I recently read this post about not comparing your kid to others over at sleeping should be easy (yes, it should, I agree. More than that hot topic coming soon) and it really got me thinking.
You see, one of the things ‘Sleeping Mom’ mentions is that her toddler wasn’t able to remove his own shoes. So she taught him how. This was a revelation to me as Mushroom learned to remove his own shoes pretty much within days of acquiring them. Now, I never thought of this as a skill before – more of a petty annoyance. He has started to grow out of it now but for months, he would pretty much take off his shoes and socks all the time. In the supermarket, in the road. There came a point where I often just shoved the shoes in the buggy and left him barefoot until we got to where we were going or until he fell asleep. I lost count of the number of people who would stop me in the street asking ‘do you know your child has bare feet?’ as though I was some kind of idiot. Until I read Sleeping Mom’s blog, I never thought of this irritating act as a skill. So it got me to thinking – at the grand old age of 14 months, what else does Mushroom do that can make me lose patience with him, that could in fact be classed as a skill? It turned out there were a few things, so I wrote a list (I do like a good list). Here it is :
- Can remove his own shoes and socks.
- Can remove his pyjama bottoms/shorts (for this reason we mostly use sleepsuits if its cool enough.
- Can undo his nappy – if he can get to it (there’s a theme here – the boy likes to be naked!).
- Can open a bottle of cream and squeeze it everywhere. And then rub it in.
- Can use a pen/pencil/crayon to make marks on paper. And on the floor. And on the walls.
- Can open the washing machine even when it’s firmly shut. Puts all sorts of things in the drum that have to be removed before I can put a wash on.
- Can unlock my mobile can call random people (it’s a pattern lock. Must change it).
What annoying things does your child do…? Could you be persuaded to see them differently now?
