Jim took Gareth to the mall the other day to get some shinguards as he starts soccer this week. We’re not shoppers in this family and spend as little time in malls as possible, as was evidenced by Gareth’s loud comment while walking past mannequins in a store window: “Daddy…is that what we do with dead people?!?”

Yesterday Daegan had his first drama class ever—an activity I thought he might enjoy given (a) you get to move around a lot, (b) you get to play games and be silly, and (c) it’s not competitive. However, Daegan very clearly stated that he did NOT want to be signed up for it, insisting that he did not like drama class because it is something he has never tried before. Sigh. I find this  to be a rather challenging aspect of parenting this child. One the one hand, Jim and I believe in listening to your kids, respecting them and...

I stumbled across the blog Free-Range Kids a while back, and have been enjoying reading it ever since. It’s really making me think: of course we want to protect our kids and keep them safe, but are there negative consequences of this constantly supervised up-bringing? Are we creating a generation of anxiety-ridden, fearful kids, with little experience negotiating the world until we send them off to college? Some of the stories on her website are shocking to me, like the one about a 10-year-old boy who was picked up by the police after folks called 911 seeing a child by...

Or so was Gareth’s claim. He wasn’t tired yet, and wanted to watch one more show. “Fine,” we said, as it was Friday night and we had no appointments tomorrow except the afternoon clay class. “You can watch this while we help Daegan brush his teeth and get ready for bed.” This is what we found when we came downstairs again: Gotta love 4-year-olds. :-)

On Friday Gareth had another of his drama classes at the nearby Arts Centre, and he is simply thriving. This is his first successful go at an unparented class. Last year at this time I put both boys into an unparented yoga class, thinking that having his older brother in the room would help ease Gareth’s transition to classes sans Mom or Dad. Nope! He just wasn’t ready. This time around he is in class with his friend Daniel, and is having a wonderful time—not a single issue. What a difference a year makes! After class Daniel and his...

Came across this article, The Serious Need for Play (Scientific American) on one of my email lists. Here’s the Key Concepts as listed in the article: Childhood play is crucial for social, emotional and cognitive ­development. Imaginative and rambunctious “free play,” as opposed to games or structured activities, is the most essential type. Kids and animals that do not play when they are young may grow into anxious, socially maladjusted adults. Interesting, interesting stuff. And I have to say, I find myself wondering less about...

OK, so I missed the date by several weeks. But I saw this idea on another blog, and knew it was something I wanted to do with our kids to capture ‘snapshots’ of them as they moved through their childhoods. Here’s the questions I asked both boys: What is your favourite: cereal? fruit? vegetable? drink? toy? TV show/movie? game? book? restaurant? holiday? animal? What do you love about each person in your family? What do you have fun doing with each person in your family? Where would you like to go on vacation this year? ...

Today Gareth had a dentist appointment to get a small cavity filled. Jim took him in (Dad is calm in these situations, Mom exudes anxiety) and he said Gareth did great. He got a little wiggly at one point, but overall was calm and cooperative. One funny moment: upon receiving a Diego sticker, Gareth immediately peeled it off its backing and placed it on the front of his (plain) shirt: “My shirt looks much better now!” But the quintessential 4-year-old moment happened when the dentist was done. She told Jim that Gareth would be woozy for a bit, and...

Another quote that resonated with me, particularly today dealing with somewhat rambunctious and balky boys: If you want your child to be the kind of person who’s going to stand up for what she believes in and not be pushed around by other people, you’re going to have to expect that a little bit of that is going to be exercised at home! You can’t have it both ways. You can’t raise a child who’s going to be independent and open-minded outside the house, but obedient and conforming inside the house. It’s just not going to work that way!...

Today was our first Family Clay class, and it was dino-riffic! :-) Daegan has done a bit of work with clay in some of the art classes he’s taken, and asked to do a clay class with Mom or Dad. Well, this is even better: a class all four of us could take together. We had to wait until now to start, though, as the youngest age they accept is 4. Gareth made the cut-off by a few weeks. In today’s class we put clay over top of an upside-down nylon/mesh-wrapped bowl to build a landscape—“like a beach,...