Fright Night
Did a little babysitting, this weekend. You know me, I apply my skills wherever there is a need!
The duo I cared for, a 9-year-old girl and 5-year-old boy, were a delight. As always. And I'm not being sarcastic. The kids were and are delightful. Most children are-- it's the parents that can seriously suck-- and these particular ones are mostly independent and really have the sibling love down pat.
(More on the parental suckage later.)
The nine-year-old, Gili, enjoys Math and Business and has actually sold bracelets she creates out of colorful beads while Ziv, the five-year-old, reads chapter books, already, loving words and humorous adventures and Wheel of Fortune. I've helped Gili come up with funky color combinations and cool terms for her bracelets, the two of us making a new batch to sell at $2 a pop. And I've encouraged Ziv to write a story whenever I come over. They're really, really short stories. He usually doesn't get past about two or three sentences. But that's fine. He has no trouble coming up with a beginning, middle and an end.
Besides, the Kindergartner figured out how to spell decided through my mere sounding out of the word.
"Debbie, how do you spell 'decided'?" he asked.
"Hm. What letter do you think 'decided' starts with?"
"D"
"And what do you think comes next? Deeee-ciiiii..."
"E!"
"And then?"
"C??"
See? Other than a hand in popping corn for movie nights, Ziv truly doesn't need me. But he pretends to out of love.
I don't seek perfection from these and other children, rather I encourage them to motivate themselves to do things. Self-motivation is something that seems to lacking from our, um, more "refined" and "grown-up" and "wise" generations (hence the fully-capable yet irresponsible creatures strutting around the planet like they own the place and are smarter than everyone else). I've worked with many, many, many children-- rich ones, poor ones, scholars and those with learning disabilities-- and I'm aware that self-motivation doesn't come from homes much. It also doesn't happen overnight. As such, diligent teachers are left with quite a job on their hands, a job that never compensates them enough but luckily rewards them with children who are eager to learn.
An eagerness to learn is important in the fast-paced, mainly entitled society we live in, today. It is to be respected and nurtured-- not ignored and devalued-- because through it we can produce responsible beings with a solid self-esteem.
To be honest, I was kinda surprised when Ziv figured out that C was the third letter in decided. He could easily have guessed it to have been an S or, worse, given up. The sounds are similar, after all, and lots of kids his age become frustrated and pretty much tell me where to go as they turn back to their Wii entertainment systems. I gave him a high-five and an awesome for that. Good for him.
Self-motivation is what I push. Almost anyone can earn an excellent grade in a subject if it is desired, but not everyone can become self-motivated enough to maintain a decent grade or see where their natural skills and education can take them. Self-motivation starts at home and then it comes from surrounding places and people-- not the other way around-- and kids need a sense of purpose.
Ziv was not only motivated to spell 'decided', but his accomplishment made for a natural boost in the confidence department.
Yay.
On the agenda was a movie about a dog, but the kids preferred to dive into writing or activity books for most of the night. I joined them in on this feat, solving a few second grade money-math addition and subtraction problems while Gili handled division. I asked Ziv for help in subtraction.
"Ziv, what's 5 take away zero?"
"Five".
"And seven take away three?"
"Four."
Genius.
Gili graded my paper later. I passed.
We moved onto an innocent hour of coloring book fun.
Fine. I took an hour coloring in some animated characters, alright?
Anyway, we were innocently coloring with crayons and markers when Gili excused herself to use the restroom. Sometime during our coloring expedition, she manhandled a loose tooth in the upper-right quad of her mouth. Gah. She showed it to me, too, swinging it back and forth as though it were a feather in a great, big wind.
"Um, why?" I asked.
She laughed.
"Ever swallow a tooth, Debbie?"
"No?"
She laughed some more.
"Can I pull my tooth out?" she asked.
It wasn't a question I wanted to answer yet I stared at the tooth. I stared at the sucker and noted that it wasn't quite ready for plucking.
"Uh, you can. You just shouldn't..."
"OK. I'm going to the bathroom!" she yelled, running 'round a corner.
Five minutes went by. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes.
At the twenty-minute mark, I began to worry a little.
"Uh, Gili? What are you doing in there?"
She excitedly muffled something that didn't sound anything like "I have diarrhea" before bursting out of the bathroom and sliding into the livingroom, right where Ziv and I were sitting.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggghh..."
She pulled it.
"You pulled it," I said.
"Yeah. And there's blood everywhere!"
She was right. As I surveyed the bathroom, I realized that blood was pretty much everywhere. In the sink, on the sink, all over the mirror even if I didn't exactly know how it got there.
Perfection.
It wasn't a time to laugh, but Gili laughed anyway, probably at my confusion. Better than a freak-out, I supposed. Still, the stream of blood along her gumline reminded me of a scary movie.
"Hokay. Go and rinse gently with warm water... and I'll get a wad of tissue ready."
She rinsed and I went off to work. The gentle rinsing action did the trick, slowing the bleeding significantly and I soon applied the wad to the gushing area.
"OK. Bite down. Your mouth will taste 'ew', but it is temporary," I told her.
She giggled.
"I know," she said. "I lost another tooth last week. Now we're up to seven!"
And then, Gili became philosophical.
"Debbie, what's the point of losing all your teeth and then having them grow again? Why not just keep the old teeth? There's no point."
I didn't know about that. But I eventually finished coloring my picture, and they loved it.
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