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Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Mom accused of tying shoes, zipping coat
Sometimes moms do things without realizing they are doing them. I don’t mean the audible conversations with ourselves or hiding in the bathroom for a few minutes of peace and quiet.
I mean things like tying our kids’ shoes for them.
I’m guilty of that. I was convicted by my son’s Kindergarten teacher.
“He really needs to know how to tie shoe laces.”
“But, his shoes have a Velcro closure…” I said, temporarily confused.
If he doesn’t have to learn cursive writing, why bother with tying shoe laces, right? Wrong.
Quite honestly, it never crossed my mind. My son always just slipped his shoes on and ran out the door. We actually had to purchase him a pair of shoes that required laces in order to accomplish this task assigned to him (us) by his teacher.
After some practice, my son was tying his shoes with no trouble, although he prefers now forcing them off and on without taking the time to tie them up correctly.
This same teacher now has my younger son in her class. Again, she had to convict me of my unconscious wrong-doing in order for me to realize I was doing it.
I received an email with a subject line: Zipping of coat
Referring to my precocious 6-year-old, she wrote: “Your son and I have an ongoing joke. He keeps saying he can’t (zip his coat) and I keep telling him he can. He says he is not going to practice and I told him I would email your parents. He told me today, ‘You said that the last time and you forgot. I bet you forget this time too.’ So here I am emailing you about helping him learn to zip his coat. Make sure you mention this to him. (I would love to see his reaction.)”
After I lifted my jaw off of the floor, appalled by the gall of my dear, sweet lovable child to say such a thing to his teacher; I perched myself in a kitchen chair and waited for him to walk in the door, home from school.
As he strolled in and began removing his unzipped coat, I said, “Leave it on.” and gave him my best death-ray glare.
“Oh-no! Did you get a note from my teacher?” he asked.
We spent the next hour zipping and unzipping his winter coat. We even practiced on other coats and jackets until he had it down to a fine art and could virtually do it with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back (well, maybe not that.)
This lesson in coat zipping - another thing I had been doing without giving it a second thought (because we are usually scrambling to get out the door to the school bus) - was followed by a lesson in “how to talk to appropriately your teacher.”
I’ve been paying more attention since this happened, trying to make my kids be more independent and not do all of the little things for them.
Next up on the life lessons list: fingers are not utensils.
Contact this contributing writer at Motherhoodcolumn@yahoo.com or facebook.com/motherhoodCTC
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