Today's first Up is easy. I went out after dinner to a jam session with two other ACWE musicians -- a sax player, who picked up a clarinet for a while tonight, a percussionist (primarily xylophone and marimba), who has been focusing on keys, and myself, trained in flute, but self-taught on guitar on, well, guitar!
We even had a random dude from Minnesota who was in town for a job (and who our sax player picked up on CraigsList) sit in with us on lead.
It was a really great rehearsal, and most everything fell into place. Played lots of bluesy stuff -- Derek and the Dominoes, Otis Redding, Van Morrison and the like. We could use a rhythm section to hold us down, though. Anyone want to play bass? I'll loan you mine!
The second Up I am going to blatantly Pollyanna. Our 4-year-old revealed tonight at dinner that he's being teased at preschool. Apparently his best buddy there has started calling him
"baby" and "stupid." Mama-bear instincts make me, of course, want to confront this kid, or at least have a chat with his mom, but you know what? It's not going to solve a thing. Instead, I told Little Bee that he needs to put a stop to it himself, and that there is power in words. I advised him to tell his friend that what he is saying isn't nice, and that it hurts Little Bee's feelings. If that doesn't appeal to this kid's sympathy and put a stop to it, he should be more assertive, and say, "No, Skippy*, you're wrong. I'm not stupid." or "No, I am not a baby." And if that doesn't put a stop to it, that he should speak to his teacher privately (not running or screeching or tattling) and let her know that this is going on.
I'm hoping that this will be the first of many lessons Little Bee will learn on how to empower himself. I'm hoping this one turns out well for him. And I'm hoping that for the time being, I can keep mama-bear under wraps.
*Names are all changed here to protect identities, in case you haven't noticed!
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Interesting, we had a similair issue with our 8 year old this week. A kid in the day camp group he was going to was really bothering him, so when I took him the next day my wife asked me to speak to the adults there. I said no, he was going to handle it. On the way we talked and I told him how he should handle it and if that didn't work, calmly go find an adult. I wanted to see how my son handled it, kind of nudging him out of the nest.
ReplyDeleteTurns out he did fine, told the kid to back off, and soon after an adult intervened before my son had a chance to go to them. ( Apparently the kid was really off the wall and they were watching for it. ) I think it was a good learning experience for when my boy has to handle the REAL jerks in the world.
"Helicoptor parenting" does not do children any favors.