Potty training...Suburban Rebellion style.

Potty training is one of the most stressful parts of parenting a small child. We were fortunate to fall on a method that worked like a charm with both of our children.
The way we did it was to spend a week in hardcore potty training with them. We read books about the potty, we go pick out underpants, we talk potty with everyone, we watched potty movies, we sit on the potty every 20 minutes while were home and we were home as much as possible. We celebrate the victories, we clean up the accidents cheerfully. Everything we do for a week is potty. All potty, all the time.

Then, we drop it.

Life goes back to normal. Diapers are back in use. We go out and do things. We don't mention potty at all. After a couple-ish weeks of no potty I start to offer underpants in the morning when we are dressing for the day. It took my daughter 3 months to take the underpants and it took my son about a week to take them. After that, they were both trained.
I think the "magic" in our method is that they are in control of their own potty learning. They decide when they are ready and we just provide the things they need to learn how to do it and to recognize when they are ready. There's no pressure, no power struggles, just a decision on their part to do it.

Testing neurosis.

I've worked at the public library for 13 years now and in that time I have seen a lot of different types of parents. The type that annoys me the most would probably be what everyone has been blogging about lately...the Tiger Mother. I have been asked many times for books on how to study for our state's standardized elementary school test which I find odd but the strangest requests I have had are for books to help study for IQ tests. Seriously, people? I guess that's better than the parents who want to drop their children off at the library for free babysitting while they go to work or shopping...

Well, once we got the letter verifying Kat's date for group IQ testing I started to stew about it. Should we prepare Kat? What if she is put in a room with 2 other children who have been trained to take the test? Of course you can't raise your IQ by studying but could we raise her chances of doing as well as she possibly could by studying?

I went round and round on that crazy train for a while. I grabbed a book on critical thinking skills and took it home vacillating between "Yes, let's help her out a bit" and "You need to get a grip, Momma!" A coworker suggested that we ask Kat if she would like to try some things from the book to prepare. A friend laughed at me about checking the book out and told me to leave the girl alone. Pete said that he would like to go over some of the items in the book with her so that she knows what might be on the test and will feel confident.

So, Pete will spend some cozy one on one time with Kat over the next couple of weeks going through the book. He and I are in agreement that it should be done in a spirit of fun and that nothing should be taught or drilled. He's just going to show her some puzzles and see what happens from there.

"We are pleased to inform you..."

We got a letter in the mail the other day stating that Kat had passed the first part of her GATE testing. I was pleased that it was a pretty quick turn around between the testing and the letter. She took the test on Monday and we got the letter on Friday. I was not as happy that the letter didn't give us any other information. How did Kat do on the test? Just good enough? Stellar?
We found out that there are 100 children testing for 12 spots.
The second round of testing will occur when the school gets enough students together to hire an independent tester to administer an IQ test. They do it in groups to save money. After that test we will know in May what her results are and if she qualifies to go to the free-standing GATE school.

Drew hilarity!

Yesterday Drew turned 4. The boy is a little Alex P. Keaton, he loves money. He carries money around with him, he talks about money, he plays with money, the boy loves money. And as much as he loves money, he hates to wash. So, when I found this bar of money embedded soap at the Hallmark store, we snatched it up!
We gave it to him for his birthday and told him to go wash his hands with it. We told him that the more he washes the sooner he will be able to get to the money.
What does the boy do? He puts the soap in the sink and turns it on to a trickle and walks away. I went into the bathroom a few minutes later to find what he had done and called for Pete. After Pete came in and had a good laugh, Drew came running in full tilt yelling, "Don't touch that!"
He knew precisely what he was doing. Too funny!

Outnumbered.

An interesting dynamic in our household is the fact that I am the only one who is not gifted. I'm perfectly bright, I have a Master's degree...I can hold my own. Nevertheless, I am not gifted. My mind doesn't make amazing connections, I don't learn effortlessly like the rest of my family seems to, I don't process information fast.
It's odd to parent two little people and to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are smarter than you are. The first time I realized that Kat was smarter than me was when she was about 9 months old. Peter and I were sitting on the floor with her one night teaching her how to use her shape sorter. We dumped all of the blocks out on the rug and showed her the holes in the top of the box and how each shape fit in its own spot. We did a few and handed her a shape. She popped it right in so we clapped and smiled and gave her another one. She popped it in so we clapped and smiled and gave her another one. We did this 4 times until she looked me straight in the eye with a funny look on her face then pulled the top off of the box and proceeded to put the rest of the shapes in the box and the lid back on.
Our 9 month old showed us the most elegant solution to the problem at hand. If we wanted the blocks in the box, she would get them there for us.

Discovering that Drew is smarter than me has been more of a process. Drew wasn't supposed to walk or talk. Yet he was reading letters at 18 months, some words at 2 years, doing addition and subtraction at 3 years, and still surprising us daily with the things he does. He isn't as flashy as Kat, it would be easy to miss his intelligence, but it is there. He's my tortoise, slow and steady.

Peter is a genius. There is no doubt in my mind about that. There is nothing mechanical that he cannot fix, there is no problem he cannot solve. He's both hilarious and endearing when he talks about building machines that build machines.

It's interesting being the intellectual lightweight around my house. They all completely depend on me and love me deeply. I just wonder when they are going to realize that they're all smarter than me! (Peter knows this, of course, but is too kind to let on that he knows!)

GATE testing.

Kat is going to have testing to see if she qualifies for the GATE program here in town. Her test is on Monday and I am a little nervous about the whole thing. She's a bright girl but what if my motherlove means that I am not seeing her clearly? What if she decides not to bother with the test and goofs off? What if she misses the cut off by a smidge? What if she gets accepted and we have to decide where to send her to school next year? What if she goes to the GATE school and Drew doesn't? That could bring some emotional and logistical pain.
Silly worries. They aren't consuming but when I think about Monday I think about these worries. I also worry that I don't really know what to tell her about the testing. From her point of view, her current school is the bee's knees. First grade looks awesome to her. She knows the kids in her class. She can't wait to eat in the lunchroom and play on the playground. Why on earth would she want to give that up for a school she's only been to once or twice? So far I've only told her that she will go for a test, the tester will be nice, she should answer all of the questions as best she can and that the test will decide where she might go to school next year. We talked a bit about her current classroom in public school and how some kids there learn fast like her and some take more time. I told her that the GATE school is full of kids who learn fast and that she wouldn't have to spend so much time waiting between tasks. She liked the idea of that!
It's hard to know what is best right now. We have wonderful options available to us, all full of pros and cons. What to do...what to do...