Heads up: This post is 14 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
In the morning, I sometimes let our helper look after L while I catch a few more minutes of sleep. Today, L came back inside the room, I sort of remembered him playing with my glasses and when I woke up, my glasses was gone! I asked L where my glasses were and to my surprise, he was hesitant to answer with his baby talk! He had that guilty look in his eyes and avoided my question! When I pressed on, he then tried to show me what he was playing and gave some baby talk about balls. I asked one more time and he finally walked to the end of the bed and pointed toward a plastic bag there, then he went to climb up the crib, trying to get into it. I checked the bag but didn’t see my glasses (I couldnt see very well), I looked around the room and then finally, I went back and picked up the bag and lo and behold, my glasses, with one arm broken off. I was a little mad, I showed it to L and asked him why he did that, and that I was not happy about what he had done. (I got a feeling that I shouldn’t be asking “why did u do that”, coz I myself didn’t answer this question truthfully as a kid! Why did I do it? ‘Coz I wanted to explore! So I think I should just stick with telling L my own feelings – sadness, frustrations, etc.)
Anyways, the fact that L showed a sense of guilt means that he already knows when he had done something that he thinks I will not be pleased about! I thought that was pretty amazing and was secretly pleased about it at the time. However, thinking back now as I’m writing this, I wonder if this is actually a bad thing. I’m worried that this will grow into hiding, lying or reluctance to share troubles with us, his parents. Perhaps what I should’ve done is to remain positive and calmly let him know that it isn’t nice to break other people’s things, but then show him that I can fix it!
Another big incident this morning happen during breakfast. Perhaps because L played with toy eggs yesterday, he said eggs when we asked him about breakfast. I asked our helper to boil an egg. When it’s done, she cracked the shell, wanting to peel it for L. (Very typical, I wish she would understand my way of teaching!) I quickly stopped her and brought the egg out in a plastic bowl, with a ceramic plate for holding the shells. L was immediately interested but he reached out cautiously, so he already expected the egg to be hot. He touched it, quickly removed his hand from it and said “Hot!”. Next I peeled the shells off and put them in the ceramic plate, L started playing with them, touching them, feeling them, trying to put them back on the egg! (That was cute.) But soon he had run out of things to do with the shells, in a blink of the eye, he tossed the plate off the table! It made a loud noise and shattered spectacularly on the floor! I could see that he was stunned! I was pretty damn frustrated and I asked him that stupid question again, “Why did you do that?!” I realized what a stupid question it was and went back to feelings & reasons mode again, telling him I wasn’t happy about the throwing and breaking of the plate, explained to him how the sharp pieces will cut his feet if he walks on the floor now, and “this is why we don’t throw glass!” I’m not sure if he really got it, but I could see that he was completely absorbed in watching the helper clean up. Afterwards, I took him to the garbage bin to show him the pieces, I took out a particularly large and sharp looking piece and showed it to him, he seemed quite scared of it.
To me, the toughest part of the whole incident is when my mom yelled at me for “not teaching my child!” (slap / punish him) I got beaten by my mom quite severely as a child, and I could never (still can’t) see the benefits of it. In this incident, I could see that he was stunned and was still observing the resulting consequences. I think if you hit a child at this point, they’ll go from the “Oh shit! That was scary! Those pieces of glass look dangerous, and the plate is gone! I can’t use it again!…” thinking, discovery mode to the “Oh fuck! I’m getting beaten again! WTF? That hurts! What can I do to make mom/dad stop hitting me?!” mode. :P
Asian parents are very afraid of “losing face” when their child misbehave, worried that others will call their children 冇家教 (no home discipline) behind their backs! But I think expecting a 2 year old boy to “behave” is more unreasonable! Still, dealing with this social pressure is one of the challenges a Reggio parent will need to face here in Asia.