Tag: #Kids

  • First Time at the Dentist

    Yesterday was the kid’s first experience with going to see a dentist. I know for some people going to the dentist is not an enjoyable experience, and looking at the websites for pediatric dentists, almost all of them have a page dedicated to calming your child’s fears of going to the dentist for the first time.

    My kid saw Little Shop of Horrors, so she didn’t have the healthiest appreciation of the dental profession.

    But I was committed to making sure that the kid would have no issues with going to see the dentist for the first time. I found lots of videos online about kids going to the dentist where they explained the tools, and the procedures. We watched them together, and she very quickly associated that dentists are just like any other doctor, as they are there to help and make you feel better.

    And the pediatric dental office we went to was great! This is what they do, but they were really great at making the kid feel special, and explaining everything to her, so she wasn’t afraid. I could even feel my anxiety rise as the cleaning started, and the kid let the assistant start touching her teeth, but she was fine. It was all fine, and the kid even said that she found the dentist fun!

    I told her how proud I was of her. Then we got home to tell mom all about the dentist, and I added how proud I was of the kid. After dinner, I reminded the kid of how brave she was at the dentist, and that made me proud. As we brushed our teeth before bed, I reminded her how proud I was how she handled the dentist. And then when I tucked her in, she told me to stop telling her how proud I was of her.

    I was laying it on rather thick.

    And I had committed the sin of trying to over parent my child to compensate for my perceived failings in my life. I was a nervous, anxiety riddled child. I worried so much about things, that I often made myself sick to my stomach to where I couldn’t get out of bed. I wish I wasn’t the worry-wart little kid, as it created self-doubt and fear in me, and I have had to work hard as an adult to overcome it. I just wanted to make sure the kid isn’t afraid of things like I was.

    This might be one of those life lessons where as I parent I need to set the example, rather than over praise.

  • Landlords

    I got an email yesterday afternoon from my landlord’s property office, informing us that they are going to install a buzzer system in our building, and that we need to be available Saturday morning for the installation. and when I read this email, my first reaction was that this was a lie, as they want to enter our apartment, and try to evict us.

    Yes, I am aware of how much that was a completely irrational response to that email.

    My second reaction was to respond to the email, thanking them for the buzzer, and confirming that we would be home on Saturday.

    But in my defense, we are like the last building in Manhattan that doesn’t have a buzzer, and we have been complaining about it for years.

    I don’t know what it is, but there is something about New York, where you can’t trust your landlord or super. Next to the Mayor, those are the most hated jobs in NYC. In the fifteen years I have lived here, I only know one person who had a positive experience with a landlord. For everyone else, it’s just pure hatred.

    In the end, I try to be fair, balanced in my interactions with our landlord; we have to work together as long as we live here.

  • SLEDDING!!!

    We went sledding yesterday. Me and the kid, that is. The wife and I bought a two-person sled on Sunday, when we saw that we were gun’na get a real heavy snow storm for the next 48 hours. Yesterday, Tuesday, the snow let up so we were able to make it to the local park which had a nice gentle hill kids could sled down.

    The kid was beside herself, bubbling over in excitement with the opportunity to experience sledding. She was full of courage marching up the hill, as I followed behind her with the sled. When she got to the top, her determination did not waver, but she wanted to make sure that I would go down with her. She rode in front as I pushed us off very slowly, and then used my feet as brakes to make sure we didn’t go too fast for her. Her response at the end of the ride was, “I want to do it again. This time by myself.”

    And she was off.

    Though she did grab me a few times to ride down with her, she pretty much was off on her own adventure of sledding the hill, trying to go faster and faster, and dodging people and trees. The squeals of joy, and that deep belly laugh of nervous energy of having survived the fastest sledding, only to see if she could go even faster, pretending that she was flying in her spaceship.

    It did feel like the world was “normal” for an hour. Just some kids having fun in the snow.

  • It’s Another Snow Day!

    And it’s the fat fluffy flakes that are falling.

    The kid is beside herself, but we do have school today, and that has put a damper on her.

    But!

    We bought a sled yesterday in anticipation of the weather, and hopefully, we will get to use it tomorrow.

    Now, we did get to go out in the snow this morning. See, I learned the lesson from the last major snow storm that hit NYC; Buy a Snow Shovel! And we even got one of those snow brushes/scrapers for the car. So, as the snow was piling up, I knew that I needed to head over to the car, and start the process of cleaning it off, and getting the windshield wipers up, so they don’t freeze to the car. If I was going out into the snow, the kid had to go with me.

    And she was cute as could be. When we stepped out in to the storm, I would have to say that it was almost blizzard like, she giggled with excitement with being pelted in the face with snow. There was a stiff wind, and heavy snow, but we made it over to the car. The whole walk over there, the kid kept reaching down to make snowballs, or to walk in the drifts. Snow is just too tempting for the kid, and I don’t blame her, but she wanted to go sledding. The storm was just too bad., so I had to tell her not today. She wasn’t happy with that decision.

    We made it to the car, and I let her use the snow brush to knock the snow off. She had fun drawing pictures on the snow dusted windows, before she brushed them off. We made the best of the situation we had, before it got too cold for us and we headed back.

  • Learning to Read and Write

    I am not a fan of remote schooling, but I don’t know anyone who is. It is something that we are all putting up with. I have said this before, and that is that the remote teacher my daughter has is great. She is patient, and calm and very nurturing to all the kids. My daughter looks forward to seeing her teacher, and draws pictures for her. For this crappy situation, I feel very fortunate that she is our teacher.

    I am also aware of the short coming of remote learning. Mainly, it is difficult to consistently reinforce lessons in these spurts of learning. Even with parental support, which I know all of us parents do for the class, it is not reaping the same results as compared to the kids being in a classroom together.

    But there is one very wonderful thing that I do get to take part in; I get to help my kid learn to read and write. (The kid is an ace with math, which she totally gets from her mother.) I have made flashcards to go over sight words with her, and its fun watching her begin to recognize those sight words in the real world.

    “Hey, Dad! I can read that!” is a new fun phrase she likes to share with me. She is just beginning to unlock the world around her, and that feeling of the discovery beams off of her.

    And at the end of the day, the kid will sit in my lap and read one of her books to me. Slowly, sounding out words, connecting the thoughts in the words, and watching her confidence grow as the words are no longer a difficulty to her.

    With reading the books, she is now wanting to write her own books. We have bought her several notebooks to draw in, but now she wants to put words with her drawings. She labors over her desk, drawing images, and scenes for her stories. Then she starts the process of finding the right words to describe her pictures.

    It is pretty special that I get to play a part in my kid learning the basic building blocks of her education.