Friday, February 03, 2017

Parenting Month 75: A is for Attitude

Our two year old is speaking more and more. As foreshadowed by many events, she talks, pretty much non-stop.  And if she was able to proclaim her will when she was 18 months and not actually knowing words, she show guile now that she actually has english and chinese vocabulary.  While big brother is getting pretty good to, it is even money on whether he is learning from his classmates, or if he is learning guile from his little sister.

On the other side of the equation, we are seeing that there is tradeoff.  While little sister clearly is well beyond what big brother was like verbally and socially, we remember how generally agreeable and happy he was in simple ways. And especially the fact that big brother could concentrate on something for extended periods of time.  And the effect is that while there are things that little sister does that big brother did not at the same age, there were many opportunities we could provide big brother at that age because he was so well controlled and he could focus and be satisfied with one thing for extended periods of time.  If you asked us who is smarter, we both would say little sister, but big brother could maintain his attention and stick to things longer that she can now.  And that is starting to show the difference.

T has been learning how to lie. And we suspect he is picking this up at school, because when he does, he has this habit of looking to see if it was successful. So whenever we notice that pause, we start to think about what has he just said. At this point, it is experimentation.  He is also still very bad at hiding things. One little habit he has is when he makes a mess on something. He will come along and ask for things that happen to be cleaning supplies, and inform us that there is no need for us to go look at ___.  At this point, while we immediately go look, we are being good at merely helping him clean up after himself. And hoping he does not get better at hiding.

Last, we have a couple more events. His first college basketball game:


Pitt women's basketball friends and family day
Getting a tiger named T, because then if there is trouble, he can say that T did it without lying.

Pitt women's basketball friends and family day
Presenting the colors for the national anthem



Pitt women's basketball friends and family day
Pitt colors at the Pitt game

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