Archive for April, 2008
Empathy
The Goddard School For Early Childhood Development is very big on nurturing the “whole child.” Each day we get a report where Natalie’s teachers list daily activities meant to teach and encourage skills in the following categories: Language Arts, Motor Skills, Cognitive Development, Social Science, Creative Art, Nature Studies, Music/Movement, and Self-help/Life Skills. When you look at the sample activities, it’s clear that although these things are all important and clearly the Goddard School cares about children and their development, the Goddard “Philosophy” is as much a marketing technique as pedagogy.
Having said that, we obviously agree with the “whole child” philosophy—it’s one of the reasons we chose to send Natalie to The Goddard School. There are a lot of things we like about their program, even though it’s silly to think about a one-year-old needing “curriculum” in order to learn and develop. Here’s an example: one of the activities that falls under the Social Science category is “Hugging our sad friends to show empathy.” It may seem like an insignificant activity, but you know what? I’m glad the Goddard School is teaching kids empathy—it’s an important skill. I’d like to think that children will learn empathy and how to express emotions in healthy ways at home with their families, but I realize that many families are too emotionally stunted or dysfunctional to teach their children those critical things.
Anyway, that’s a long lead-up to explaining that we’ve never really needed to teach Natalie how to empathize. If anything, she has too much empathy. Natalie’s over-developed empathy was a problem when I used to watch Clara on a regular basis. I was often challenged with the difficult task of comforting too little babies at once, because if Clara got hurt or cried for any reason, Natalie would break into a full-on wail—even if she were perfectly content before Clara started crying. If Chris or I so much as say “ouch” or express pain or upset in any way, Natalie cries. We recently learned that Natalie has much empathy for her favorite characters in books, too.
Here’s a video of Natalie listening to one of her new favorites, Bear Snores On.
Untitled from nataliecaroline on Vimeo.
There is always at least one baby crying at any given moment at Natalie’s daycare. Hopefully being around so many kids will help Natalie learn that while a little empathy is good, she needn’t fall apart when one of her friends cries.
Yummy Vegetables
Like all toddlers, Natalie goes through stages in terms of what foods she likes and how much she wants to eat. Lucky for us, she’s pretty good about eating her veggies. I’ve always been thankful that even before she was a year, she’d eaten and liked 90% of the fruits and veggies in her book Eating the Alphabet. I caught her making some pretty funny faces today at lunch while eating asparagus, broccoli, tomatoes, and cucumbers (plus pasta and cheddar cheese!).
Natalie likes to share and insisted that I take a bite of my asparagus while she ate hers:
Showing off her tongue:
Tomatoes are a consistent favorite:
Natalie couldn’t get enough cucumbers last summer…now she makes this face every time she eats one:
While her expression led me to believe that she is no longer a cucumber fan, she asked for more and ate a few pieces, making that disgusted face with each bite!
Veggie lover:
The old “see”food joke:
Playdate with Clara
Between Diane and I going back to full-time work and Natalie and Clara both being sick so often this winter, the girls haven’t seen each other for a long time. We finally got together last night, and it was quite a reunion!
Natalie was so happy to see her friend that she gave Clara a big kiss:
We took them out for pizza and then to the playground at dusk. They had a blast running around in the twilight:
Climbing:
And sliding together:
