My mother is taking all three of them at 2:00 this afternoon and not returning them until sometime tomorrow afternoon. This has nothing to do with the focus of the thread. I did, however, want to rub it in the faces of the other people that will have to deal with their children this weekend.
My wife is breast feeding, and thus her sex drive is at about 0.05%. Apparently this is normal? I don't like normal.
You would think getting three of everything would prevent fights. I mean that's fucking logical right?
Why would you tell on somebody when you are currently doing the EXACT SAME FUCKING THING YOU ARE TELLING ON THEM FOR?!?! I am going to go bash my head into a wall now.
Why not both? I'm interested to know how real parents taught their kids to read. Most things I'm not too worried about planning ahead for, but I want to ensure the bastard is as literate as I can help. I know they say read to your kids, but he makes it difficult since he's very hands on and stubborn, and doesn't like to focus on anything anyone else is saying or doing for more than 20 seconds, so I'm not overly sure how impactful that is, for the moment anyway.
The little girl is closest to reading right now. She's starting to sound out simple words and things of that nature. What seems to help her is of course reading but also showing her that letters make sounds. Theres this video called the letter factory where they go through and sing a song for all the letters and their coresponding sounds. She hasn't watched it for a couple of years but to this day when she's trying to sound words out and struggling with it she will sing the letters song to herself. It really seems to help her get through tough words. I think the biggest thing is to not push it. Its gotten to the point where she doesn't like to read with her grandmother any more because her grandmother always tries to turn it into Madelyn needs to read time. And will get very frustrated with baby girl when she doesn't feel she is trying hard enough. However when we read together I will just sound out some of the simple words as I'm reading with absolutely no pressure on her and soon baby girl will take over and start wanting to read the whole book to me. Yet her grandmother can't see the no pressure method of doing it gets better results. Also get material he's into. The little heathen is still definately preliterate, but she recognizes some rather complex words like; Spider-Man, marvel, White Tiger, Power Man, and a great deal of other super hero words and names.
My cousin has two kids, 3 and 6. I saw his wife eating by herself while the kids were next door playing, it was the happiest I think I've ever seen her, and I was at their wedding.
Read to them, but read something engaging. And let them see you reading. My brothers and I learned to read because my mom kept X-Men and Spiderman and X-Factor and New Mutant (and so many more) comic books laying around. Given the turn those books have taken these days, probably not a good idea. But my kids see me reading a lot and we've always had books for them. They just...did it.
We followed the shimmered formula. We read to my daughter every day, and tried to pick books that we could involve her in - e.g., we would read a book about the zoo, and ask her to tell us what sounds each animal made. My wife and I both read quite a bit, so there are always books laying around, and she sees us reading all the time. After awhile, things transitioned naturally from us reading to her, to her reading to us, to her just reading on her own. She is 9 now, and part of our bedtime ritual is her and I hanging out, each reading our own books, for 30-60 minutes.
I think for kids who might not have as much interest in sitting down and reading, it's good to incorporate letters and words into other aspects of life and play. One of the kids I nanny for now is 3, and now that she knows how to spell her name, she likes pointing out things that start with the same letter or have the same sounds. She's also excited about seeing the names of things she likes written out. She does a lot of drawing, and I always make a point of titling what she drew, that way she sees more words and letters, and I get a reminder that the big blob is a flower. Now she recognizes most letters and is getting better at matching letters with sounds.
Thanks for the replies. The little boy that lives in my house isn't even talking yet, he's only 17 months old, so I'm sure I'm waaaaay overkeen here. I was really spurred on last month after picking him up from his grandparents when they babysat: as his Opa was explaining how the evening went, you could tell by his body language he knew what exactly what we were talking about as it was said, i.e. his behaviour, what they did, etc, he responded very specifically to each subject as he snuggled into my arms. I have to admit the obviousness of his understanding took me a little by surprise, because, unlike my friend's kid and my boy's cousin, he doesn't really do any "tricks," mostly just his own thing. You can give him suggestions to play "hiding" or "spinning around" and he'll take them under advisement, and he'll imitate three different sounds with his tongue, but aside from that he doesn't give off many signals that he can even hear you (but he always hears the microwave, even from the other end of the house). I mean, I understood in theory that toddlers understand before they speak, but it gets hazy when you're in the midst of child-rearing for the first time. That said, for a couple months now, when I found it difficult to sit down with books, I started grabbing out the alphabet flashcards the lady-person bought. It's easier to hold his attention with a series of separate cards, rather than one long book, and as I let him hold them himself, he caught on pretty fast as to which way is "up" on them. I just sit down and hand them to him one at a time, naming and sounding out the letter, he even tries to join in when I repeatedly sound out F "efff" and H "huh" even if they they both come out as "estssts." He also finds it amusing when I pronounce "exxx" and sometimes he'll even emulate the way I trace my finger over the letter as I sound it out. Last month he also realised there's pictures on the back with the relevant word underneath, and showed and interest when I pointed to each letter and sounded out the word. The cards are a little troublesome in that regard, because for some retarded reason they're not all phonetically spelled words. My other problem with the cards is that they've given the lower case prominence, with a bonus small upper/lower case combo in the bottom corner (probably how he knows which way is up on the cards). It probably makes sense because most words are written in lower-case, but I'd have thought capital letters are easier to grasp. I know it's jumping the gun a bit (I think the box of the flashcards says like 3+ on it), but he seems interested and last Saturday we attended a roller derby, and after discouraging him from playing with the wheels that were attached to people's roller skates, he dragged me over to the sponsor's signs and reached out to drag his hands over the letters, which I thought was encouraging. I'm also definitely of the mind that 'learning=fun=work' for human beings (it's alright for preschool, but then in society the man keeps us down by separating the three, thus making "learning=boring, work=burden, and fun=waste of time), and he has no trouble letting us know when he's not having fun, so I don't feel like I'm pushing him... Yet... Edit: Oh yes, when we get to "Yy," the word on the reverse is "Yo-Yo" and he's started saying "woah-woah" in response. I was happy to hear it, even if it was just some Skinner style response...
It's spontaneous purchase time! It's a TALKING learn-Klingon-ese book for toddlers. I'm teaching the baby to scream "This putter DISHONORS ME!" In Klingon and then sending her to her mother. Good times.
My daughter is 14 months and we read to her every day. She loves books, they're her favorite thing. We'll read two or three a day to her. She owns more books than toys at this point. She isn't really talkin yet (lots of babble that the wife and I understand but most wouldn't), but I think she'll be a good little reader. It definitely doesn't hurt that my wife and I read a lot with her and around her. I know this will sound dumb, but I learned a LOT of reading from video games. Some of those old RPG games (Final Fantasy II and Dragon Quest I remember specifically) involved a lot of reading to keep up with the story, and it was the most I read. My nephew loves to play Mario games, so I gave him Paper Mario, which is an RPG with a lot of reading, and my brother says he'll read everything out loud as he plays and he loves it. On occasion, games can teach more than how to shoot.
I think this might be the coolest site for parents with young kids that get upset when animals/pets get hurt/killed in movies. I wish I'd thought of this, basically tells you if a pet/animal is harmed. Just thought I'd share. http://www.doesthedogdie.com/
Jesus Christ, that website. My wife tried to call me out with it, refusing to believe my claim that yes, Hooch indeed DOES get shot and die at the hands of Craig T. Nelson. She almost cried when she found out I was right.