Reading Pieces and What Fingers Are For
Yesterday was my turn to take Evil's Twin Minions of Chaos to their swimming lessons. They're solo, private lessons so we must entertain/dry-off-&-change one while the other is swimming. We use this time to do a lesson in the Teach Your Child To Read in 1,000,000 Relatively Simple Lessons book, see.
Ben likes to riff on the lessons, choosing to use them as a launching pad for other conversations, much as a comedian uses the headlines in a newspaper. As a precautionary defense tactic, I raided the YMCA vending machine for Reeses Pieces. These would be used as bait/bribery to get him from one lesson to the next without the usual lecture inspired by the previous task (Ben reads "I am mad". Daddy hears long story about why Ben was mad at Max and Max's friend was there and he wasn't letting Milo play but Milo did not get mad . . . something I don't understand. . .and Dreamfriend did this and Dreamfriend did that and. . . something else I can't decipher. . . and God gives him agency.) In the end this tactic was only moderately successful. Ben persisted in his Benhood, and simply riffed on "Reading Pieces" instead of the lessons (I had referred to them as both "Reeses Pieces" and "Reading Treats"). When the policeman pulled me over leaving the YMCA (long story, suffice to say there is big crackdown in State College, PA on the dangerous miscreants who have PA tags on the back of their cars but [dramatic music. . . . ] CA tags on the front), the policeman got a lecture from Ben about Reading Pieces.
Milo is generally much more civil during his reading lesson. That is not to say he is generally more civil than Ben -- quite the opposite -- but he does enjoy the structure of the reading lessons I think so he follows along with pleasure. After his lesson, while waiting for Ben to get done with his swimming, we played with our reflections in the swimming pool's glass walls. I moved his hands around like a puppet, showing him how to "Car Dance" (that's dancing from the waist-up only). And I took the opportunity to try and re-direct his awful habit of chewing his fingernails (which he learned from Max. Who learned it from me.) by telling him that fingers were not for chewing, they were for tickling. On the way home, upon seeing him biting his nails, I did not not ask him to stop as usual. I said "Milo. . . what are fingers for?" Cut to crazy tickle-fight in the backseat between two safety-restrained boys. It made me laugh, and for at least 5 minutes Milo didn't bite his nails.
Does anyone know where I can get that awful-tasting stuff you put on fingernails? We could all use some.
Ben likes to riff on the lessons, choosing to use them as a launching pad for other conversations, much as a comedian uses the headlines in a newspaper. As a precautionary defense tactic, I raided the YMCA vending machine for Reeses Pieces. These would be used as bait/bribery to get him from one lesson to the next without the usual lecture inspired by the previous task (Ben reads "I am mad". Daddy hears long story about why Ben was mad at Max and Max's friend was there and he wasn't letting Milo play but Milo did not get mad . . . something I don't understand. . .and Dreamfriend did this and Dreamfriend did that and. . . something else I can't decipher. . . and God gives him agency.) In the end this tactic was only moderately successful. Ben persisted in his Benhood, and simply riffed on "Reading Pieces" instead of the lessons (I had referred to them as both "Reeses Pieces" and "Reading Treats"). When the policeman pulled me over leaving the YMCA (long story, suffice to say there is big crackdown in State College, PA on the dangerous miscreants who have PA tags on the back of their cars but [dramatic music. . . . ] CA tags on the front), the policeman got a lecture from Ben about Reading Pieces.
Milo is generally much more civil during his reading lesson. That is not to say he is generally more civil than Ben -- quite the opposite -- but he does enjoy the structure of the reading lessons I think so he follows along with pleasure. After his lesson, while waiting for Ben to get done with his swimming, we played with our reflections in the swimming pool's glass walls. I moved his hands around like a puppet, showing him how to "Car Dance" (that's dancing from the waist-up only). And I took the opportunity to try and re-direct his awful habit of chewing his fingernails (which he learned from Max. Who learned it from me.) by telling him that fingers were not for chewing, they were for tickling. On the way home, upon seeing him biting his nails, I did not not ask him to stop as usual. I said "Milo. . . what are fingers for?" Cut to crazy tickle-fight in the backseat between two safety-restrained boys. It made me laugh, and for at least 5 minutes Milo didn't bite his nails.
Does anyone know where I can get that awful-tasting stuff you put on fingernails? We could all use some.
posted by Chris at
7:38 AM
1 Comments:
Maybe you could use Vegemite on the fingernails. I wouldn't even eat a tasty cracker with that stuff on it.
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