How to be himself
Hi All:
I am wondering if you can provide us with some advise on how to deal with child at this age
I have a boy of 5 years old named Chris and a girl just turned 1 , they both have the birthday on the same month two weeks ago, for the last three month,
my boy is home on a break from pre-school going to official area k-garden mom had a crazy idea to save some money by not sending the boy to school before the class starts in Septmber, of course to earn some money, we have to spend some effort, mom's tasks are daunting while dad go to work in the day time, the girl is just learning to walk and still require attentions as new born baby some times and the older brother require we play with him all of the time except when he sees a favorite TV programming or eating desirt
well hope thats not too long of question for you, above are just some backgrounds
so the mom, the girl and the boy manages to stay home all day during the day time (as mom dont drive and dont know her way around too much outside of the house) , dad (me) does not have much patient/energy to play with the boy in the active way as the boy wishes after a day of work
mom figure out an idea, have the boy play with the neiborhood kids in the public back yard after 5pm to around 7pm, its a nice gathering of 4-5 neighborhood chidlren about the same age plus/minus 1-2 years old,
PRO
***more excerise and help to improve his health
***better adaption to environment outside of the house, so he knows it hurts when he purposely slids in the hard concrete surface rather than soft cartpet at home all the time
***more energy spent so he can sleep on time
***improve people and communcation skill and how to play with others
CONS
***the play environment is not always very safe and clean (ie. some times we discovered broken glasses on the gress and one of the kids were sent to ER because of it)
***one of us parent need to watch them in case they do something crazy, and the responsability is not exactly set on which parent, a few parents I never seen them came out and watch before so we some times feel we are assuming the responsability policing the kids traffic since we are out there
in which one of the con we discovered, and is probably also an issue already exist within our boy's mindset:
our boy follows one of the neighbor boy (who is probably a year or two younger, but looks like he plays outside all the time, lets call him "Marty") do things all the time, both good and bad thing, and when there is a some blame to be point to, the neighbor boy would say my boy did it all
for example my boy would shadow that other boy whenever he rolls on the gress, kicking other kids, pull the tree leaves off the tree, throwing rocks, play with dirty things from the ground etc.
when we talk to our boy Chris, tell him to be himself, decide whats right and wrong, and told him what he did wrong today, he would agreed not to follow Marty do things next time we let Chris play outside again but yet every time in the heat of the playing moment our boy would forget what he promise and again and again follow the same path
that led us wondering, have we tell our boy what to do too much ??
I have to confess myself that i say the word "don't" way too much when I talk to my boy in the last year or two, I feel bad to have to pick on his mistakes all the time, but could not help it
his mom does that at times too, and some times our commands conflicts (ie. mom and dad tell him to do or not to do one things and the direction is not always the same)
do you think this is where the problem lies ? from all your experienced parents out there, whats a good direction to help correct our boy while not having to control him too much ? I think our boy is good on theroy but lacking of short-term judgement
also the issue of playing with other kids, how can we filter make sure he pick up the good behavior and filter out the bad ones from other kids ?
thanks
JC
Hi All:
I am wondering if you can provide us with some advise on how to deal with child at this age
I have a boy of 5 years old named Chris and a girl just turned 1 , they both have the birthday on the same month two weeks ago, for the last three month,
my boy is home on a break from pre-school going to official area k-garden mom had a crazy idea to save some money by not sending the boy to school before the class starts in Septmber, of course to earn some money, we have to spend some effort, mom's tasks are daunting while dad go to work in the day time, the girl is just learning to walk and still require attentions as new born baby some times and the older brother require we play with him all of the time except when he sees a favorite TV programming or eating desirt
well hope thats not too long of question for you, above are just some backgrounds
so the mom, the girl and the boy manages to stay home all day during the day time (as mom dont drive and dont know her way around too much outside of the house) , dad (me) does not have much patient/energy to play with the boy in the active way as the boy wishes after a day of work
mom figure out an idea, have the boy play with the neiborhood kids in the public back yard after 5pm to around 7pm, its a nice gathering of 4-5 neighborhood chidlren about the same age plus/minus 1-2 years old,
PRO
***more excerise and help to improve his health
***better adaption to environment outside of the house, so he knows it hurts when he purposely slids in the hard concrete surface rather than soft cartpet at home all the time
***more energy spent so he can sleep on time
***improve people and communcation skill and how to play with others
CONS
***the play environment is not always very safe and clean (ie. some times we discovered broken glasses on the gress and one of the kids were sent to ER because of it)
***one of us parent need to watch them in case they do something crazy, and the responsability is not exactly set on which parent, a few parents I never seen them came out and watch before so we some times feel we are assuming the responsability policing the kids traffic since we are out there
in which one of the con we discovered, and is probably also an issue already exist within our boy's mindset:
our boy follows one of the neighbor boy (who is probably a year or two younger, but looks like he plays outside all the time, lets call him "Marty") do things all the time, both good and bad thing, and when there is a some blame to be point to, the neighbor boy would say my boy did it all
for example my boy would shadow that other boy whenever he rolls on the gress, kicking other kids, pull the tree leaves off the tree, throwing rocks, play with dirty things from the ground etc.
when we talk to our boy Chris, tell him to be himself, decide whats right and wrong, and told him what he did wrong today, he would agreed not to follow Marty do things next time we let Chris play outside again but yet every time in the heat of the playing moment our boy would forget what he promise and again and again follow the same path
that led us wondering, have we tell our boy what to do too much ??
I have to confess myself that i say the word "don't" way too much when I talk to my boy in the last year or two, I feel bad to have to pick on his mistakes all the time, but could not help it
his mom does that at times too, and some times our commands conflicts (ie. mom and dad tell him to do or not to do one things and the direction is not always the same)
do you think this is where the problem lies ? from all your experienced parents out there, whats a good direction to help correct our boy while not having to control him too much ? I think our boy is good on theroy but lacking of short-term judgement
also the issue of playing with other kids, how can we filter make sure he pick up the good behavior and filter out the bad ones from other kids ?
thanks
JC