owen got jerked around pretty good because there was more room for him to move around (since the barrier when against me, and I am, um, bigger than him). He started freaking out, so I hung on with 1 hand and held him with the other and went into survival mode, whilst also getting nauseous. Owen survived, and claimed to have never been scared. Yeah right... oh, and his shoes fell off during the ride (and they were snug sneakers) and were tossed around inside our cage like crazy. Good times.

On the way home Owen announced that Grandma and Pop-Pop (my parents) were rich. He then went on to say how he knew... because they have a pinball machine.

So there you have it, show the world you have made it... get a pinball machine for your house.

West Coast

Quick story... I spent 15 minutes last night analyzing song lyrics with Owen. The song was "West Coast" by Coconut Records. Owen wanted to know why he said "I miss you/I'm going back home to the west coast." We created an elaborate story about this guy (and this might be accurate) that he broke up with a girl he loved to move to the east coast. Then he realized he missed her and shouldn't have left. Owen's reaction was charming... "He had a job on the west coast working as a lifeguard at the lake, and moved to the east coast for a regular kind of job." We then concluded it was better to not only be on the west coast, but to work at the lake and be with the person you wanted to be with.

He also really liked the idea that the guy would "talk out loud like you're still around." To quote Owen "It's like he thinks she's still there, and wants to tell her something and then... oops I'm on the east coast now."