Moral Development
It is a struggle in this area. J refuses to say "please", when requesting for things. Very often, I have to withhold the thing, until he says "please". This is a power-struggle that I have weighted the cost, and decided to take the battle. I am evaluating myself, whether we have been consistent ourselves in saying "please" and "thankyou". It may be reflective of how we ourselves are lacking and have not been a good example. So I am trying to be more conscious in the development of this area in ourselves.
Teaching a child, I have realised, is a mirror image. In the midst of teaching the child, I often realised that I have to teach myself first - from singing to moral development. It is a very humbling experience to realise that I still have so much to learn. I need to be back to being a child and to learn the basics of life. I guess, God in His wisdom, by making adults parents, is giving an adult like me a second chance to start learning from scratch.
It is slipping with the bedtime prayer and the Bible verse reading, as J prefers to invest the time in singing. This is an area that I have to put in more efforts. I will try to learn more songs that incorporate bible verses, lessons and prayer. One of my projects is to make a list of all Bible verses useful for children, and start memorising them myself.
Life, as a mom, is extremely busy, and at times filled with insecurities and feeling of lousiness. Why can't I do things better! Why did I make that mistake AGAIN! Why can't I be more patient! Why did I lose my cool! Oh no, I didn't manage to make dinner today!
I need to pray for wisdom, grace, strength and God's constant forgiveness to carry me through each day and try again.
Loves Singing and his Teddy-Bear
I notice a very sensitive period right now towards singing. J loves to sing, and would sing along with me. It started about a week ago, I think. He gets the tune right, but the words are still not clear. But it is getting better and better, and the leap came at 2Y3M exactly.
Unfortunately, I am not so creative, and I am always singing the same few old songs. I tell myself that it is good for children to have repetition...ha ha, but I should try to keep up and teach him new songs.
He is very attached to his teddy bear now. Every morning, when he wakes up, he would always remember to bring teddy bear down with him to sit at the dinning table and eat breakfast together. This goes for practically all meals.
He would bring teddy bear to sit on the toy potty besides him almost without fail.
He would bring teddy bear with him to his daycare and everywhere he goes. The interesting thing that the daycare teacher told us is, J has been very willing to share his teddy bear with other children. So I was glad to hear that he is so willing to share. We make sure that we bring the teddy bear along with us, when we go on vacation, otherwise, we wouldn't think what the consequences would be!
Nutrition
J has become a very picky child. What ever he used to like as a baby, he now simply refusing it most of the time - apple, banana, carrot, pumpkin, chicken, salmon, rice, meat, seeds, bread, etc. The only thing he is still willing to eat it faithfully is oatmeal, but he is eating it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, 7 days a week! I am telling myself that it is a stage that children go through, but am running out of ideas how to solve it.
There were many times, he refused to eat what was served on the table. He would kick a fuss and cry out loud, making me very exhausted, since we both just returned from a long day at work. Daddy and I am determined not to treat him like an Emperor, dishing out all different dishes hoping that he would eat one of the dishes. In fact, trying out this method never worked for us. J would point to another food, and I would bring it out, and he would turn his attention to another, and then he would still kick a fuss and refuse to eat.
We tried time-out to calm him down, and it has worked everytime. I am now ever more fully convinced that some kind of discipline action such as time-out is more effective, than trying to appease a child's growing wilfulness.
Language Development
Not so much note-worthy progress, except that there are more and more 3-word sentences in Chinese Mandarin. He loves repeating what we say right now. He can actually repeat them rather well, but I wonder how much of those sentences he understood!
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