Growing up sage

Pamela Druckerman's Bringing Up Bébé was a rather different read from the usual parenting books so far.  I was quite surprised that French parenting (in the early years at least) resonated with my own East meets West blend so far.  I don't agree with it all, esp. the non-attachment-friendly actions and a rather socialist approach to do what others do with minimal individual affirmation.  

YET I do appreciate some elements, mainly:

• Help him grow up sage (wise and calm) as well as éveillé (awakened, alert, stimulated). A child in control of himself, absorbed in activities with doucement (gently, carefully), mindful of himself with no n'importe quoi acts without regard or consideration for others 
• Have a cadre (framework) where firm limits are set within which tremendous freedom is given
• Focus on the right éducation (upbringing) rather than discipline
• Teach him to attend (wait... stop!) by self entertainment/distraction and not be an enfant roi  who is constantly at the center of attention. Building patience and delayed gratification will help with the caprices during the tantrum-throwing frustrations
• Reinforce FOUR magic words: "Hello, "Bye," "Please" and "Thank You" 
• Small acts of foolishness (bêtise) call for moderate responses but major acts require a firm non, les gros yeux (that LOOK of admonishment) and punishment with serious consequences
• Equilibre (balance) includes not letting being a parent overwhelm your life. Don't become a daily maman-taxi (tough one, that) 
• Goûter (afternoon snack) is the ONLY snack of the day beyond the three square meals, ideally together with family
• Allow autonomie, a blend of independence and self-reliance early on, including separation from parents such as école maternelle (free public pre-school) from the year the child turns 3 and colonie de vacances (kids' summer camps) from four years on
• Practice complicité, the mutual understanding that parents and caregivers try to develop with children from birth.  Small babies are perceived as rational beings, with whom adults can have reciprocal, respectful relationships. Note: several baby experts would disagree...
• ... which leads to French "sleep teaching" aka the PAUSE, typically by 4 months. My take on this is not that every newborn parent must sleep train by letting their baby cry.  Rather, consider waiting a little before responding to let baby learn to sleep on his own in between cycles, and then enter to determine if it truly is hunger, a dirty diaper, anxiety, et al.  This gradual "wait" approach worked for us even though we never liked or resorted to full cry-it-out

Caveat: The lowest grade I got in college was in French, so pardon any errors

You can never talk too much ... to your kid

I just finished Jill Stamm's "Bright From The Start" and was encouraged by her section on how live, repetitive interaction boosts early language development. Language development begins in utero.  Understanding its use begins as infants interact with family and caregivers, while language acquisition explodes by the time they're three years old. Babies are born physically equipped to hear distinct language sounds (phonemes). By age one, they tune out words not frequently spoken around them, which in turn, they cannot easily pronounce.  In fact, normal and deaf-signing toddlers go thru similar language development milestones: 1st word (11-14 mos), two word combos (16-22 mos), complex rule-driven communication by 3 years on.  While the ability to read early is not consistently linked to advanced intellectual performance later in a life, it's increasingly necessary to excel in local school, and thus, influence self-esteem et al.

Live, repetitive interaction is not about putting a CD, radio or video on constantly nor about having a non-stop verbal diarrhea with your child.  Rather: 

0-6 mos: 

• Use intentional parentese to stimulate brain and extend attention span
• Speak Multi or Bilingual naturalistically, preferably with dedicated caregivers or playdates
• Engage him face to face at an appropriate distance, use music, hang photos, selected mobiles
• Lap read! Enables a visual embrace as you and child are looking at the same object.  Start short (5 min) but frequent, 4 mos on when visual acuity improves and he can reach out to see and touch objects/pages

6-18 mos: 

• Deliberately point and label objects by name (light, door), attributes of objects, highlighting ones that are same or contrasting ( smooth, rough, big, small, square, round, blue, red), feelings (tired, hungry, happy)
• Read over and over!  Hold him close, let him turn pages randomly and be hands on (fine motor skill practice). Modulate voice and facial expressions, even use props to invite participation. Vary intonation to match enthusiasm, emotion, meaning.  Intro simple books with 1-2 sentences per page and plenty of rhythm, rhyme, repetition, rhyming songs, and random play with rhyming words. Knowledge (i.e. retention) generally kicks in after two weeks of repetition
• Talk frequently! Describe actions and objects. Positive tone, conversational interactions. 

18-36 mos:

• Dialogic reading: Read with children while engaging them throughout.  Describe the illustrations (where's the frog, how many), describe what they think is happening, predict what might happen next (what's he doing, where's he going), personalise ideas (remember the frog at the park?), share feelings about things in the story, leave lines incomplete -- let them fill in the blanks!
• Start simple music lessons (keyboard, violin, percussion). Sing fave songs esp with actions
• Follow tots lead on interests and expose them to environmental print (EP). Read all around you, ask open ended questions. Differentiate printing vs pictures vs sounds that describe them

3 years on: Phonemic awareness (ability to hear beginning, middle and ending sounds), Phonics (linking sounds to letters) and EP recognition evolves by then too.  
Choose books that match your child's brain level of engagement.  Stages of a reader (based on cognitive development):

1. Attends to pictures, doesn't form stories - picture/photo books, flash cards
2. Attends to pictures, forms oral stories - creates own story across the pages with "nonsense talk" - listener has to see pictures to follow along 
3. Attends to pictures, forms written stories - spoken words and intonations sound like reading 
4. Attends to print - recounts and retells stories they already know while pointing to the print rather than pictures, not actually "reading" 

Recommended tot books (the list is endless, here's a few from her book)

1. Interactive/lift the flap - Dr Seuss, Margaret Wise Brown, Karen Katz. Baby Dance (Taylor, A). Fit-A-Shape: Shapes.  Where's My Fuzzy Blanket (Carter, N). Wheels on the Bus (Stanley, M). Touch and Talk: Make Me Say Moo (Greig, E). Quack Quack, Who's That? (Noel, D). 
2. Emotions: Winnie the Pooh: Feelings (Smith, R).  WOW! Babies (GEntius). Faces (Miglis, J). Baby Faces (Miller, M). Where the Wild things Are (Sendak, M).  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Viorst, J).  The Selfish Crocodile (Charles, F). Glad Monster, Sad Monster: A Book About Feelings (Emberley, E). No David! (Shannon, D)
3. Rhyme & Rhythm: Dr Seuss, Margaret Wise Brown. Each Peach Pear Plum (Ahlberg), Moo, Baa, La La La (Boynton). Five Little Ducks (Raffi). Five Little Monkeys (Christelow). This Old Man (Jones). The Itsy Bitsy Spider (Trapani). Find the Puppy (Cox)
4. Scribbling (Pre-Drawing/Writing):  Crayon World (Santomero), Figure Out Blue's Clues (Perello). Blue's Treasure Hunt Notebook (Santomero). Harold and the Purple Crayon (Johnson). Get in Shape to Write (Bongiorno). Messages in the Mailbox; How to Write a Letter (Leedy)
5. EP books: Cheerios Play Book (Wade).  M&Ms Counting Board book (McGrath). Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Counting Fun Book (McGrath). Kellogg's Froot Loops (McGrath).  Sun Maid Raisins Playbook (Weir).  Oreo Cookie Counting Book (Albee).
6. Helping Young Children Learn Language and Literacy: Birth Through Kindergarten (Vukelich, C. Christie, J. Enz, BJ)

I did what I knew, and when I knew better, I did better

June was an exercise in child-led learning.   Forget about class or mommy's "lesson plans," our theme was on B's all time favourite things...

Theme:
(1) Things that go:  It started out with us reading Brian Biggs' excellently illustrated vehicle series, esp.  Everything Goes: In The Air for days up till (and after) B's first flight to Phuket.  Shortly after, his Chengzhu holiday program took the Playclub tots on the Duck Tour bus AND boat.  Then we ended up flying again (aka the unplanned haze-cation) to Penang. For a boy already crazy about wheels and diggers, it only seemed natural that this ended up as our special monthly theme

(2) Shapes: Learning shapes is fun and easier as B recognises his rainbow colours (he calls indigo "dark bool" ;) Besides the hand-me-down shape sorters, blocks and a timely Gymnademics home package set, we reinforced shapes through bean bag games, geometric foam pictures and playdough

Routine:
We used lots of puzzles this month given B's growing interest (and affinity) for this. Besides the wooden peg puzzles, we took out slightly harder board and magnetised ones.  It takes him some time to get the alignment right even if he knows where it should go. But he takes them out from the boxes himself to work at it almost every day.  For a boy that can't stay at a task too long, this is quite a feat! We also used more representative learning to support what B would see in real life, i.e. block building a "duck bus/boat", drawing the jet pilots and helicopters flying by for National Day rehearsal, browsing through books, transportation art and flashcards with photos and/or illustrated print, role playing with toys and sound effects, etc. We even tried threading with his Good Night construction site set. Speaking of which, B can thread in and occasionally flips it over to thread out but doesn't quite know? have patience? to keep threading the next sequence.

Art and Craft:  So many this month given the special occasions, but no time to complete a big special project (that one's already WIP for next month). Our top 2 faves:

(1) Fathers' Day card - B made 3 this year, 1 for dad, 1 for each grandpa

(2) Garden montage of ziplocked paint, bubble wrap prints and cut-out shapes

Outings:  June was children's season and school holidays.  So... You guessed it!  We went back to the Singapore Art Museum (awesome Enchanted Garden kids exhibit) and Gardens By The Bay (Flight of Fancy's hot air balloons). We also visited the Philatelic Museum to see geek!mom's Star Wars exhibit.  With the Singapore Duck Tour, Phuket and Penang trips, B is slowly touring his way through Southeast Asia ;)

Personal:

- Mealtimes are back to normal, even better in fact since our Penang trip.  B feeds himself, has a robust appetite, is keen to try new things, and most importantly, happily eats fruits and veggies again! At his 18.5 month check in/jab, B weighed 12.5 kg.  He couldn't stand still to measure the height, but based on his ex-pants shorts and pajamas, he's definitely over 86 cm!

- Sleeps well overnight (~11 hours straight) but his naps have gotten shorter (~1 hour average) even on days when he's so tired and nodding off by 1130a!  He tends to wake up crying from his nap yet will only sleep longer if we rock and hold him.  Another regression? Separation anxiety again?  Just roll with it?
- Resumed potty training which I started / stopped earlier this year.  This time, we are going the distance  i.e. no diapers while at home and playdates.  Also bought another, lighter single piece "portette"

- At times, he shows a little stubborn and willful streak so I've been more firm with discipline, insisting he continues with the basic home "routine" (incl. helping out, cleaning up), and not giving in to his temper tantrums. So far, nothing unmanageable (yet! yet!)

- Steady progress language and cognition wise. He's started to fill in missing words from familiar stories and songs, repeat new words that he's able (willing?) to vocalise and put 2 simple words together like "eat/no more", "back door."  Oh, and he's asking "WHY?" ;) It helps that I'm reading more specific books with big fonts, few words like the Dr Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown classics, in addition to our usual dialogic, fun but variable stories. Besides English, he seems to find Malay/Bahasa easier to pick up but that could be b/c I've been quite negligent with Chinese since our holiday break! Of course, if I were honest, for a verbal mom like me who talks, sings and reads to him constantly, I do wish at times that he could say more earlier! But he's developing at his own pace and all is well

- I made his first photobook to help make reading (pages, prints, photos) more personal and fun for him. Also as an alternative to flicking through photos and videos on my smartphone.  He seems to enjoy flipping through it and it grounds him esp. when we are away from home.  Small steps worth continuing and building on

- We STILL haven't committed to 2014 nursery for B next year .... Talk about kiasu!  Yet even with my sporadic homeschooling efforts (longer task/wishlist than actual), I still feel we're doing ok and giving B a better experience at this age