Hi Texican, sorry to hear about the anxiety over dad 'gone missing', in the eyes of your son anyway...We deal with some of that on a regular basis. I am outside the house 3 days a week (god forbid!) and need to regularly re-explain to my dd4 that I go to make money (for all the cheese she eats). And the house and the car, etc. She seems to 'get' this, and it does help her.
Hi Chris - I was out of the house 5 half days when my son was 4, and I had heard that having an explanation phrase was helpful ( like your cheese - lol) so here is one I repeated almost every day:
Mommy goes to work for 4 reasons:
1) Make Money
2) Help People
3) Use my Special Gifts
4) Grow Inside
Of course there was discussion about what each of them meant. What is funny to me in retrospect, is that I thought that all 4 year olds would be able to have such discussions if only all moms were as wonderful at explaining things as I am. L O L My denial of my son's giftedness was firmly in place. If anything, I felt guilty for making him 'weird' for my on selfish need to communicate deeply with him.
I didn't really think of myself as gifted, except in a statistical 'top 3% of what school likes - but so what?' kind of way, and couldn't bear the idea of individual differences.
I would have said, at the time, that all people have special gifts and need to find them and use them, but that our society was imperfect at identifying, helping develop, and rewarding all the special gifts. I still believe this actually, but without the shell of denial that gifted kids have special educational needs that schools have an actual responsibility to provide an environment where development is even possible, let alone encouraged.
And without the shell of denial that most folks are so tuned in to the 'usual developmental path' that families with kids on a asynchronous developmental path are going to need to ignore most of the 'common wisdom' about parenting and find individualized ways to parent their unusually gifted kids.
Wow La Tex, I haven't been able to bring those two thoughts so close together in words before today - thanks for starting this 'Random Chatting' and thanks to C1234 for reminding me of those bittersweet days.
For what it's worth C1234 - as much as my son hated me going to work at age 3 and 4, he now at age 13 and 14 is that relieved that I have 'other places' to use my special gifts and Help People than on him!!!! I love these 'true but simplified' discussions what we can have with our preschoolers. In Kindy, DS didn't want to go to school, and said "Why do we have to?"
My BIL used to say things like "Because the police will come and arrest me if you don't" which I thought was horrifying at the time, so I said: "If you get in the car, I'll tell you all about it" and once he was strapped in the carseat was all onto Child Labor and Child Labor laws! What a fun way to take a 5 year old to school! I really wondered what was wrong with all the other Moms who didn't have these conversations.....Now I get it!
Live and Learn!
Grinity
