I really like reading the Your __-Year-Old series every year, because in just the first 20 pages, I am usually convinced that whatever strange new phase I have been worrying about in Kate’s behavior, and calculating future therapy bills that will surely follow, is “developmentally appropriate” and I move on with my life for the next year, at least convinced that she is “normal.” One of the other highlights in these books is the fact that they are over a quarter century old, leading to giggles over the outfits the kids in the photographs are wearing, and some hilarious differences between parenting then and now. In Your Four-Year-Old, the authors assert that most four year olds are ready to run small errands for their parents, as long as they don’t have to cross a major street. Ha! I can’t even leave my two locked in the car for 30 seconds to hit the library drop box without fear of child protective services descending. What a strange and sheltered generation they will be.
Search This Classical Life:
categories:
in the middle of:
read in 2016:
Paterson, The Great Gilly Hopkins
Sloan, Ajax Penumbra 1969
Mandel, Station Eleven
Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty
Shakespeare, As You Like It
Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saintsarchives:
oh, yes, I got a big chuckle over that one, too. We live on the corner of two major streets, and even if an errand didn’t involve crossing one of those streets, there’s no way on earth I’d let him wander around alone. And even though many neighbors are around during the day, none of them are outside and NONE of them would watch out for him.
Honestly, though, I’m not sure I could have run an errand for my mom at 4, either. With my older sister, sure, but by myself? We lived in a small town, but even so, I’m not sure I would have been able to find my way back home.
I have Charlotte run next door to drop things at our neighbor’s house… that’s about the extent of her “errand” running though.
*L* Love the pics of little kids in leisure suits.
These books have become part of a little tradition of breaking out the appropriate one on each birthday. . . I rarely read the whole thing, but the bits I do read are SO helpful in remembering and recognizing that my children are growing and changing and have to experience each stage along the way.