How to win friends and influence people

Facilitating toddler interactions can be quite challenging.  If one child has a toy and there is another child in the room, they will often want the same toy even though there are dozens of others to choose from.  The "toyless" child might then grab the toy from the first child, resulting in crying and looks to a nearby adult to correct the injustice.  When Tani was 1.5 years old, if he took a toy from a child, rationally explaining how it wasn't nice and to give it back often didn't work.  Now he understands a lot better and I think knows he shouldn't do it.  We were at a birthday party last Sunday and two girls were playing with a small toy kitchen.  Tani, who is 30% bigger than the next largest child even though they're the same age, swooped in and brushed the two girls away and started playing with the kitchen.  "Tani, that's not nice.  They were there first, let them play with it".  He reluctantly moved out of the way and a microsecond later was on to something else.

In Tani's daycare, if a child bites another child the teachers write up the incident and send home a sheet to both the vicitim and perpetrator's parents but won't identify the children involved.  That way the parents know their child bit someone or got bit but don't know who the other party was.  When Tani turned two, he bit one of his classmates.  By then he was talking so I asked him who he bit.  "Devora" he said matter-of-factly.  "She cried".  (Note names in this posting other than Tani's have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty).  Melissa asked his teacher the next day about the incident.  She smiled and wouldn't confirm who but said the girl was running around the previous afternoon proudly telling everyone "Tani bit me!".   A couple of weeks ago Tani got bit for the first time - or at least it was the first time we got a white form explaining Tani was bit.  These forms also state when it happened, what was going on at the time, and what was done about it.  For example, "at 10 AM Tani bit a child who was trying to play on the same toy.  We explained to Tani 'it's not OK to bite your friends'".  So I asked Tani who bit him.  "Orli" he said again matter-of-factly.  "I cried."  I recalled that about a month ago during bedtime Tani was telling me that Orli had been misbehaving and the teachers had to tell her not to hit her friends.  He said, "Orli hit Shoshana.  Shoshana cried."

Believe it or not after reading all of the above, the kids have great affection for each other.  When I drop Tani off at daycare, often the kids who are there will happily shout "Tani!" or "Nani!" if they can't quite pronounce his name yet.  Luckily toddlers forgive and forget quite quickly and if they remember a bite or hit it seems to be remembered either fondly or as a noteworthy event, not something to be resented.

School bus

When I put Tani to bed at night, he always requests the song "Wheels on the Bus".   A couple of months ago it morphed into "Wheels on the School Bus".  The song is a narrative (sung to the tune of "The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round") of how students wait for the bus in the morning, ride to school, the bus goes to wait and then picks the students up after school and takes them home, and then they go play, eat dinner, get ready for bed, go to sleep, wake up and repeat the process the next day.  I often sing several rounds of this until he either falls asleep or asks for a different song.  A couple of weeks ago he requested that the school bus driver wanted a snack, so I sang "The school bus driver has a snack, has a snack, has a snack, the school bus driver has a snack, of Cheerios and milk" (I think I had originally picked pretzels, cheese and crackers but Tani changed the snack).  He likes this verse and if I forget it while I'm singing he is sure to remind me.  This week he requested that I add a line that the school bus driver wears a bib when he eats his snack.  So the line goes "The school bus driver wears a bib, wears a bib, wears a bib, the school bus driver wears a bib when he eats his Cheerios and milk for snack."

Tani has been into a "Real Wheels" video that Grandma Susan bought him which is all about buses.  The video is for children 3-8 because it is mostly talking and not much music or songs.  When Tani was two (as opposed to 2 years and 2.5 months now) he had no patience for videos with a lot of talking.  Now he can follow the story and enjoys them.  So this bus video's narrator is a funny guy named "Bus driver Dave" who tells the viewer all about buses.  Dave shows up at bus driving school ready to learn to drive a bus, but he's late so he has to wash the school bus with a hose and mop.  He squirts himself "accidently" in the face with the hose and makes all kinds of faces at having to wash this big bus.  Tani thinks the whole incident is hilarious.  It's fun to watch him watching the video.