Task At Hand

I received a Little Tikes catalog in the mail the other day. My girls love to look through all of the catalogs that we get in the mail. They love the bright and shiny covers. They love to decide who gets what on each page. They love that they get their own 'magazine' every, single day in the mail.

So yesterday, after I got a Little Tikes catalog, I knew Madeleine would be especially excited to look through it because it was filled with fun & colorful toys. I gave her the catalog and a black marker. I suggested that she take this opportunity to circle things she really, really liked, perhaps things that Santa might take note of. She was totally game and got right to work.

This is what she came back with:











She circled nearly everything in the catalog, except the Makin' Mud Pies set she got for her birthday and the Spray & Rescue Fire Truck her sister, Lily, got this summer.

Looking at these pictures, I could think, 'how funny & cute, she loves all the toys in the catalog' or 'how greedy & selfish, she wants every, single thing on every, single page.'

My most recent exposure to the studies of managing behaviors and positive discipline have taught me otherwise. I have learned, that for children of Madeleine's age (4) , the focus is not on the end result, but on the journey or activity to get there. She was more enrapt with the act of circling the pictures of kids enjoying the toys, than imagining herself potentially receiving and subsequently playing with these toys at a later date.

As parents, I think we all naturally feel that our kids are the smartest, brightest, most talented at any & all specific talents, but we are fast to forget that they are still toddlers, still babies. They are sponges and can soak up our vocabularies & mannerisms and repeat them back to us, without fully understanding what they are saying or doing. Personally, I have always responded to my child's vocabulary as a proud parent. We encouraged her first words & cheered on her full sentences We never stopped to think if she totally understood the words & actions she was using and if she knew why she was using them. Hey, as long as they were not swear words, we were happy, right?

Madeleine was simply reveling in the task at hand. When I gave her the marker and catalog I should have said this 'Here, take this marker and show me how good you are at making circles. And, lucky you, you get to make circles around pictures of kids your age having fun on toys you might like to play with. I bet you can fill this whole, entire magazine with great circles. When you are done, let's go outside with Lily, make piles of leaves and mess them up!'