The other day our 5-year-old, Otis, and I were discussing the age-old topic of butterflies and moths. What makes them different?
“Butterflies are smaller than moths,” Otis opined with a definitiveness that made me wonder if he was right. “And butterflies are colorful. Moths aren’t.”
I told him I wasn’t sure about the size thing, but he was right about the colors. “Moths are usually brown, maybe tan,” I said.
He looked at me skeptically. “More like burnt sienna,” he said. I had to look it up, and thought again that he might be off factually (burnt sienna looks a bit orange to me), but he gets points for vocabulary and creativity.
Our two older kids, including Rosey, who is 4, love coloring. So I figure Otis may have learned the color from a crayon. Or maybe it’s the “Pantone Colors” board book we have on the kids’ bookshelf, while my wife is sure it’s from the popular “The Day the Crayons Ran Away” series of books.
Speaking of coloring, Otis is engrossed in his current coloring project: flags. The kid loves geography and has a variety of books on countries and states. I can still better him in state capitals, but he rules in identifying states by shape. He knows them all and where they go on the map. I mean, who can tell Mississippi from Alabama, anyway? Let alone Ohio from Iowa.
For flags, he’s focused on countries. I believe he’s approaching it by the ease of drawing them, so there are mainly flags with two or three stripes. Though I’m not quite sure why his first one was Trinidad and Tobago, the subsequent few (Madagascar, Poland, Japan and Sweden) make sense.
So yeah, we are raising a kid who likes to know stuff. As I wrote recently, he’s just nerdy enough to get teased. Luckily for Otis and his siblings, we live in Irvine, where knowledge is cool and the schools are full of popular nerds.
As for Rosey, she is not as far along with ABCs, reading and other academic basics as her older brother was at her age. Which is fine, right? Everyone moves at his or her own pace.
OK, so I’m mildly concerned, and I blame TV. Not the watching of it, but the choice of what we watch. Our eldest often drives the choices, so we skip shows that I firmly believe helped his development (despite the “no screens” orthodoxy) when he was Rosey’s age, such as “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Super Why!” and a few others.
There’s also a bit of middle-child syndrome at play. It’s not a conscious choice, but if I’m honest I’ll admit that Rosey doesn’t get as much focused learning-related play participation from her parents, or at least from me. Part of that is a function of hours in the day, but part of it is the fact that as the oldest, what Otis is learning is always new to us, so I find it more interesting. And I’m willing to fess up, sadly, to the possibility of old-fashioned sexism being in the mix, too.
Her mother is better than I am at focusing on Rosey’s unique interests and ways of learning. I’m more of a tried-and-true guy, so I’m digging out old toys like alphabet blocks that Otis used to enjoy, and introducing Rosey to them.
But I also am aware of studies that argue against too much parental hovering. A study just making the news as I write this concludes that “Children with ‘intrusive’ parents who push too hard for good grades may be more prone to become highly self-critical, anxious and depressed.” I’d only had a few minutes to worry about that report when I read another: “Babies who learn to stand up relatively early may do better with attention, memory and learning by the time they are preschoolers.”
On average, the babies in the study learned to crawl and stand with assistance at around 9 months of age; they were able to stand on their own at 11 months and walk on their own at 13 months. Our third child, Mabel, just turned 1. She can stand while holding on to something, but not on her own. And she’s barely taken her first step, with that 13-month milestone just around the corner!
Sorry, Rosey. Your middle-child reading will have to wait. And Otis, you’re on your own (plus, you’ll be in kindergarten soon). We need to do more with Mabel so that she’s walking by the end of this month. Her very future is at stake!
