Continuing from An ordinary day – Breakfast and leaving home
I need to show up at school pick up time with snacks. My son would be incredibly hungry and he can’t wait until we get home. I usually pack a home-made burger, a sandwich, or couple of granola bars.
On Mondays, my son has gym classes. When I am pick him up, his first questions goes:
My son: Is there gym class today?
Me: Yes, there is.
Here is his answer:
My son: I don’t want to go the gym!
Once I feed him his snacks, his resistance softens and as soon as we enter the gym, he dashes in. After gym and on other days, we come home after school. If I change our route without informing kids in advance, I voluntarily call for trouble. If I have such plans, I have to prepare them in. If we change the daily routine without prior notice, we must then be ready for a possible family doomsday.
When we return home, they have time for free play. This is relaxing time. Kids are happy, they are not hungry, not sleepy.
Around 4:30pm, things start getting shaky again. When I sense the red signal, I have to make sure they have snacks. At six o’clock, I start reminding them about impending dinner time so that they are ready for dinner. Once we sit for dinner, if they leave the table 3 times or more, I tell them, I think they aren’t hungry. If they are really hungry, they’ll stay at the dinner table and finish their food without loitering around. Unfortunately, this tactic doesn’t work really well with my daughter. She will eat if she likes to, otherwise, even if Jamie Oliver comes and cooks for her, she couldn’t care less. Thank God, they are lucky to have a mother who thinks her children will eventually eat when they are hungry.
After dinner, they have more time to play. After fruit, around 7:30pm, bed time ritual starts with potty time followed by shower and brushing teeth and finally going to bed.
Even after the lights are out, we are still on the clock. Pee one more time, water, milk and other stuff come up frequently. These requests are usually initiated by my daughter. She quietly tells her brother “Call mom and tell this….” My son must be tired of this too because we hear him telling his sister “I want to sleep. I will write down some rules, no talking!”
My son loves his routine. If he doesn’t sleep well or if he is hungry, it’ll change his mood. He always has excess energy. He is easier in negotiations and inclined to meeting the halfway. His memory is unbelievable but he gets distracted very quickly.
My daughter has a very independent personality; she can – must – do everything on her own. If we leave them alone, my daughter would be the leader of the pack. She adapts to situations better than my son. When we say “Let’s do this”, my son would insist on keeping the status quo while daughter is already set to go. My daughter is pretty stubborn and hard to persuade. She has strong attention capacity.
To summarize, most of our days are spent negotiating, persuading, forecasting, predicting, planning, strategizing and pulse taking. They would take down the most experienced strategists with their perseverance and negotiation skills.
I will wrap up this series of posts on Monday.
We are about to complete a hard but very important project at work. We will feel relieved once we can wrap it up and deliver it to the client. I have to survive two more days and dream of a fun, lively weekend. May God help me out.
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