from Thursday, September 29th, 2011 1:42 pm:
This was yesterday's musing that actually led me to start the blog.
I am sitting on the floor with 18 month old G. He is playing. I am watching. He has a very cool wooden NYC Cab that's about a foot long. Painted, simple. 4 rubber wheels. He's had it since the entire time I've worked with this amazing family, so at least 9 months (pretty sure it has been around much longer). But I digress (get used to it!). The point is, for the entire time that I have been with G, one or more wheels of The Cab is likely to be off when I arrive or come off (at least twice) while I am there.
Fear not, we are not heading to some "when the wheels come off" metaphor. Nope. But I have been pondering, "could we glue these wheels on?" for at least the last 6 months. Not in a, "really folks, can't we just glue them?" but more in a "what's the design of this? if we glue that, will they still roll?" sort of way. I never have these thoughts when The Cab is not in use so I have never actually investigated this.
A couple of weeks ago G was frustrated that the cab was rocky. I told him that it was probably because one of the wheels was missing and I observed out loud where the wheel was. I suggested to G that if he brought it to me, I'd put it back on. This was a new step for us/him. That kind of detached "do something now, get results in the future" thinking. But he got it, and we fixed it, and he was excited, and I was excited because I hadn't seen that kind of mental processing displayed by him before. And I love my job and I love seeing how children learn and grow.
Earlier this week I arrive and 2 wheels were off. I expected to repeat what we had done a few weeks ago, but I wasn't going to say anything until G indicated to me that he cared and that he wanted me to intervene. G picked up a wheel and then started to tap it (tire side in) against The Cab. Some children get quickly frustrated and would have thrown the wheel. But what I have seen in my years working with children is that the children who don't have things done for them, who are given opportunities to problem solve for themselves, have incredible problem solving skills and don't give up that easily. Sure enough, G flipped the wheel around and after a few taps, he fit the small part of the wheel into the body of The Cab. That was a pretty magical moment for me. I have been traveling for a few weeks and hadn't spent any time with G since the end of August. His problem solving skills have exploded in recent weeks. I've spent accumulative hours this week watching him, marveling at his patience and calmness as he figures out how things fit together, how he wants to accomplish things, what's the easiest path to crawl through a maze of chairs under the table to get to a ball on the other side--nope, the answer is not to walk around! :)
To circle back, I was amazed at this wheel-into-cab moment I had just seen, and then G instantly did it with the other wheel. He looked up at me, wide-eyed, and made a magical "oooh!" shape with his lips and a little noise to go with. It's impossible to capture in writing. His eyes sparkle too. Take my word for it, it's special.
Which brings us to yesterday. I arrive. G wakes up. We come downstairs, eat lunch and start playing. Shocker--the wheels are off The Cab. Did I get to witness another magical problem solving moment? (For those unfamiliar with kids, things like this are done again and again, until mastered, which makes sense, but it's a little different from most things we do as adults--when we figure out how to fix things, we usually leave it in place. Kids will often undo what they just did so they can do it again and again, until they own the process. Love this.) So no, I didn't see this problem solving process begin again. On this day, G sticks the wheel onto a chopstick. And now it's a stick with a wheel on top. It's a whole new object to play with, explore and shake at me.
This is the moment when I thought, wow. If I had determined, months ago, that these wheels could be glued onto The Cab without compromising it's rolling potential, none of this would have happened. I mentally replayed basically the last couple of paragraphs and realized that those moments wouldn't have existed. I'm by no means claiming that G would be handicapped on the SATs because he'd never had this opportunity to problem solve or creatively combine objects--he has lots of those opportunities. I'm not saying that this would have stunted his intellectual growth for good. But it was just an odd moment when I realized that a seemingly innocuous action on my part (gluing wheels to avoid pulling them out from under the couch along with cat hair when G wanted to have an operational taxi) would have changed things. And it was never really a problem that the cab sometimes didn't have all the wheels (I think there were 2 months this spring that we were down one). Rocking The Cab was fun. Figuring out why it rocked and how that could be fixed last month was a neat discovery for G.
So will I leave everything broken from now on? No. Sometimes it's too broken, too irritating, and there are things in our world that only exist to preform specific functions. Thankfully, in the world that G lives in, the objects he plays with don't have to fulfill specific functions. (Yesterday, I gave him 2 plastic tumblers, one filled with Medela bottle caps because he'd show an interest in pouring a couple of objects the other day. But this was 8 things in bigger cups. He loved it. And no, I didn't demonstrate how this could be used, I just sat them on the floor and he found them when he was ready and explored them as he pleased.)
I promised that there wouldn't be a metaphor in this, and there isn't, but I have taken a life lesson from this. Some things are better off broken. Or not broken but just not fixed. And we never know what world of opportunities will come from a cab with wheels that don't stay on or from life's plans that fall apart. (To be fair/honest, the higher meaning of this just occurred to me.)
Topic for another post--I am with this incredible family because I didn't get what I thought was my dream job. I started nannying for another family 2 years ago because I was frustrated in a job...a job which I took after I didn't get into my dream school. I would have missed out on incredible moments, life long friends (people I consider my family), and the best year of my life. So from now on, I will work harder at pausing and wondering, does this really need to be fixed? Is this actually broken?
I am sitting on the floor with 18 month old G. He is playing. I am watching. He has a very cool wooden NYC Cab that's about a foot long. Painted, simple. 4 rubber wheels. He's had it since the entire time I've worked with this amazing family, so at least 9 months (pretty sure it has been around much longer). But I digress (get used to it!). The point is, for the entire time that I have been with G, one or more wheels of The Cab is likely to be off when I arrive or come off (at least twice) while I am there.
Fear not, we are not heading to some "when the wheels come off" metaphor. Nope. But I have been pondering, "could we glue these wheels on?" for at least the last 6 months. Not in a, "really folks, can't we just glue them?" but more in a "what's the design of this? if we glue that, will they still roll?" sort of way. I never have these thoughts when The Cab is not in use so I have never actually investigated this.
A couple of weeks ago G was frustrated that the cab was rocky. I told him that it was probably because one of the wheels was missing and I observed out loud where the wheel was. I suggested to G that if he brought it to me, I'd put it back on. This was a new step for us/him. That kind of detached "do something now, get results in the future" thinking. But he got it, and we fixed it, and he was excited, and I was excited because I hadn't seen that kind of mental processing displayed by him before. And I love my job and I love seeing how children learn and grow.
Earlier this week I arrive and 2 wheels were off. I expected to repeat what we had done a few weeks ago, but I wasn't going to say anything until G indicated to me that he cared and that he wanted me to intervene. G picked up a wheel and then started to tap it (tire side in) against The Cab. Some children get quickly frustrated and would have thrown the wheel. But what I have seen in my years working with children is that the children who don't have things done for them, who are given opportunities to problem solve for themselves, have incredible problem solving skills and don't give up that easily. Sure enough, G flipped the wheel around and after a few taps, he fit the small part of the wheel into the body of The Cab. That was a pretty magical moment for me. I have been traveling for a few weeks and hadn't spent any time with G since the end of August. His problem solving skills have exploded in recent weeks. I've spent accumulative hours this week watching him, marveling at his patience and calmness as he figures out how things fit together, how he wants to accomplish things, what's the easiest path to crawl through a maze of chairs under the table to get to a ball on the other side--nope, the answer is not to walk around! :)
To circle back, I was amazed at this wheel-into-cab moment I had just seen, and then G instantly did it with the other wheel. He looked up at me, wide-eyed, and made a magical "oooh!" shape with his lips and a little noise to go with. It's impossible to capture in writing. His eyes sparkle too. Take my word for it, it's special.
Which brings us to yesterday. I arrive. G wakes up. We come downstairs, eat lunch and start playing. Shocker--the wheels are off The Cab. Did I get to witness another magical problem solving moment? (For those unfamiliar with kids, things like this are done again and again, until mastered, which makes sense, but it's a little different from most things we do as adults--when we figure out how to fix things, we usually leave it in place. Kids will often undo what they just did so they can do it again and again, until they own the process. Love this.) So no, I didn't see this problem solving process begin again. On this day, G sticks the wheel onto a chopstick. And now it's a stick with a wheel on top. It's a whole new object to play with, explore and shake at me.
This is the moment when I thought, wow. If I had determined, months ago, that these wheels could be glued onto The Cab without compromising it's rolling potential, none of this would have happened. I mentally replayed basically the last couple of paragraphs and realized that those moments wouldn't have existed. I'm by no means claiming that G would be handicapped on the SATs because he'd never had this opportunity to problem solve or creatively combine objects--he has lots of those opportunities. I'm not saying that this would have stunted his intellectual growth for good. But it was just an odd moment when I realized that a seemingly innocuous action on my part (gluing wheels to avoid pulling them out from under the couch along with cat hair when G wanted to have an operational taxi) would have changed things. And it was never really a problem that the cab sometimes didn't have all the wheels (I think there were 2 months this spring that we were down one). Rocking The Cab was fun. Figuring out why it rocked and how that could be fixed last month was a neat discovery for G.
So will I leave everything broken from now on? No. Sometimes it's too broken, too irritating, and there are things in our world that only exist to preform specific functions. Thankfully, in the world that G lives in, the objects he plays with don't have to fulfill specific functions. (Yesterday, I gave him 2 plastic tumblers, one filled with Medela bottle caps because he'd show an interest in pouring a couple of objects the other day. But this was 8 things in bigger cups. He loved it. And no, I didn't demonstrate how this could be used, I just sat them on the floor and he found them when he was ready and explored them as he pleased.)
I promised that there wouldn't be a metaphor in this, and there isn't, but I have taken a life lesson from this. Some things are better off broken. Or not broken but just not fixed. And we never know what world of opportunities will come from a cab with wheels that don't stay on or from life's plans that fall apart. (To be fair/honest, the higher meaning of this just occurred to me.)
Topic for another post--I am with this incredible family because I didn't get what I thought was my dream job. I started nannying for another family 2 years ago because I was frustrated in a job...a job which I took after I didn't get into my dream school. I would have missed out on incredible moments, life long friends (people I consider my family), and the best year of my life. So from now on, I will work harder at pausing and wondering, does this really need to be fixed? Is this actually broken?
