Don't Shush Me
We have a lot of people working with the kids. We have Abbie’s speech therapist, the public school extension workers, the NICU follow-up coordinator for the boys, and some woman who the NICU follow-up coordinator thought would be helpful but doesn’t seem to do anything besides bring toys for the kids to play with.* The advantages to this setup is we have many eyes to watch the kids for any developmental delays, and many hands to help keep the kids in line. The disadvantage is that we have many strangers’ ears to hear the bad things the kids say.
Yesterday was public school extension workers day for the boys. Two workers highly trained in the realm of child development come to our home to watch the boys play with blocks. Their main focus is on speech, ensuring that the boys continue developing their language skills and avoid the delay Abbie showed at that age. They work with the boys individually, splitting into separate rooms so as not to bother each other every time someone cheers wildly because a boy said “please.”
I like to watch my children when they work with these specialists. I can answer the workers’ questions, interpret my children’s speech, and hopefully catch the kids’ arms when they rear back to hit out of frustration.** Since the boys were in separate rooms yesterday, I couldn’t watch both of them. I bounced between them a little before settling mostly on Ian since his speech is a little behind Tory and I could use the feedback on how he’s doing. Plus, Ian’s worker had cooler toys.
At the end of the session, Tory’s worker brought him into the room and gave me a progress report. His speech is improving, he used several words, and he often tried to imitate sounds. Those are all encouraging signs. He also said something that sounded like “shush up.”
That was a new one. I know that you shouldn’t use any words around children that you don’t want them to use. Our children also know they shouldn’t climb on furniture, and that doesn’t happen either. I mentally ran through all of the negative words we use around the kids. I call them twerps when they’re being twerps. The occasional dammit slips through the filter. We sometimes tell the dog to shut up, which is bad, but in our defense, she can be really annoying. We tell the kids to shush, hush, or maybe hush up, but I can’t remember telling them to shush up.
I explained the shush / hush / hush up scenario, and the workers were on their way to the next home. I wish I could’ve heard what he said; I doubt it was any variant on shush. The boys haven’t picked up many other admonitions. They shout, “get down” while standing on furniture. They don’t get down, but they shout it. They might say, “stop.” Otherwise, they haven’t repeated “no,” “don’t,” “naughty,” “what are you doing,” “dear lord, what are you doing,” or anything else I say while reprimanding them. That’s good, because between the furniture climbing and the hitting, I do a lot of reprimanding. I wouldn’t want these workers to think I use anything less than the optimal correction techniques, such as an occasional “dammit.”
* Not that I’m complaining.
** Hitting isn’t an issue with the boys yet, but you should ideally wear a football helmet while trying to make Abbie say, “ooh.”
Yesterday was public school extension workers day for the boys. Two workers highly trained in the realm of child development come to our home to watch the boys play with blocks. Their main focus is on speech, ensuring that the boys continue developing their language skills and avoid the delay Abbie showed at that age. They work with the boys individually, splitting into separate rooms so as not to bother each other every time someone cheers wildly because a boy said “please.”
I like to watch my children when they work with these specialists. I can answer the workers’ questions, interpret my children’s speech, and hopefully catch the kids’ arms when they rear back to hit out of frustration.** Since the boys were in separate rooms yesterday, I couldn’t watch both of them. I bounced between them a little before settling mostly on Ian since his speech is a little behind Tory and I could use the feedback on how he’s doing. Plus, Ian’s worker had cooler toys.
At the end of the session, Tory’s worker brought him into the room and gave me a progress report. His speech is improving, he used several words, and he often tried to imitate sounds. Those are all encouraging signs. He also said something that sounded like “shush up.”
That was a new one. I know that you shouldn’t use any words around children that you don’t want them to use. Our children also know they shouldn’t climb on furniture, and that doesn’t happen either. I mentally ran through all of the negative words we use around the kids. I call them twerps when they’re being twerps. The occasional dammit slips through the filter. We sometimes tell the dog to shut up, which is bad, but in our defense, she can be really annoying. We tell the kids to shush, hush, or maybe hush up, but I can’t remember telling them to shush up.
I explained the shush / hush / hush up scenario, and the workers were on their way to the next home. I wish I could’ve heard what he said; I doubt it was any variant on shush. The boys haven’t picked up many other admonitions. They shout, “get down” while standing on furniture. They don’t get down, but they shout it. They might say, “stop.” Otherwise, they haven’t repeated “no,” “don’t,” “naughty,” “what are you doing,” “dear lord, what are you doing,” or anything else I say while reprimanding them. That’s good, because between the furniture climbing and the hitting, I do a lot of reprimanding. I wouldn’t want these workers to think I use anything less than the optimal correction techniques, such as an occasional “dammit.”
* Not that I’m complaining.
** Hitting isn’t an issue with the boys yet, but you should ideally wear a football helmet while trying to make Abbie say, “ooh.”
posted by Matt at
11:43 PM
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