We all know that opposites attract!

Did you know that children learn concepts best in opposites? It’s why in your Kindermusik class, you’ll learn fast/slow, smooth/bumpy, high/low, among many other pairs. It’s why in school, addition and subtraction are taught back to back. It’s why when you begin to drive, your teacher makes sure you know where both the brake and the gas pedals are!

Learning opposites enhances vocabulary and word association, encourages sensory and motor development, develops discrimination and classification skills, and provides plenty of opportunity for fun games. The farther apart the opposite (black and white, hard and soft), the easier it is for children to master the concept. When you add an interactive approach, this learning becomes highly enjoyable.

Here’s a few “opposite” activities:

When doing these, be sure to label the opposite words. (It’s pretty easy to forget to do that, as we adults already know the vocabulary!)

• Try tasting some opposite things like sweet sugar and sour lemon.
• Sort round cans and square boxes when putting away the groceries.
• Music is full of opposites. Put on your favorite piece of Kindermusik (or music with pitch or tempo variation), and move high and low, or fast and slow.
• Sing a song silly! (High and then low, or fast and then slow.)
• Move. Go and stop. Take big steps, and little steps. Go under, go over.
• Open and shut the doors. Or cupboards. Cause seriously, if they don’t learn both opening and shutting in a pair now, your fridge is going to constantly be left open when they are a bit older!
• Identify back or front. Left or right. Short and tall. Boy or girl. Young or old. Dirty or clean. Empty or full.
• Feel the objects around you. Hard or soft? Rough or smooth? Hot or cold?
• Read some opposite books, and talk about what you see. Here’s some favorites: Dinosaur Roar, by Paul and Henrietta Stickland. Big Dog, Little Dog, by P.D. Eastman. The Foot Book, by Dr. Seuss.

Even babies learn opposites. Talk to your baby as you go throughout the day, and emphasize the opposite words with your vocal inflection. “I’m going to pick you up.” “We are going down the stairs.”

Really, the possibilities are endless. Just have fun with it!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose two oldest children are oil and water.

Babies and toddlers enjoy blowing. As they practice blowing, they strengthen mouth muscles and develop awareness of their breathing, which will help their language development.

With preschoolers and early elementary, blowing develops their diaphragms and builds muscle control necessary for singing and wind instrument playing.

Blowing also helps children become aware of the fact that they can use breath to make a variety of sounds, move things, blow out candles, or create a cooling breeze.

Blowing for all ages
Blow kisses – even babies can do this!
Blow through a straw into your milk, juice or water.
Blow bubbles
Play a slide whistle or a harmonica (like the one in this semester’s Our Time)
Put a dab of watercolor or thinned tempura paint on a piece of paper. Blow on it with a straw and make beautiful designs.

For older children
Put a fluffy craft feather partially into the end of a drinking straw. Blow on the other end and see how far you can make the feather fly!
Place a ping pong ball on the table. With players on each side of the table, try to blow it off your opponent’s side with a drinking straw.
Whistle
Play a duck call or kazoo

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who wants you to breathe in through your nose, and blow out through your mouth three times right now. Don’t you feel calmer?

My husband Casey and I have been married for just over 2 years.  Nearing 32, we have want to start a family, but the question we keep asking ourselves is … when? So Casey and I got a puppy to practice on. (Sound familiar?) If having a puppy is anything like having a baby, we are going to be in for a whirlwind experience when babies finally come around!

Sleep? What sleep?
Fully in love with her already, we brought our 9 week old English Bulldog, Amelia Rose, home.  She had so many wrinkles on her little body it was hard to hang on to her, and she made these cute little grunting noises every time she was picked up.  How could you not love a puppy like that?!

Amelia Rose

Arriving at home, we went – now what? This, coincidently, is the same question I’ve considered about bringing home an actual baby.  I know that babies eat, sleep and poop, but what else do you do with them? (On a side note, I’m so glad to be teaching Village because now I have so many ways to be able to bond with my future babies that I’m not so intimidated by the thought of bringing one home.)

We had heard that for the first week or so we would be getting up with her every couple of hours to let her go out. But, we really didn’t know how little sleep we would actually get.  I would wake up to her little grunting sounds, roll over and wake up Casey, (who needed a little help functioning at that hour) who, bless his heart, would take her out to go potty. 

We loved having a puppy, but man, were we tired! Finally, that 4^th night, I woke up and realized that it was 5:15 am! Well, to my surprise, Amelia had slept 7 hours with no accidents! I can say that we are all happy to be getting more sleep. (I do realize this happens much faster with a puppy than a baby!)

Family Dynamics
Casey and I knew from the start that a puppy would change everything! Isn’t that the same with a baby as well? We have a 9 ½ year old “only child” cat, Max. I was hoping that because we have so much love for Max, he would have no problem with a new puppy in the house! Boy, did I have another thing coming!

When Max met Amelia for the first time, he hissed and promptly ran to the bedroom, where he stayed under the covers for a week! His whole world was upside down.  I am happy to report that for the first time last night, Max and Amelia were sleeping on the couch together. Max is still unsure of Amelia, but he’s warming up.  

My Conclusions
Amelia will be 12 weeks old soon, and we know we still have a long road ahead of us. Casey and I have to be on the same page when it comes to discipline.  If we aren’t, Amelia gets mixed messages and in the long run, training will be an even longer process.  I’m sure we’ll have to be a united front when we have kids as well.

On one hand, I get exhausted just thinking about how much we’ll have to talk about things, but on the other hand I can’t wait to do that because I know our marriage will be stronger in the end.  (If the lack of sleep doesn’t kill us first!) I am so glad that we have decided to embark on puppyhood before having a baby.  I know that having a puppy is challenging us to be better parents.

 -posted by Miss Anna, whose Facebook status says that she currently has a puppy snoring on the couch!

In order to develop balance and stability, babies age 1-2 should practice walking in different directions and in different patterns. Non-walkers begin to develop the sense of balance by experiencing varied movements in a grown up’s arms.
 

For your walker, pull the car out of your garage. Take some sidewalk chalk and draw all sorts of different kinds of lines on the floor. Play follow the leader and have fun walking, running, jumping and tiptoeing on the lines. Be sure to change leaders, and let your child lead when he or she has the hang of the game. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your child will catch on.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose middle child Rob had a very clear preference to be held and rocked upside down when he was a baby. No small wonder he now is loving being a gymnast! 

Remember my new-mom expectations I told you about yesterday?

As I gained experience, my expectations became more realistic and my confidence grew.  I even had a few memorable breakthroughs. One day, I was attending the hospital’s baby-parent class with other nervous new parents. I was trying in vain to keep my fussy infant happy while a seasoned mom answered our questions, her contented baby snoozing in her baby sling. I looked around, suddenly noticing there was not one mom under the age of 35 in that room. Where were they? I mused. Out enjoying their babies; not in here stressing about how to be a perfect parent came the answer. I left and never went back!

Is there any way for well-meaning, committed parents to fully escape the grasp of unrealistic expectations?  I honestly don’t know. The hounds of unrealistic expectations continue to nip at my heels to this day!  Perhaps it’s harder for those of us who tend naturally toward idealism.  We’re hard-wired to shoot high.

Nevertheless, I believe it is possible to temper expectations with truth. Try this exercise:

When you feel some disequilibrium, write out your expectations.
I should always know what to do.
I need uninterrupted sleep every night or I can’t have a good day.
I’m a better mom if I give birth naturally.
Good parents are never upset with their kids.

 The power of unrealistic expectations often lies in their hidden nature.  When we put light on them, whether on paper or talking with a friend, we see them more objectively. We often realize how ridiculous they are.

The next step is to rewrite realistic expectations:
I have plenty of time and resources to find out what to do.  There’s no rush or shame in that process.
I can be tired and have a good day.
My goal is to deliver a healthy baby.  It’s not really about me as a mother.
As a human being, I have permission to be human.  When I blow it, I can model to my kids how to ask for forgiveness, a life skill they will need to possess.

Expectations have a powerful influence on our parenting experience.  If we can get a handle on troublesome unrealistic expectations and replace them with realistic expectations, we’ll find lots of emotional energy diverted from stressing out to enjoying to the fullest the amazing gift of being a parent.  And that is a goal worthy of any idealist!

-posted by Donna Detweiler who was happy to ditch some of her silly expectations after seeing them on paper.

When my children were preschool age, I was overwhelmed more often than I care to admit!  Each day demanded lots of energy, flexibility and creativity.  On most days, I could hit two out of the three above.  But the insidious culprit that often stole my joy and peace was an invisible, powerful force called expectations.

Expectations are preconceived ideas about how something should or will happen.  When I visit the dentist, I expect some discomfort and I’m usually right. When I schedule a hair appointment, I expect Karin to be there and she usually is. 

Expectations can be realistic or unrealistic.  It is realistic to expect Karin and the dentist to be there.  If I knew Karin always ran late, I would either adjust my expectations or go somewhere else! 

Unrealistic expectations can be more troublesome.  I still remember going to the orthodontist at age 16, expecting this to be the long-awaited day he would remove my braces. I was sorely disappointed when they had to be on another 4 weeks.  No, I was spitting mad! When I got married, I expected my husband to wash all the family cars like my Dad did.  This too has proven to be an unrealistic expectation!

Whether our expectations are realistic or unrealistic, we experience disequilibrium when they go unmet.  Disequilibrium is a feeling of discomfort that can range from no big deal to mildly annoyed to full blown anger and frustration.  Our response to the disequilibrium depends on our personality, maturity and how invested we are in that expectation.

As a 30-something, later-married, post-professional career, new-stay-at-home mom, I was doomed to have high expectations from the start.  Over the years of waiting to be a parent, I’d developed a mental composite of the ideal parent I wanted to be.

To make matters worse, I’d been working with college students, a mostly babyless crowd for the past years.  I had way too much theory and way too little experience.  It was a perfect recipe for disequilibrium.  And boy, did it come when I finally had my own real baby in my arms.

Here was my new-mom list:
I expected to be able to nurse effortlessly.
I expected to get sleep.
I expected to have a magic touch when he cried.
I expected to be calm and confident all of the time.
I didn’t expect to feel lonely.
I didn’t expect to feel so afraid to make a mistake.
I didn’t expect to feel so much pressure to make his life wonderful.

I suspect these might sound familiar to a few of you.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who encourages you to write down your parenting expectations before you read the rest of the story tomorrow.