Kindergarten Wisdom

I'm an expert baby bather.  I love to take a new little baby and a tiny, soft washcloth, and clean every crevice of ear and neck and make a baby sweet-smelling again.  All, of course, while cooing and smiling back and forth with the baby.

Babies need everything done for them.  That can be exhausting, and there are few breaks from that constant care-taking, but, even when super tired or harried, I've always enjoyed those moments of taking that care of someone so precious, and being needed that much.

I've enjoyed it so much that, truth be told, I have still been bathing my baby, until recently.

No, I don't cradle his whole body in my forearms as I lay him on his towel and coo in his face.  But I have still been washing his face and ears to make sure they really get clean, and soaping up those darling, though often bruised-from-playing-limbs.  There's a practical side to this--it takes less time to get him through the tub, and it uses much less of the body wash.

But, recently, I made myself explain to him that he should start with his face--before there is soap on the washcloth, and showed him how to spread the washcloth over the palm of his hand and add just enough soap for the other parts.  My heart prickled a little as I did this, because it meant I would never again bathe one of my children, but I kept my voice calm and business-like.

I'm sure I could have kept bathing him for another year or so, but there comes a time when a mom has to stop, well, mothering.  One thing at a time.

I remember when I read in a parenting book that the job of mothers is to teach their children to be their own mothers.  This statement shocked me at the time.  I had only toddlers then, and they needed so, so much from me.  And I needed them to need me, too, a little.

But it's true.  A mother who doesn't teach her children to stand on her or his own feet ultimately fails.

So, one thing at a time, we teach, and we let go.

On the next bath night, I asked my small son if he wanted help with his bath.  There are practical reasons for letting him bathe himself, too--taking less of my time being chief among them.  But I think I was secretly hoping he would say he needed me.

Or at least wanted me.

Instead, he came down the hall toward me and the bathroom saying confidently, "No, I can do it myself."  And he did.  I turned around and went back into my bedroom, and let him.

He joyously sang a song from a movie that the family had been watching.  His brother in a nearby room joyously sang a different song from that movie.  It was a good moment.

During the next bath, I happened to be in the same room for a few minutes while he busied himself washing his own chubby, banged-up limbs, and he started a precious stream-of-consciousness monologue for me.

I learned that his favorite colors are green, gold, yellow, silver, red, black, bronze, and blue.  (Olympic year, much?)  But red is his "favorite favorite color," because of Gryffindor. 

He then informed me that dimes are a centimeter and nickles are an inch.  I'd never noticed.  Had you?

We then discussed whether or not "my" is a word.  His teacher had told him a few days ago that all words have either an a, e, i, o, or u in them, and that any combination of words without one of those letters was not a real word.

He had apparently lapped up this new "rule" and given it a special place at the table of his memory, because he neatly served it up two days later and informed the teacher that the "my" on the spelling list was not a word.  This child lives for rules.  He still breaks into tears if he forgets to wear his pajamas for two nights before putting them in his hamper.

He chirped out the "sometimes y" rule he had since learned.

He reported having made eight friends, and named them in the order they were acquired.  And he said, "Every day of my life just gets better and better."

I found out he knows it's his seventeenth day of school, and remembers what he learned on each day.  He's taking this Kindergarten stuff very, very seriously.

Which will serve him well if he keeps it up.  While standing on his own feet.