Point taken, y’all. I buy a new lego set a couple times a year because I like it and I wanted to expand our options (ie. I needed more green and leaves and stuff). His grandma buys him stuff thats supposed to stay at her house and tends to drift over despite my protests. I am the one who tidies it up. He has no problem at all using it in freeform lego building but hes 5, he doesnt know the discarded pieces need to be sorted into the mildly elaborate system his dad has created.
I just want my office desk back and hate being the only one to ever sort the used pieces so they can be found again. Also he avoids the outside because it means putting sunscreen on
Nope. Rooms are for sleeping only, and the kids share their room. Also, i dont want to reinforce the idea he sometimes has about it being “his” lego. Its not, its a family toy. We have a lot, thanks to Ponder’s childhood lego collection. I grew up mostly without lego (expensive, many children smaller than me) and would have loved it so I dont want to keep it too far from Pumpkin either.
My standards for “minimalism” is always- only keep out what I’m willing to clean up and won’t drive me insane. If it’s too much for me to maintain and have around happily, then it’s too much.
You organize your legos? When I was a kid, our organization system for legos was simply: Put in designated lego box when not in use. We’d dump out the box when it was time to build and put them back in the box when building time was over.
Just my two cents, but I think that you should decide whether the mildly elaborate system is providing enough value to justify the effort to maintain it.
Edited to Add: At some point we started dumping out the box onto a bedsheet that was spread out on the floor first. That made cleanup much easier, as I recall.
Kindergarten is much more intense now than it was when I went. And a lot of people are keeping kids home an extra year even if their birthday is in the summer well before the cut off date. If you start an October baby at age 4 there will be kids in the class born more than a year before them.
Yeah, and that is if you are allowed to start an Oct baby at age 4 if the cutoff is in Sept. At our school district it is a hard cutoff on Oct 1 and there are no exceptions. I know this because B’s birthday is Oct 2 and I have already asked and they are firm about it. She will start kindergarten right before she turns 6.
Sounds like a job for dad who created the system ;). Or I agree with @benson, perhaps organization is not necessary? I think I started organizing our shared Legos myself around age 8 or 9. Before that my parents definitely couldn’t be arsed.
@noitsbecky Thanks for saying that about Meowlet! Actually, we had a kind of sad meeting today with his teachers. They’re flagging that he’s behind significantly on emotional and social development and presents as a very young 3 year old rather than a 4 year old.
Things they say they’re seeing:
He doesn’t have a lot of empathy. Like he thinks its funny when people get hurt, even when they tell others that they are in pain. (Woops maybe raising a sociopath? Gotta get on that… )
He scratches, for example, when he can’t get his way, or escalates quickly to LOUDNESS instead of troubleshooting.
He’s kind of a dreamy, dazed sort of kid and wanders around for like a full 30 minutes instead of listening to instructions to get his shoes off/indoor shoes on, bags and stuff put away. It feels like he’s not hearing his teachers, which is very common for us, too. BUt he KNOWS how to do these things? He can take off his gear, serve himself food, prepare food, do all his self grooming (hair, teeth, body washing in tub). He just is sorta all over the place and gets distracted easily.
He’s still having toileting issues, mostly poop stuff. That’s not so big a concern for me because I’ve seen him play independently and then of his own volition stop to take a massive shit and dump it into the toilet on his own. He just fucking does what he wants, idk.
I don’t want to like, not address these issues even tough I feel like he’s probably going to be okay. I want to give him the most support I can. It definitely causes some tension between my husband and I because my husband has thought something was wrong with him since he was super little (took a while to walk and talk), and thinks he may have a learning disability or something. I take great annoyance and offense because I think his expectations of a four year old are rather unrealistic at times, but what do either of us know?
We’re raising it to the pediatrician, but if you have any thoughts on ways we could be supportive to Meowlet in the meantime or words of encouragement I’d appreciate it.
ETA - I will say that he is increasingly showing A LOT of interest in making friends. He loves the downstairs neighbors kid and he talks about his classmates a lot now!
Oof, parenting is relentless! I think the most important thing is that he knows that your love is unconditional, that you know he’s a good kid, and that you’ll be there with him for hard stuff. Pretty sure you’ve already got that well in hand!!
I like to frame things as “some things are easy, and some things are hard”. It’s going to be different for everyone which things are easy/hard.
Example:
Me: Its easy for me to stay calm and use a quiet voice when I’m mad, but it’s hard for me to tell other people when I’m sad. It’s easy for me to remember to clean up when I’m done using my things, but it’s hard for me to stay focused on getting ready in the morning.
You: It’s easy for you to remember all the planets, but it’s hard for you to remember to listen to people. It’s easy for you to tell stories to your friends, but it’s hard for you to take care of your friend if they get hurt.
We all have to put extra effort into the things that are hard. But you’re strong and amazing and will get better at the hard things. We’ll work together on them.
“Oh oww! I hurt my toe. Please bring me something to help make me feel better?” And make sillier and sillier suggestions for ways he could help cheer you up and make you feel better?
Warning, a side effect of this sort of role playing is that Latte compulsively tries to give other children flowers or leaves if they’re crying it’s adorable but she’ll straight up chase stranger kids down the street to give them a flower.
We do SO many books, so maybe the role play will be better. We tell SO MANY stories you would think we have that in the bag, but his stories center a lot on being a cop and arresting people, woops.
Also but do you know what I DON’T wanna do at 6PM after work and dinner? but i ofc if duty calls i will rise to the occasion n stuff
That IS adorable! I just feel like he’s good at knowing how to be kind? Like when the neighbors kid was crying and he said that he needed to give her love so she could feel better?
Oh is he a control and power kid? Like, dictating other people’s actions gives him a high? Those kids often do best with role playing other people. So like, husband stubs his toe, you ask meowlette “oh no! I want to help him feel better, what do I do?!” And he gets to boss you around and BAM delighted power child.
Also there’s a reason you can’t diagnose sociopathy until kids are full grown we just call that “children” lol. (Well, we call it oppositional defiance disorder generally, but YKWIM. Lots of red flags in adults are totally normal in kids esp young ones)
And it sounds like there’s no indication he WONT develop these skills, he’s just developing these specific ones a bit slower than average.
)
it’s adorable but she’ll straight up chase stranger kids down the street to give them a flower.
but i ofc if duty calls i will rise to the occasion n stuff