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NONNA'S THOUGHTS

Mark the Milestones

7/17/2023

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Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

"I was surprised."

Little Guy turned 5 this week! His birthday party included many friends from Pre-K & their families, as well as other friends and family. He wanted to be surprised, but he also wanted to know he was going to be surprised.  So, about 10 minutes before guests arrived I was able to take Little Guy for a drive until MamaDada texted they were ready.  Gosh, was he so excited!

We parked back at home. Walked hand-in-hand through the gate to the front door and knocked. I could hear on the other side of the door, people saying, "Hide!" and "Let's all jump out on 1-2-3."  At the same time, Little Guy was saying, "I hope I'm surprised."  "I think I'll be surprised."  And I'm just cracking up as the bystander to all this preparation to be thrilled!

Little Guy opened the door, stepped through and there was this moment of silence. Everyone - including the birthday boy - holding their breath until his friends and family jumped out of their hiding places to cry, "Surprise!"  And as everyone's laughing, I hear Little Guy with a huge smile say quietly, "I was surprised."

Everything else about the celebration was icing on the cake - he unconsciously recognized the instant - the moment marking the milestone.

A Habit that Says "I see you."

People, time moves quickly. Make time to mark the milestones!

Marking milestones may require a new habit of looking for moments to celebrate. Parties or bigger events are important for the major milestones, but unnecessary - and impractical - to let your child know you see her, you see what she accomplished today. A simple "hey, good job" or "wow, I'm proud of what you just did" may be all the moment requires.

And, hopefully, you will hear her say, "I was surprised."  But just the first time you practice this habit - with lots of practice on your part, soon, she may be able to recognize the moment and tell you about it!

And that's a milestone to celebrate!                
Nonna                        

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Resilience

2/27/2023

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Wrapping up February

Sick days are hard. But when the sick days turn into a sick month, it becomes a bit of long slog for everyone in the family! My Daughter and family have experienced colds, ear infections, pink eye, fevers, vomiting, etc. since the beginning of this month and I am sure she is ready to wrap it up! 

Wisdom: Leaping Forward

Did you know the verb form of resilience is resile - me, neither!  Resile (ree-zil) is derived from the Latin word resilire which means to leap back.

Leaping back is certainly an aspirational image for practicing resilience, but sometimes we can only look in the direction of a leap away from our difficulties and challenges. And all of us need to know where we are going to leap - just returning to a starting point does not really capture the full idea of resilience as being able to withstand life's challenges while moving on.  Resilience is a bit more like Michael Kane's "use the difficulty" approach to life - whatever it throws at you, use it!

While I would not go so far as to say my Daughter and family have leapt back yet to pre-sicky days, I can say they are ready to move forward. Even now, while still sick, Daughter reflects on weeks of sickness and how to prevent or minimize so many illnesses in a month's time. This is a lived-resilience - one might even say it's the wisdom to leap forward rather than leap back!


Whatever life is throwing at you just now, I hope you are able to move forward and that you are supported by family & friends.      
Hang on, February is just about wrapped up,   

Nonna                        

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Use the Difficulty

1/17/2023

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Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash

A Simple Idea

The Boss recently shared with me a short clip from a 2018 Charlie Rose interview with Michael Kane about "using the difficulty."  His anecdote from early in his acting career is quite humorous, but his acting philosophy has not wavered since: any time we are faced with a difficulty or problem, we can use it to our advantage.

Although Sir Michael was speaking about the craft of acting, he dropped into the conversation that he uses this philosophy in his personal life and in raising his children! 

Wow.  Can you imagine how resilient, how creative, how strong our children would become if we purposefully modeled this simple idea?

"No" becomes "Yes, if..."
"I cannot" becomes "I could if..."
"They told me no" becomes "What can I do to get a yes?"
"It's in my way, so I'm stuck" becomes "How do I go around the obstacle?"

Yes, sometimes a No is a No and there's not much we can do about it; but, even then, we can try to learn something advantageous or beneficial about the particular No.

Frazzle!

Just this last weekend, Little Guy and Noodle stayed overnight with us and while not our first foray in watching both overnight, definitely the most rewarding for everyone involved - the kiddos slept through the night and MamaDad celebrated their anniversary with alone time together!

While here Little Guy discovered our board game Frazzle! under the bed in the guest room - why was he looking under the bed? It's a longer story... 

Anyway, he was fascinated with the bopping gavel and wanted to play the game. If you remember the Frazzle! rules, you know coming up with words that start with a specific letter for a specific category in a one-minute interval is beyond a pre-schooler's word skills.


The Boss to the Rescue!

And if anyone knows The Boss, you know he rarely takes a "no" at face value, even when it comes to games. So, rather than tell Little Guy we couldn't play the game because it would be too hard for him, we talked about the rules and Little Guy's new rules are as follows:
  • The one who holds the bopping gavel, known as The Bopper, would pick a category around the board and the other players needed to act out one word which fit the category.
  • Similar to charades, The Bopper would figure out the word and decide if it fit the category. If the word fit, then the player moved their colored cube one space forward. If the the word did not fit the category, the player did not move their cube forward.
  • All decisions made by The Bopper were final.
  • The Assistant to The Bopper - always Noodle - kept track of the Frazzle! letter cards because even if we wanted to use them, we could not get them out of her hands.

It was a great game!  But Noddle decided she needed ALL of the colored cubes on her side of the game board and Little Guy figured out you could bop The Boss - gently - to get an oversized response. Amidst all the chaotic hilarity no one seemed to mind we didn't finish the game.

It was a simple idea - how can we change the game rules so that we get to a Yes! for Little Guy?


Thank you, Boss, for rarely taking No as the final answer - even when it sometime makes me crazy!  It was a good example for our Daughters and I love seeing our Grandchildren learn similar lessons about life. You are the best,

Nonna                            

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