It’s our house in Red Bank!! A small little red brick bungalow on a quiet little street. We are such a small, quiet street that we are only one block long. The upside is, you can only get to us from two streets. The down side is, no pizza delivery unless you want to pay through the nose!!
All posts by Savvy Spoonie
Hysteria, reading, and going for the Oscar…
So, we are working on reading. I have developed a series of fun interactive games to help her learn to read. For example, we make letters out of rope, name words that begin with those letters, and then walk the letter tightrope. We made a ladybug word wheel, that had a strip of letters rotating in the middle, and the letter “ug” on the end, so we can get hug, bug, rug, etc. We have a basket of letters that she gets to pick from, and we write and read as many words that begin with that letter, we have alphabet bingo, we have level appropriate books. Each time we start a new activity, she is engaged and happy, and does really well. However, each time we go back to an old activity, she doesn’t want to work at it. She sighs after each letter, she cries if she can’t read the word the very first time, and in the end, she is a screaming, crying mess. I have not been a pushy, mean mommy. I have not let my frustration show. When she gets like this, I tell her we will go back to reading later, when she is less frustrated. This results in her blowing up and screaming and crying even harder. Right now, she is in her room screaming her head off about how she “will give me all her attention and won’t yawn anymore”. I put her down for a nap after we tried to read the word “huff” about three hundred times. We were having a really hard time, she was getting really tired, but she didn’t want to stop, and each time I suggested it, she got really upset. She would sound the word out, get it right, forget it, sound it out, yawn, get it right, cry, calm down, sound it out while yawning and rubbing her eyes, forget it, sound it out… you get the picture. I told her we would try again later, but each time I tell her that she starts screaming about how she is never going to read, that it is too hard.
Is it wrong to want to just scream when your kid complains that the 30 minutes to an hour of game filled reading exercises are too hard? I mean, it must be hell on wheels to have to circle all the items in a picture that begin with the letter f. It must be the worst thing ever to have to sit still for five minutes trying to read the world “bug” on a ladybug shaped word wheel that you get to spin for the beginning letter. Argh!!
And yet, if I show my frustration, she is going to pick up on it and this will all get worse. The worst about it is, she is good! She is reading! She read five pages of a book this morning in about 10 minutes, and then she melted down into madness. Yesterday, she read all the words on her bug wheel, and then melted down into madness. The more she is able to read, the more she cries about not being able to read. We celebrate each word she reads with hugs and smiles, but any time she encounters a single hard word, she loses it. We talk about how reading is hard, and no one picks up a book and starts reading it right away. We discuss the importance of practice, but she still gives up right away.
Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Laudanum?
Don’t bash on the belly gentlemen…
Why are pregnant women called crazy? (A soapbox moment)
I am bothered by a common theme within our culture as represented by the media, and our culture in general. (Actually, I am bothered by many common themes, but this is the one bothering me today.)
I find it disturbing that pregnant women are considered crazy. If a pregnant woman has an emotional reaction to any given situation, she is just as likely to be treated like a person recently released from an institution as she is to be treated like a person with feelings. I understand that pregnancy causes emotional ups and downs, harsher or more extreme reactions to normal situations, and simply more emotions in general. I get it, I am currently pregnant. I understand that my crying in the grocery store the other day because the Fair Haven A&P doesn’t carry the fudgsicles my parents buy back home is not the way I would behave if I weren’t pregnant. I understand that crying at the end of Clerks II was more likely caused by hormones than it was the touching and meaningful prose of Kevin Smith. (I am pretty sure that Mr. Smith never intended to make his audience sniffle quietly whilst Dante and Randall rebuilt the Quick-Stop.)
Crazy is a hugely negative term in our culture. It immediately demolishes a person’s credibility. For example, when liberals and democrats in 2000 and 2004 began to speak about the possibility of a stolen election, the validity of their viewpoints were dimished quite effectively by referring to them as crazy. (Or by referring to them as conspiracy theories, which in popular culture is synonymous with crazy.)
What upsets me is that these increased emotional reactions are natural. They occur becuase of a natural increase in hormone levels caused by growing a baby. (Without this ability, the human race would cease to exist, so therefore, I feel we should more respect pregnant women.)
I am upset that the hormones rushing through my system as a result of my role in continuing the species give other people the license to call me insane and treat me like a ticking time bomb.
Those of you who know me know that I can get fired up and angry about a great number of things, without a single wayward hormone in evidence. How am I supposed to make it through the next nine months without harming those around me if they treat me like a lunatic each time I get up on my soapbox?
It is unfeeling of our culture to punish pregnant women for expressing their feelings when a massive flood of hormones is pulsing through their systems. (Yes, referring to pregnant women as crazy when they react emotionally is punishment.) Why don’t people simply understand that the growing of another human being has a tendency to effect emotions? Why aren’t women, while pregnant, offered commiseration and support, instead of being derided as insane? Isn’t it enough that we have to willingly get fat in a culture that makes anorexia look healthy?
Your Denver Girl (Pregnant and emotional!) signing out.