Guerilla Learning

Louis and Joss have been watching a lot of a little cartoon called Octonauts. For those of you who don't know, it's about some animals that live underwater in an "Octopod" and go around saving other marine life (most of the time). It's a fairly benign cartoon. No-one is bopping anyone on the head, or calling anyone names.

I was busy business-scheming yesterday so they were watching some Octonauts and all of a sudden Jossie came through to me with a roll of toilet paper and started imitating the little penguin that is the medic on the show. She wanted to bandage me up (which, coming from her mouth, sounded more like "sandwich me up"). Oh, how lovely it was to sit there and let her wrap metres of toilet paper around my arm, and have her ask, full of concern, "It feel better, Mama?"

And then, last night we were at a friend's house for pizza and play (and wine) (and liver cleansing tea) and Louis picked up all of the marine-animal toys and started naming them, "Look Mama! A Hammerhead! A Lemon Shark! A Lobster!" Such JOY in him while he made all these connections!!

I, for some reason, have a lot of faith in their ability to learn all that they need to learn in an academic sense. My concerns rest mainly in the area of supporting them to have a healthy innate sense of Who They Are. I really think that's my parenting challenge (as in, My Challenge, not theirs).

A while ago I was watching Louis play with a friend of his in the back yard, and I thought to myself, if there was a natural disaster I actually have a lot of faith in Louis that he would be capable, as long as adults trusted him to do it. THEN the next thought was, that goes for Me TOO! I need to trust him to BE who he needs to be.

Most of the challenges I face with this are around television. I have a cyclical love/hate relationship with the contraption. BUT, when I give myself over to his innate knowledge, when I trust him, when I let it go, amazing things happen.

While we were on holiday, Ron had reached the limit of *his* tolerance of Louis' television watching. And we asked Louis to come down and talk about it. He didn't want to. So I sat with Ron downstairs and brainstormed the Why's and How's of what Ron wanted to see. Louis had crept down the stairs and was listening outside the door. At some point he said, "Papa, you said you only want me to watch an hour? and then go and do something else for an hour?" "Yes" "I can do that!" It was interesting to me that out of the whole conversation Ron and I had had, Louis had focused on that small aspect of it.

So, we came to that tentative agreement and Ron set up something on the Apple TV that after an hour it prompts you to either turn it off or continue.

The other day, I announced that we needed to go to the library, and Louis said, "But it hasn't been an HOUR!!!" and I said, "Are you kidding? It's been about THREE hours!!" and he looked at me perplexed and said, "But the message didn't come up." And I explained that he had to not use the remote for an hour for that message to come up. So he gave me the remote and said, "when the message comes up, we can go, ok Mama?"

Wow, look at that! Using a tool to self-regulate! I think he knows that he's missing out on Other Stuff because he's watching TV and seems unable to break the connection. So he's found a tool to use to break it! I'm so impressed!! He's six!

We had a little friend come over on Tuesday who introduced Louis to Jake and the Neverland Pirates. There's a bit more name-calling and bopping on heads in that one, so I have to work harder to embrace it. There'll be *something* in there that Louis is drawn to though, so I'm waiting to see what that is. Waiting and Trusting.