Today we took the girls to a local ballet school and watched their ballet recital. The girls have recently become interested in ballet and I am always looking for opportunities for the girls to practice their "sitting still and watching something quietly" skills. They still need a lot more practice with that skill!
During the recital, Sabrina stood next to me on the pews (this ballet school is part of a church). She started to pick her nose with her finger. I moved her finger away from her nose and quietly, but firmly, said "Do not pick your nose, Sabrina."
She turned to me with that grimace on her face which means that she is about to start wailing and said "It's my nose." Her finger immediately returned to her nostril for more picking. I grabbed her hand again and said "NO, Sabrina, you cannot pick your nose. If you start screaming, we will have to go outside and you will go into time out."
Thank God Sabrina still dislikes time out. She calmed down immediately. I fear the day when time out loses its sting with Sabrina!
My thoughts returned to a common theme: my girls are so different. Almost every day my kids do something which reminds me of this truism. I have no memory of Catherine ever picking her nose. She had a runny nose most of the time because she had so much nausea, and maybe that had something to do with it. But Catherine is also a much cleaner person than Sabrina. Catherine washes her hands all the time and will not walk past a wall-mounted container of hand sanitizer without getting some. When I pick Sabrina up from school at the end of the day, I can determine her daily agenda by looking at the stains on her clothes, arms and hands: dirt and grass if they went outside, paint if they did crafts, lunch. I no longer dress Sabrina up for school. Instead, she just wears shorts or pants and a t-shirt.
Also, I don't think Catherine would have challenged my authority like that at the age of 28 months. We have had to push independence and self-sufficiency on Catherine. I think we may have babied Catherine because of her medical issues and given Sabrina less coddling. But Sabrina is pushing her independence on us. She frequently says "I do it" to us. Catherine still complains that she needs help and whines that she "can't do it."
1 comment:
"I do it" is one of Peter's favorite expressions. "No" is heard commonly by both Peter and Josh. Your time out story reminded me of one time Peter was starting to run out of the preschool area so I called him sternly and loudly (since he's half way to the bus) and he comes back and says "I sit time out" and then plops down on the floor. If I mention time out, he will look around and try to figure out where it is. So yeah..sting lost on us. :)
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