Some things I'd like to run by you guys...
Gabriel is super shy. When I take him to school and the teacher asks him to come over, he does it, but only by taking tiny one inch steps. One right after the other until two minutes later he's traveled like five feet.
He also tells me that he hates school and doesn't want to go. He refuses to do his work for the most part and won't talk to anybody. Except occasionally he'll do something strange like disagree with the teacher about something and be openly defiant. At home he chatters like crazy.
Gabriel doesn't like us to wash or cut his hair. Most of the time doesn't want to sleep on the bed and prefers to sleep on the hard wooden floor intead without covers or pillows.
He doesn't like to use a step stool that has swirley impressions on it because he doesn't want them to get imprinted on his skin because it freaks him out.
He doesn't want to eat any vegetables and he will spit food out if it contains a tiny sliver of carrot or something.
He's very particular about things and can be quite tyrannical. He got upset today because Christine couldn't properly pronounce "carrera" in Spanish because of all the rolling of the "R's" and he kept making her say it over and over, and he would get upset verytime she mispronounced it.
Yeterday he was mad at me because I sang a "Blues Clues" song wrong because I said "Bee dee Beh," when it was actually " Bee dee Baa." Man he was mad!
Do you guys remember me being weird when I was a kid? I'm sure I was but I don't remember ever being shy, but I do remember being a tad antisocial mostly because I thought all the other kids were morons. What do you guys think?
Gabriel seems to be both shy and antisocial, which may not be the best combination.
Christine her brother and sister were all described as shy by teachers when they started school, so maybe he takes after them. (I saw their report cards) They got into Harvard, Princeton and Harvard, so maybe he'll take after them in that way as well. (I hope!)
He also tells me that he hates school and doesn't want to go. He refuses to do his work for the most part and won't talk to anybody. Except occasionally he'll do something strange like disagree with the teacher about something and be openly defiant. At home he chatters like crazy.
Gabriel doesn't like us to wash or cut his hair. Most of the time doesn't want to sleep on the bed and prefers to sleep on the hard wooden floor intead without covers or pillows.
He doesn't like to use a step stool that has swirley impressions on it because he doesn't want them to get imprinted on his skin because it freaks him out.
He doesn't want to eat any vegetables and he will spit food out if it contains a tiny sliver of carrot or something.
He's very particular about things and can be quite tyrannical. He got upset today because Christine couldn't properly pronounce "carrera" in Spanish because of all the rolling of the "R's" and he kept making her say it over and over, and he would get upset verytime she mispronounced it.
Yeterday he was mad at me because I sang a "Blues Clues" song wrong because I said "Bee dee Beh," when it was actually " Bee dee Baa." Man he was mad!
Do you guys remember me being weird when I was a kid? I'm sure I was but I don't remember ever being shy, but I do remember being a tad antisocial mostly because I thought all the other kids were morons. What do you guys think?
Gabriel seems to be both shy and antisocial, which may not be the best combination.
Christine her brother and sister were all described as shy by teachers when they started school, so maybe he takes after them. (I saw their report cards) They got into Harvard, Princeton and Harvard, so maybe he'll take after them in that way as well. (I hope!)
posted by Israel at 8:17 PM
20 Comments:
Although he does have a strong personality and kind of a bad temper Gabriel is not at all defiant or disrespectful towards me.
I use corporal punishment when appropriate and he has gotten his share of spankings, mostly when he is beating up on his brother or doing something he knows he isn't supposed to do. He even knows when he's going to get it and he offers up his hand for a smack and asks for "Just a soft pow pow, not a hard one."
But I just can't go around smacking him because he is shy or has certain innate difficult personality traits which he inherited from his parents (both of whom have strong personalities and bad tempers.)
Chancla to the Nalga is great, but I don't think it's a cure all. He doesn't misbehave per se in class, he just chooses not to participate sometimes.
How old is he exactly? Jess wants to know...
he'll be 5 on Oct 16
Hey Israel, I was just curious, is this Gabriel’s first time in an actual school setting, or has he been in preschool before this?
Is he in preschool or kindergarten? Is this all new to him, or has this behavior been ongoing even though he should be familiar in a school setting?
Josh listens to 3 sermons recently, and now he's quoting scripture and ready to preach himself?!? Wow, I'm impressed. You should come to church with us on Sundays, you'll be raising the dead in no time!
I don't think shy is bad, but open defiance is.Does he get punished for being openly defiant to authority figures even if they aren't his parents? He probably should.
Is he old enough to get privilidges taken away from him yet? I heard a good way to discipline kids is to make them sit in one spot without moving for the same amount of minutes as their age! It will drive them nuts, and if they break the rule, the time starts all over again. If your kid can't stay still, it will be like prison to him, and when those minutes are up, he won't want to go back. I mean think about it, Wouldn't you think it would suck if you broke the rules and someone made you sit for half an hour without a single thing to do in an uncomfortable chair. No sleeping, no yelling, no nothing, just sitting.
Jariah was sitting at work for just a few minutes and he thought it was horrible.
Don't get me wrong, chanckla can be great sometimes too, but its very temporary.
No matter what you do to dicipline the kid, the message should be clear to them. You do bad things, bad things happen, you do good things, good things happen. You reap what you sow.
Thanks Becca that makes me feel a little better, knowing Elijah had his particularities and took a long time to potty train.
Gabriel had that whole thing where he did not want to sit on the toilet at all, and he would say, "I hate toilets, toilets are disgusting" for the longest time.
He's in preschool, and it has been almost a year now, we could start him in Kindergarden now but he would be one of the youngest, smallest kids and with the way he's acting now, we thought it was better to give him another year to develop socially.
What I don't want to do is spank him if he doesn't want to do things in school like trace his letters or whatever. I don't think that forcing him to do stuff by smacking or punishing him will make him like school any better.
He has known his letters in English and Spanish since he was two, so I figure maybe he's bored. Sometimes he will do his assignment, sometimes he won't.
He is showing a lot of intellectual curiousity about reading and stuff, but I don't wanna push him especially since we're keeping him back in preschool another year so he can get caught up socially if possible.
We'll see...
Janessa was really bored with preschool by her second year, so even though she was the youngest to start kindergarten when she did, Jess didn't want to make her go back to preschool for a 3rd time, so she went ahead and went to kindergarten. She is now ready for 2nd grade, and she has adjusted very well. Gabriel is probably just bored if they are doing the same things this year that he learned last year.
I never claimed to be an expert. But when I say these things, I look back on my own life, and remember what it was that I remember, and that changed my life. I know that when kids are beat every day, they don't remember what you say, but when it's few and makes a definate statement, then you remember. Do you think if Josh beat Elijah every day with a chanckla, elijah would have remembered it all these years later? The very fact that he remember means that he doesn't do it all the time.
I remember every time my dad spanked me. For Climbing the tree, for breaking curfew, for fighting with Josh, for burning my sheets when I used them to hide the light so I could stay up late and read.
My mom whipped me every day, and I honestly have a hard time remember any of them.
There's alot of stuff I lack, like potty training advice, and stopping your child from peeing in his underwear. But I still remember alot of stuff about my diciplining growing up. Oh, and I can also tell what stuff would have worked on me when I was a kid that wasn't done.
I was there.
Okay, this has nothing to do with Zion's posts....
I have a very good friend who has a 5 year old son who is also terrified of getting his hair cut. He also freaks out when he has to get his picture taken...
Bottom line, he's 5!!
P.S. I'm not going to offer any advice, because I have no frame of reference since I have no children. The things I mentioned are just some of the things that I have witnessed that might apply to your situation.
Zion is definitely an expert in getting his rear beaten on a daily basis.
Every morning I would awake to the lovely sounds of Zion getting a whipping. OOWWW!! Smack!! WAAAH!! Smack!! OOOWWWAAAAAHHH!!
And do you know why? Because every morning when he woke up and got ready for school, he couldn't find his school books, or his shoes or some basic necessity that he needed to get ready -- usually his shoes.
So you would think that Zion would remember and learn and get his stuff together the night before so that he could avoid a whipping the next day, right?
Noooo!!! That would make too much sense and take too much foresight. It would mean learning from your mistakes and failing to repeat them.
And I had to suffer by having his infernal caterwauling be the first thing I heard every morning.
I suspect retardation, either that or masochistic tendencies that made him enjoy getting whipped every day.
No one else gave Mom's whipping arm such a workout.
Danny got whipped a lot, but not for the same thing every day. Danny got whipped because he was inherently incapable of getting away with anything.
Josh and I hardly ever got whippings, but when we did they were well deserved and involved the calling of an ambulance or something that couldn't be easily covered up.
Oh yeah, and Gabriel grinds his teeth at night. (Loudly)
Just like his mom and his aunt. No one has figured out how to blame that one on me yet.
We have scheduled play dates, but most of the time he ends up ignoring the other kid or going in the other room and saying "I want them to go home."
He loves playing with his cousins, though.
I do notice that he will be more friendly and outgoing to people (especially females) who start paying attention a lot of to his little brother Miguel.
Then he will ham it up and do things he doesn't normally do to get a little of the attention that Miguel is getting. But without that competitive factor, he can usually just take it or leave it.
Miguel, by the way is Gabriel's exact opposite. He loves to flirt and charm.
Gabriel really doesn't do tantrums. He'll get mad and yell sometimes, but it isn't that he is trying to get something, its because he perceives that some great injustice has occurred, like someone has mispronounced one of his favorite words or sang his favorite song incorrectly.
Gabriel has never once in his life asked me to buy him something at a store and he doesn't cry and roll around on the floor and stuff to try to get his way.
If he's acting up he'll straighten up and fly right as soon as he sees me getting mad.
Miguel just turned terrible two and he is just starting in with the tantrums. He does ask for things in stores and he crys when he doesn't get them. This just started a couple weeks ago.
I am teaching him that no matter how hard he crys for something he's not going to get it and that I will not compromise on that rule.
cries...
Wow the password I have to type in this time is
"rhurtddy"
R hurt Daddy
I remember that dad would say this hurts me more than it hurts you before he gave me a whipping.
I never believed him until I actually had to physically discipline Gabriel.
It does hurt me (a lot.)
But I've got to do it out of love and it has to be consistent and for clearly articulated reasons.
But it still hurts.
The one thing that sticks out in my mind wasn't any spanking that I got, it was two counselings.
1) In first grade my teacher Ms. Irene Baray wrote on my report card that I was a "Smart Aleck." Dad took me around behind the house and I sat on the electric meter and he told me very quietly and seriously "The teacher wrote on your report card that you are a Smart Aleck."
I was devastated, "No dad, I'm not a Smart Aleck, the teacher just hates me! She hates me dad!"
Dad said, "Don't be a smart aleck."
That was it, but it made a huge impression on me and I was never a smart aleck again. (OK, maybe once or twice)
2) In sixth grade I told dad that I was going to an "Awards Ceremony" at school. It was an awards ceremony of sorts, because I won the "Fastest Mouth in the West" Award. But it was also a dance, which I failed to mention. So for some reason Dad shows up to pick me up and catches me slow dancing with Kathy Sobachan.
I was having a good old time because unlike me, Kathy Sobachan was very fully developed by sixth grade and so my face only reached as high as her very, very, very well-developed CHEST!
So during this slow dance, I look over and see Dad standing at the door, with his eye brow arched up in that scary way.
So he takes me home and doesn't say a thing the whole way and I think "Man, I'm going to get it."
I sit down on my bed and he stands in front of me and all he says is, "I am very disappointed in you." Then he leaves.
That was it. Psychologically, it was much worse than ten whippings to have to hear that, let me tell you.
(I never danced with a woman who was taller than me again. Seriously, still to this day, I can't dance, not even like a white boy.)
I tried to sneak to a dance once by telling my parents that I was going to a sleepover at my best friends house. Mom figured out that I was actually planning to go to the dance a couple days before it was scheduled, though, so I didn't really get to go. (Plus, I got pulled out of the public school I was in and was home schooled for the remainder of the year.) I, too, was in the 6th grade.
I'm not surprised that Elijah is doing so well in school. When he was very young becca was ALWAYS with him, teaching him letters and words, and math or whatever. I was quite impressed with how much time she spent teaching her child. I know alot of people spend alot of time trying to teach her kid, but it always seemed like she went the extra mile.
Well I think it paid off. He quickly learned to talk and interact, and by the time he was two he seemed like a little adult.
Anyhow, I didn't see Elijah grow up for most of his life, but I still think those first couple years probably were a huge part of his ability to understand and do well in things.
Anyhow, I'm done. Good job!
You better hope you're not the only woman he ever loves!!!
My first love was the little girl in my reading group in first grade. She was really smart and a good reader and she had a cute pixie dutch boy haircut.
I also was fond of a little girl that was modeling underwear in the Sears catalog. Not because of the underwear, but because she had a big smile that showed her entire gumline. She had excellent gums.
Then came Monica in first or second grade, I carried her books all the way home and when she went inside I yelled "I love you!" as loud as I could. Then I ran off when her mom came out. (I saw her and her mom at Randolph Park several years ago and they remembered this. She also still looked really pretty which meant my taste was impeccable even then.
Then there was Lulu in second grade who used to put on lipstick and chase me around the playground and kiss me when I finally pretended to get tired. She even employed a whole platoon of boys to help her. They would hold me down while she slobbered on me. I pretended not to like it.
Then I liked Bebe too because she was a Tomboy and weared red checkered dresses.
And that was just all the crushes I had before third grade.
I was only a chick magnet until the 3rd grade, then I reversed polarity and became a chick repulser.
I can't even be mentioned in the same breath as Sam or Josh. Sam had girls leaving him presents at the front door. Of course he had it easy because he was good looking.
Josh on the other hand -- not so good looking.
But he did have a gigantic head literally and figuratively. When he played football he looked like that Jack in The Box CEO mascot.
I'm sure Danny had more than one girlfriend, he just kept it on the "down low."
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