Over the past several months, Fisher has developed a very keen interest in machines. This past January, I couldn’t pull him away from watching a guy use a snowblower on the substantial driveway of one of our neighbour’s homes. And now he loves to watch trucks, buses, vans, tractors and even cars go by, and he likes to feel the wheels of vehicles whenever he gets a chance, figuring out how they work on his toys, already making engine sounds when he pushes his little cars along the floor. This interest comes straight from him; I have subjected him to all kinds of playthings, not just male-oriented toys. He still loves it when we read to him, and those sappy “Franklin” stories are among his favourite books, but he also likes to climb, pushing the threshold of his agility, and turning things over in his hands to see how they work.
My dad said that when he was a child, he would take things apart and try to put them back together. I think Fisher inherited this trait (as well as my dad’s ears!), and it’s fun watching the interest in his eyes as he figures something out. The best thing I can do right now is to let him take that interest as far as it will go because not only does it keep his attention, but it also builds up his thought processes and connections. And best of all, he’s getting really good at deciding where he should start to uncover the mechanisms behind machines.
Yesterday my sister and I took Fisher to a local mall for a bit of shopping. We passed these coin-operated rides, and Fisher enjoyed sitting in the car and pretending to drive. We didn’t have the right change to get it to actually move around, so when we took him out of it and promised to come back, he got really upset and tried for quite a while to escape our grasp and get back to the car ride. After some shopping, we made our way back to the rides with some Loonies in hand and eagerly put Fisher back in the car ride. We turned it on, but he was non-plussed by the experience. I then put him into the motor boat ride and slipped my coin in, and once we finally got it unstuck and moving, he didn’t seem to enjoy the time he spent there either. So with one more coin in my pocket, I tried to put him back in the car ride, and he would have none of it. He kept walking around it, turning the wheels and trying to figure out what was up with this completely unpredictable vehicle. I tried a couple more times to see if he wanted to ride the car again, and he simply refused. He wasn’t scared, he was just puzzled, and understandably so when you think about it. He likes to ride in the car and he likes to ride in his stroller most of the time. Both vehicles get him somewhere when he’s in them, with scenery to observe while he travels. The fake car bopped around (it was a jeep moving as though it were jostling through the jungle), but didn’t take him anywhere and didn’t make any normal car sounds or movements, leaving Fisher unamused and confused. This event reminded me of one important child-rearing tenet I take quite seriously: children, especially very young ones, are not easily fooled and we should never disrespect their innate sense of “rightness” by attempting to fool them. Eric has tried various times to trick Fisher into eating something that we felt was good for him, or just to eat something when he didn’t want to eat anything, and it has never worked. Not only that, but I myself felt the fool for thinking we could possible know what Fisher needs better than he himself does.
So, it seems that our unschooling experience with Fisher has finally and truly begun, now that he has shown real interest in something. And as hard as it is sometimes allowing him to lead the way when I have things like time constraints and my own interests to consider, I’ve already noticed a difference in my perspective. I mean honestly, I’m at home with Fisher and don’t feel I need to be cleaning the house every minute, so what else do I have to do but to raise this incredible child? Not a whole hell of a lot, I tell ya. I must admit that I still struggle a lot with my conditioned reaction of saying “no” when I feel the least bit of resistance to going along with Fisher’s needs/wishes, but I’m conscious of it and catch myself “in the act”, as it were. Often I’m saying “no” for really no good reason except that what he wants might be ever so slightly inconvenient (and usually it isn’t even that, I’m just saying “no” for apparently no reason at all), which is a remnant of my own upbringing. In the process of learning to become the mother I want to be for Fisher, I’m also a more forgiving of my own short-comings, which I want for him as well. With each day, we work at each other a little more, finding tiny paths to enlightenment as we grow in and out beyond our relationship.
