One of the first things as a parent I looked forward to was the moment diapers were no longer part of the shopping list. I dreaded getting that call at work from the wife, to not forget to get a box of pampers, I swore she must have been using them for origami or something, cause I got that call like every other day. While my son went up in pamper size I’d cheer and cry at the same time. I cheered for the fact the the bigger the pamper size the closer we were to parting and saying good bye to pampers forever, it didn’t help that my lil man was a preemie and size N fit him like an oversized trash bag when he came home. After every size up I’d cry also, cause the box would get smaller yet the price remained the same, and I swear I was still buying boxes at the same rate. Anyway soon enough the pamper stage was nothing but a memory (my lil man took about a week to potty train), the next stage which I heard so much about was just beginning, the verbal marathon.
The big difference between the diaper runs and the verbal marathon was the pacing. The diaper
run was like speed racing, which started with a bang, the moment you arrive home with your new born giving you no time to do anything but react, the verbal marathon is quite the opposite starting slow and steady. This slow and steady pace caught me off guard, I was enthralled and cheered my son on as he began with his first words, which by the way was da, I think the wife is still upset about that. She feels that after walking around pregnant with him that she earned the rights to his first sound being ma, sorry bout that though, at least you got second place sweetie. Like any proud parents we cheered him on unaware of what was to come. Me and the wife kept cheering him on as the verbal marathon continued, thing is we eventually forgot about the marathon. Our son caught a second wind as he went into the mid stretch of the verbal marathon. This second wind was unlike the first stretch, where he was just feeling his way, with each and every new word as he mastered and understood them, nah the second stretch was him flexing his verbal mastery. He was putting together short and simple sentences which was nice, but the sentences went from things such as what he wanted, like, and didn’t like to why. I’m pretty sure any parent reading this, knows “WHY”, has a tendency to throw a wrench in any conversation, you have with your child. Nothing worse than being in the middle of some task and telling you child to do something and they respond with why. Don’t get me wrong, why is great since is show’s you that your child is thinking and trying to make sense of what is happening, but as a parent at times I don’t feel a need for a discussion and having my son just comply with direction would just make things easier, at least for me. The questions still are raised by my son and we have taken a cheer leading approach to it. Yes it can be VERY exhausting to cheer your child on during the second stretch of the verbal marathon stage but it’s worth it. See my son is now seven years old and we continue to cheer him on, we have no idea when this verbal marathon will end or when he’ll go into the last stretch of just cruising to the finish line, at times the questions are fast and furious or just overwhelming we have no immediate response for him, such as when he asked “what is ejaculation?”.
I’ve always been a cheer leader for my son in his verbal marathon not by choice, but more so by habit. See I’ve never been one to follow the person in front of me just because they were in front. I guess I got that from one of my sisters growing up, she would end our conversation if she asked me why and my answer was because. To her it wasn’t about whether my answer was right or wrong but that I be able to explain it in my own words not a teachers words, or the article I may have just read. She said if your response to something is because is means you truly don’t understand what your saying and might as well just read aloud where you got the information from. Well that wasn’t exactly what she told me, but, that’s pretty much what I’ve gotten out of it. So with that thought process every time my son ask a question I see it as his attempt to learn something he doesn’t fully understand. Instead of giving him a simple answer I respond with a question of my own. I’m proud to say I don’t often give him a direct answer, actually rarely. This exchange between us is a learning experience for not only him but myself. While giving a child or an adult for that matter a direct answer speeds up the exchange between the two, but nothing is learned in the process. Often I see parents that don’t realize just what their own child knows or are capable of, because every time the child ask a question they rather give an appropriate yet direct response.
Let me use my son as an example, he’s a pretty rational and also an abstract self thinker in terms of how he goes about doing things. How do I know this well because when I ask him a question and he gives me a response I ask him why, and how. This always leads me into some of his abstract thoughts of why, it’s even surprises me since even before asking him why or how I tend to have my thoughts on how or why he got the response he did, but soon after asking him why I am face with a totally different view. My son is very good in math, he’s in second grade and while his class is doing basic addition and subtraction of three digit numbers, he himself is working on multiplication (he came home and asked me to find a website to help teach him multiplication, I kid you not) and is fully aware of positive and negative number and knows where they go on a number line. Every now and then I give him random verbal addition question, this particular question came during a commercial break. I said ”Hey SLMB, what’s 8+7= come on quick, quick?” He surely answered quickly with 15. Yeah he’s working on multiplication but it is always good to back and go through older concepts, sort of like a refresher. So I asked him how did he know that? I thought he would say cause he’s memorized adding and subtracting all the smaller number or something to that affect, but what he told me was that “I know 8+8 is 16 so instead of adding he subtracted 1 from 8 because it would give him seven, and he know 8+8=16 so 8+7 would be 15. While my sons response to the question was right I probed him to understand why and how, and it proved that he is not depending on what he has memorized but finding his way to simplify problem for him to solve it, ensuring me that he’s not just giving me a preprogrammed response from memorizing. This also helps when I ask him other questions, because I can honestly have an idea of how he may think about the question posed to him, making our conversations more engaging. This helps no matter what subject we may discus with our son. The only side effect of this is now our son needs to understand everything, thus me and the wife believe this verbal marathon will continue way past into his adulthood. Which I don’t mind you can’t correct anything with out asking the proper questions. As long as my son ask questions, he will always be seeking knowledge, and it’s that knowledge that he seeks which he will ultimately base his decisions off of in the future. So I continue to cheer him on his verbal marathon.
Side note: My son has an extensive library with books on all types of subject matter, we encourage him whether or not the book is age appropriate since we will gladly read it to him, and one of his book is on human anatomy and we’ve gotten up to reproductive section, which he went ahead and looked over himself, bring us to where he found the word ejaculation. So with that being said question time.
Parents, how would you explain ejaculation to a seven year old? How do you deal with question marathon stage? Do you think the verbal marathon is appreciated in school especially in grades two and up? Let me know what you think!
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First off, it’s great to see a father blog about parenthood. As for the question, please let me know when you have an answer – hehe.
Actually I think I would have to say. “Why do you ask?”
Someone told me with younger kids, give them the least info possible to start and then see if they need more. Sometimes they aren’t ready for the full explanation.
This is probably not that helpful!
Why do I ask what the first question about ejaculation, or the others? The first one not sure if there’s a correct response since it’s dependent on the child and the parents, and their comfort on question that will arise. I know the discussion with my son will become quite long since the side effect of letting him always ask question is not being able to choose when not to ask question. Wouldn’t want him to ever really thing twice about asking anything. So we told him we’d him it wasn’t a topic for us to talk about yet, but we’d wait for a weekend to talk about it as a family. Most likely we’ll talk about reproduction in the animal world instead of how people do it first. For the people part it won’t be extensively detailed just enough for him to apply what we tell him about animals over, and merge both together.