Hearing No

Today I’ve got some pics of Kiddo being Kiddo.  Kind of a 2ish year retrospective.  Partly to post one or a few cute Kiddo pics, but also because I don’t have any current pics and I wanted to talk about Kiddo for a few minutes today.

Previously, I talked about Kiddo and night time.  She gets up.  Some nights, like last night, she gets up to use the toilet and deliver any love mail we might have.  Love mail is Kiddo mail to J and myself.  She will draw us pictures at night.  At first, these pictures were hard to make out, but upon enquiry, we found that was because they were being drawn in the dark.  Well, now that Kiddo can tell time better, we found an arrangement that works for her.  

See, she has some story podcasts that she likes.  Little stories or adventures that are made for kids.  She gets to listen to 3 of these a night, but since they are anywhere from 8 minutes (for the shortest ones) to up to about 20 minutes (the longer) and we usually keep her at 30-40 minutes of stories.  After that, she gets sounds.  Usually rain or birds, but sometimes meditation bowls or camp fire or crickets.  White noise for sleep.  

The deal we made her is that she can have her light on and can lay on the floor and draw or read a book to herself or even read a story to her friends until 20:30 (8:30pm) and then its lights out and sleep time.  She’s usually pretty good with following that, but we’ve never had to push or test this issue.  Usually, right around 20:40-20:45ish, J and I are changing gears in our night, maybe to watching a show, maybe to talk, maybe to her doing her thing and me mine.  The point is, we usually are up and moving and getting a water or drink refill, getting a snack, things like that.  We look over to make sure there isn’t a light under her door.  So far, so good.

Last night, however, we got our first look at this.

The iPad was low on charge, so to ensure Kiddo had sounds all night and could still iPad in the morning for apps and Epic and all that, we needed to charge it over night.  The problem is that for the iPad to keep connectivity to her speaker, we need to leave it on a shelf in the hallway.  Unfortunately, there is no charger or outlet there, so it can’t charge.  Moving it to the Common Room to plug in loses connectivity, especially when I’m also using a ton of bluetooth with podcasts or music and gaming.  So, the solution is plugging it in to an outlet that is in her room.  

Well, last night, we left the iPad in the hallway, but it needed juice.  So, about 5 minutes after J closed her door, I knock and walk in.  Lil Miss is laid out on the floor and looks up at me with a look of pure guilt.  She looked like she was totally busted.  Any parent knows the look.  

I tell her that I’m just going to plug in the iPad and we can’t WAIT to see the love mail that we will get later in the night.  She told me she was just coloring and had the lights on because that’s the rule.  

No worries, Kiddo.  It’s all good.  The relief on her face was hilarious.  

However, on top of the rules and knowing that 20:30 is lights out, she also knows how to hear no.  At 6, that’s a big deal.  See, when she gets up, sometimes if it’s just for the toilet; she will come out, do her thing, and go right back to bed.  Some nights, when she needs lotion or if she gets chatty about her love mail, she will ask for us to rewind her stories.  Sometimes, if we get chatty back with her and it’s right around 20:00-20:15, we will rewind it a bit.  Sometimes.  Other times, she’ll ask, “Can you restart my stories?”  We will give her a No.  Usually, we get, “Awwwww, ok” in the cutest little Kiddo way.  Sometimes we get, “Plllleeeeeease.”  Usually, however, we get, Awwwww, ok!  Rarely, very rarely, do we get a meltdown.  That is, usually, indicative of her processing something and at that point, we just stop her stories, talk to her and let her get her feelings out, and then retuck her and that’s that.

She knows how to hear No.  We are very proud of her for that.  Because her “awwwww, ok” is more of a disappointed, well, I shot my shot type awwwww.  Same when she asks for treats or other things like that when she comes to Tops or running errands with me.  She just accepts the no and moves on in life.  

Part of this is because J and I have worked for 6 years with her to accept the no.  The other part is she trusts us in that no.  She knows she’s not in trouble and we aren’t mad at her.  We tell her, all the time and have for years now, that when we were kids, we would ask for stuff all the time.  Usually, we didn’t get it, but sometimes we did.  It’s ok to ask for things, no one will know what you want if you don’t ask, but you need to A. Make sure you want what you ask for, because if you always ask for a treat, but never finish it, it’ll make us (and other people) less likely to give you treats if you never finish them and B. It’s ok for people to say no.  Just because you ask doesn’t mean you get.  

She’s good at that and took it to heart.  It is very mature of her to be able to do this and even J and I don’t always hear no as good as she does.  There are tons of adults we’ve seen and met that don’t hear No as good as Kiddo does.  So, we count that as a feather in our parenting hats and we continue to teach her.  Even the other day at HarborLand, she was getting a little rambunctious with running and playing and I needed to slow her down and remind her that other kids are around and some not as big as she is, so she needs to be a little more careful.  “I’m not angry.  I’m not disappointed.  I’m just reminding you, because you don’t like it when bigger kids bonk you.”  Her reply still makes me smile.  “Oh!  Right.  Be a good friend, not a wild crazy kid.”  Perfect.  

The rest of the day she was great.  Not perfect, she still got a little excited and ahead of herself, but 99.9%.  She even helped a littler boy on a slide later in the day.  “Cross your arms like this <crosses arms across chest> and then slide.  It looks scary, but it’s TROOPER fun.”  The little dude was off and happy and Kiddo followed a minute later.

She is, truly, our best thing.

Let’s go, Kiddo… tonight we rollerblade again, get to have a Dada/Kiddo dinner, and then look into finding you another note pad for drawing funness and also see about getting some color in your hair.  Mumma and I are proud of you and think you are the best.  Love you and growl too.  And now, without further ado… random Kiddo pics.