Date Night

I love my girls!  I love them more than I can describe.  But sometimes you have to have a break!  This weekend some friends of ours took the girls for an overnight stay at their house.  (I love our friends!)  My wife had gone to get her hair cut and wanted to do a date night.  The girls were super excited about getting to have a sleep over.  They both had to take their own suitcase, because sharing one just wasn't an option.

After they left we got ready and went and had wine and hors d'oeuvres at an upscale shopping area.  Then we went and had sushi.  We both love sushi, but since getting the girls we don't get to have it very often for obvious reasons.  It was so nice to just have a quiet, leisurely dinner.  It was nice to actually be able to have a conversation without having to tell the kids to keep their food on the table, or get your fork out of your hair.  After dinner we went home and watched a movie.  Guess what?  It wasn't a Disney movie!  We slept in.  I don't mean we got up at 7:30 instead of the usual 6:00.  We slept until 9:45!  We probably would have slept even later if the bird hadn't decided it was time to wake up.  We had a nice breakfast and Starbucks.  We had time to get ready for our religious services.  The house was quiet.  It was really nice... and then we started to miss the girls.

We met up with them at our religious services.  They were very excited to see us, but I think we were more excited to see them.  We got and gave, big hugs and kisses.  Then we started chasing them around to make sure they were behaving.  Things were back to normal.

To me all of this shows the importance "date nights."  You need that break every once in a while.  You need that quiet time as a couple to recharge your batteries.  To enjoy some adult conversation.  To enjoy just being together.  To be able to focus on each other for a little while.  But also to remind you why you love having kids in the first place!

Why? Why? Why?

If you have kids you have heard that question more times than you can count.  If you have one in the 2-6 year old range you hear it constantly!  Our oldest who is 4 and a half is the Queen of Why!  It can get very irritating for me, especially when she asks "why" about the same thing multiple times in a row.  My wife is much better about it.  I am trying to improve.  Let me layout a story for you which shows why it is better to keep answering those "whys" instead of shutting them down:

First let me give you some background.  We took the girls to see Tangled for the second time on Sunday afternoon.  In the movie, Rapunzel's hair is long and blonde and magic.  If it gets cut, it turns brown and is no longer magic.  At the end of the movie the hero cuts her hair off to keep the evil old lady from being able to use it.  She then ages so quickly she disappears as she falls from the tower. (Sorry if I spoiled the movie for you.)

Fast forward to the drive home.  I wish I had a recording of the conversation so I could get it just right, but I will do my best from memory.  The oldest starts out asking "why" did he cut her hair?  My wife explains it to her.  "Why" did the old lady die when he cut it?  "Why" did she turn to dust?  "Why" did he cut her hair? "Why" did it lose it's magic?  "Why" did the old lady die?  "Why" did her hair turn brown?  "Why" did he cut it?  "Why did it lose it's magic?  "Why" did her hair turn brown?

At this point I am getting annoyed.  She keeps asking the same questions and my wife keeps explaining it to her.  But my wife caught on to something I missed.  She kept asking questions, but more and more it kept coming back to her hair losing it's magic and turning brown from blonde.  Her hair is brown.  My wife and the youngest girl have blonde hair.  See where this is going?  She was concerned that her hair wasn't as good as theirs.  She didn't want to ask that straight out, so she kept asking about the movie.  My wife picked up on this much sooner than I did.  She kept calmly answering the "whys" and started stressing more and more that the movie was pretend and had nothing to do with real life.  She finally told her that in real life it didn't matter what color your hair is.  There is no such thing as magic hair and every color of hair is just as good as any other.  Finally the 4 year old was satisfied and stopped asking "why".

So the point of this post is to encourage all parents out there, myself especially, to not get irritated with the "whys".  Keep answering their questions, even if it is the same one over and over.  It may be leading somewhere that touches on who they are and how they feel about themselves.  If we shut them down before they get there we could miss an opportunity to build them up as a person.  Or even worse, we could reinforce a negative self perception.

Little Sponges

So I just returned from taking a week long intensive class in teaching English as a second language, or TESOL.  I took the class as a means to an end.  After taking the course I am eligible to do a distance learning course to get a degree in education.  I want to get the degree as a safety net in case the work situation takes a nose dive.  But after taking the class I am so happy I went for another reason.  I learned that we are far underestimating the ability of our kids!  And I don't mean just my wife and I.  I mean society in general.

The class showed a video by The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential.  In it they showed how amazingly capable a child's brain is of learning new information and concepts at an incredible rate of speed.  It mentioned how all kids are born geniuses and we de-genius them by not challenging them, especially in their early years.  If you have children, especially under 6, I highly recommend checking them out.  They use flash cards at a very fast rate of speed to teach kids "bits of knowledge".  It is really amazing how fast our little sponges can learn things and retain them.  Needless to say we will be challenging our girls much more now that we are informed.

We also learned some methods for making learning fun.  We learned how to use physical activities to get the brain to register information more quickly and accurately.  We learned methods to take better notes ourselves and how to get more out of meetings, talks or presentations we go to.  For more info on that, Google Brain Mapping.  We learned that learning a new language isn't as hard as it may seem.  In fact, you really only need to learn around 800 words in any given language to be basically fluent for everyday conversations.  And only 100 words to be 50% proficient.  That little bit of knowledge makes learning a new language much less daunting.

Most of the methods that were taught make learning fun and interesting.  It makes you do things like sing, dance, act, juggle, role play, and exercise all while learning.  If our schools taught kids using these methods, kids would look forward to school instead of dreading it.  We would have much smarter people graduating from school more prepared to face the world.  Now if I only were rich enough to send my girls to a private school that does use these methods.  Of better yet, had the time and ability to teach them myself.  Regardless, we will be including these activities in our family time from now on.

So look out!  I am going to let my girls stay the geniuses that they came to me as.  Too bad it is too late for me!