One Minute, Twilight
One night recently when Mark had to work late, Ethan and I watched the movie "Twilight". Two days later, Ethan came up to me in the morning as I was making breakfast, and said "Mom, can we talk about Twilight?" Of course. "You know when the doctor vampire told the people that the man was killed by the same animal, well, he was lying, wasn't he, because he knew it wasn't an animal, that it was another vampire." I was a bit blown away that not only had he reviewed the movie in his head, but also re-analyzed the sequence of events (when the scene plays, we the audience don't know the doctor is a good-vampire, and so naturally have no way of knowing he's lying, unless you go back and review the scene with the later knowledge -- pretty cool, huh?).
That same morning, my smart, energetic son managed to: put hair conditioner in his hair after I had wetted it once to tame some bed-head thereby requiring a second hair rinsing; reading a book backwards to make it more interesting; putting on his friend's pants because they were different; insisting on wearing his adult XXL school jacket (which he bought for $5 one evening when he was cold at a school picnic).
Ethan has also taken to doing renditions of movie scenes and experiences we have had. For example, after watching the movie Iron Man 2, he role-played one of the fights, first taking the bad-guy role (complete with his version of a Russian accent -- not bad!), then stepping a foot away and turning around to be Iron Man, falling to the ground. Or, after watching Arthur on TV, he took on the role of Mr. Ratburn the teacher, then several of the children's characters, using different voices for each. And, after taking Ethan to the local church one recent Sunday morning, he replayed the hour, complete with his taking roles as the minister giving a sermon with arms waving and as a deep a voice as he could manage, and the choir singing.
On a more serious note, we have a new game at the house called "One Minute". It started recently because Ethan has a habit of blurting out mean words, like saying "jerk". It's not very pleasant, and for a while I was responding that we would take away 10 minutes of screen time every time he said something that wasn't nice. The other morning he lost 40 minutes before I dropped him off at school, and during the day I realized that in the grand scheme of things, a) I'd much rather him say mean things than hit something, and b) I'd much rather he say them to us rather than to anyone else.
So, brilliant mama that I am, during the day I invented a game called "One Minute" which I explained to him on the way home, and he picked up immediately and even practiced. It goes like this: if he says something mean, and I say "one minute", he loses screen time unless within one minute he first apologizes, then explains what he was really upset about. This has turned out to be a wonderful window into what Ethan is actually feeling, and infinitely more pleasant than the mean words.
That same morning, my smart, energetic son managed to: put hair conditioner in his hair after I had wetted it once to tame some bed-head thereby requiring a second hair rinsing; reading a book backwards to make it more interesting; putting on his friend's pants because they were different; insisting on wearing his adult XXL school jacket (which he bought for $5 one evening when he was cold at a school picnic).
Ethan has also taken to doing renditions of movie scenes and experiences we have had. For example, after watching the movie Iron Man 2, he role-played one of the fights, first taking the bad-guy role (complete with his version of a Russian accent -- not bad!), then stepping a foot away and turning around to be Iron Man, falling to the ground. Or, after watching Arthur on TV, he took on the role of Mr. Ratburn the teacher, then several of the children's characters, using different voices for each. And, after taking Ethan to the local church one recent Sunday morning, he replayed the hour, complete with his taking roles as the minister giving a sermon with arms waving and as a deep a voice as he could manage, and the choir singing.
On a more serious note, we have a new game at the house called "One Minute". It started recently because Ethan has a habit of blurting out mean words, like saying "jerk". It's not very pleasant, and for a while I was responding that we would take away 10 minutes of screen time every time he said something that wasn't nice. The other morning he lost 40 minutes before I dropped him off at school, and during the day I realized that in the grand scheme of things, a) I'd much rather him say mean things than hit something, and b) I'd much rather he say them to us rather than to anyone else.
So, brilliant mama that I am, during the day I invented a game called "One Minute" which I explained to him on the way home, and he picked up immediately and even practiced. It goes like this: if he says something mean, and I say "one minute", he loses screen time unless within one minute he first apologizes, then explains what he was really upset about. This has turned out to be a wonderful window into what Ethan is actually feeling, and infinitely more pleasant than the mean words.
posted by AttitudeAdopt | 6:35 AM
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