Parenting: Revised

So, it has been a ridiculously long time since I last posted on our blog. We have been incredibly busy with work, kids, and life. It has been a whirlwind the last month. School and work is on holiday this week for the Chinese National Holiday, Moon Holiday, and Mid-Autumn Festival. It is great timing because it was Dad's birthday last weekend and it is Anson's birthday tomorrow. We are also apartment hunting so we can live closer to my work/Anson's school and Paul's school. Paul has had to stay at school a few days a week in a dirty little Super 8 Motel, so we'd like to move closer to where we spend our days so we can be together more. Wang Zi Yu came from Tianjin to work as Adrian's nanny and our cook/maid this last week, but she may not continue in that position for a number of reasons, the most important being that she is terribly homesick and hates being away from her husband all week (as do I). So this week we will be apartment hunting and probably looking for yet another Ayi (maid/nanny/cook).

The boys taking an afternoon nap during the first weekday of holiday.

It has been really interesting working in a Montessori school with children 15 months to 12 years. I got moved to the ESL department and so I work with a very wide spectrum of kids. I am planning on getting my teaching certificate online while I am here so that I can teach anywhere in the world when we move (wherever we move to...). Anson is LOVING school and transitioned much smoother than I thought he would. It was hardly what I would call a transition. He lives and breathes for school; I am so happy he is happy.

Dad's 59th Birthday party

On another note, working in a school and living in a foreign country has exposed me to all sorts of new teaching and parenting philosophies, some of which I embrace and others which I don't. A few key factors have influenced a marked change in my parenting philosophy.
1) Reading "Bringing up Bebe"
2) Observing and learning to teach in the Montessori method.
3) Being surrounded by families that come from all over the world with incredibly diverse parenting styles.
4) Having to stick up for and redefine my parenting ethics and philosophies amidst scrutiny.

Here are some things I have decided:
1) Children are smarter, more aware, and more capable than most Americans (or anyone really) gives them credit for. 3-year-olds are not only capable of learning geography, drawing, language, literature, science, experimentation, deductive reasoning, and a whole slew of "advanced" topics, but they are EXCITED to do so. I always thought that children who know the names of all the countries in Africa or who can discern an ovoid from an ellipse can only do so because some pretentious adult is forcing them to learn frivolous trivia. NOT so. I have found that when this information is presented in a relevant and enticing way, children feel fulfilled by learning all sorts of knowledge. Just as an adult enjoys learning how to express themselves in a new way or develop a new talent, small children, including mere toddlers, are thrilled by the new worlds of knowledge they can absorb....if the adult or teacher is willing to recognize their ability to do so. How often people claim that children are incapable of this or that. Some parents I know allow their child to throw massive tantrums because they doubt their child's ability to develop emotional maturity, patience, and linguistic communication. Parents deprive their kids of the thrill of learning how to dress and feed themselves (which a child can be capable of at 12-24 months) because they think that their kids lack the motor skills. The list goes on and on. It has been amazing to see 5-year-old children from Finland, fluent in Finnish and English, reading books aloud in fluent Chinese with their friends. Kids are sponges. One day I was at a friend's house and her poor 3 1/2-year-old boy can only communicate through whining, baby talk, and tantrumming because his parents respond so well to this kind of ridiculous communication. I was eating dinner with her kids while she was sick on the couch. Her toddler stormed into the room and hollered in a babyish tone, "I want food!" reaching across the table and grabbing chicken off the plate with his bare hands. I stopped him and said "Shhhh." He continued to holler and I kept shushing him. He got irritated and squealed at me. I looked him square in the eyes and said, "I am sorry, this is not the way you talk to me. You are 3-years-old, you can use words. Please say, 'May I have some chicken please?'" He looked as if I had smacked him. He said, "Chicken please!" I repeated, "May I have some chicken, please?" I can't say it was super successful, but I did manage to get him onto a chair, say please, and use the serving spoon.

2) Food. Anson and I have had our BATTLES with food and nothing had worked until I read the section on food in Pamela Druckerman's "Bringing up Bebe." It was a life saver. Once I began implementing the "try everything on your plate once" technique life got better. He isn't allowed to spit things out if he doesn't like them (unless they are unreasonably spicy or bitter for an adult) and he must try things even if he has tried them at previous meals. He found this to be a good rule. I like her idea of talking to your toddler about taste as they eat so they can learn more about the taste sense. He can now discern bitter, sweet, salty, spicy, numbing (a taste in Szechuan food), etc. He can now separate tastes and likes/dislikes as well. Instead of trying a spicy dish and claiming he doesn't like all the ingredients in the dish, he can now discern that what he doesn't like is the spicy sensation.
Babies are commonly treated like idiots when it comes to food. Bland, boring, and plain has been exalted as the absolute for babies. Their little underdeveloped taste buds and tiny tummies can handle no more. WRONG. Today I tried feeding Adrian some potatoes with a little bit of unsalted margarine. This was briefly tolerated. Then I made a dish of chives, mushrooms, chicken, and turnips seasoned with premium soy sauce, cooking wine, ginger, and sesame oil. He gobbled it up. On Saturday he ate a whole bowl of shark fin soup. White bread, plain oatmeal, and plain crackers are also on his low-tolerance list. He prefers whole wheat bread and oatmeal with peanut butter, bananas, and raisins.

That's my soap box for today. Wish us luck on apartment hunting!

I made up for our lack of wrapping paper by setting up Anson's birthday gifts 

Christmas-morning-style. He got a car track, a box of cereal (a rare treat here), 

a coloring book (pictured here with his jar of crayons), and a box of Asticks wafers 

(Kungfu panda was THE selling point). We took him shopping tonight and he picked it all out, 

but we told him he couldn't open anything till his birthday. 

When he went to bed I set all this up. I love my little boy!