(no subject)

[liralen]

This morning, when Jet woke up at 6, I went upstairs, in the dark, to cuddle with him for a bit. He decided he was awake and didn't want to go back to sleep, so he played with his PlaySkool aquarium for a while, a musicbox cow (pull it's leg and it plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"), and fiddled with a music box whose batteries had run out. I probably fell asleep while he was doing that.

Next thing I know, he's standing next to me, bent down, and tapping gently on my head. When he sees I'm awake he asks, "Momma tired?"

"Uhm... yeah. Momma's tired."

"Okay. You sweep. I go downstairs." (Jet still can't say l's, yet)

"Uhm..."

Next thing I know, he has the little, clear box of all the screwdriver heads and a handle along with an assortment of AA's, AAA's, and 9-volt batteries in his pajamas pocket and he's settling down to unscrew the battery lid to the dead music box. Oh, god, a child of engineers... that screwed down battery door is supposed to keep kids OUT of the battery compartment, and here he is, two-years-old and taking it as a matter-of-fact that that's just what you do to get something to work. Of course, he had to get me to figure out which batteries the thing took... but still...

Comments

[traveller-blues.livejournal.com]

Smart kid. :) But I also get the idea he's very good at being conscientious and moral and non-destructive. Whatever you're doing to raise him, keep doing it.

-Traveller

[liralen.livejournal.com]

I wish I could actually say that it's from our doing... or maybe our not-doing... or something... but there's nothing we've done specifically with regards to that.

It's like Jet cleaning up stuff. We've certainly encouraged him when he does clean stuff up but it's not like we've taught him to *do* that or that he ought to, he just seems to feel that that's simply what one does... or something like that. I'll keep encouraging his sense of that; but I'd feel very odd taking credit for something he does himself, through some motivation in his mind.

[umetaro.livejournal.com]

As a former child who took apart everything and anything I could get my hands on, I have one suggestion. Teach him about electricity early on. To this day, whenever I see a cheap beige colored lamp, I unconsciously start twitching.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Christmas and the Christmas lights was an excellent opportunity to teach Jet about "Things that are plugged-in."

He watched, quite solemnly, as we did our Electric Pickle show-and-tell, where we have two bare wires wrapped around two forks that are stuck in two ends of a pickle on a wooden cutting board. When we plugged it in he peered at it quite mildly as it glowed, arc'ed, jumped, and spat sparks and awful smelling smoke.

He has not touched plugs or anything he's found plugged in, since. We'll see if it sticks, long-term, or not.

[archangelbeth]

It likely will.

Wow.

And wow to the unscrewing, too. The minxness hasn't managed to do that. Perhaps I'm over-fretting over her. Dunno. O:/

[liralen.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Probably over-fretting.

Jet's really into the mechanical stuff, and nearly none of his friends of like age or even a couple years older are able to concentrate the way he does or do dexter things the way he does. He's just weird. The parents of his friends are just really glad their kids don't do the things he does.

Like the instant he got his hands on the magnetic 'key' to our solid, physical magnetic locks to the poison-filled cupboards, he slapped it, immediately, over the area for the magnetic opening. Luckily, he just didn't know he HAD to pull it when it clicks the first time. Timing isn't right, but he'd seen us open that one cupboard he can't and damned if he doesn't know just what to do with it. In many ways it means I just have to watch him that much closer.

[carneggy.livejournal.com]

My mom tells the story of how she came home one day to find my then-5-year-old brother sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by the strewn pieces of the vaccuum cleaner. Her initial impulse to freak completely out was muted by the sudden realization that he was in fact working on putting it back together...

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Wow! Yeah!!

I know *that* feeling.

Like the feeling when I come down to see cracker crumbs strewn everywhere, and I have to mute the desire to freak out when I see Jet's hauled out his kid-sized vacuum cleaner and is quite cheerfully vacuuming up all the crumbs he'd made...

... but more so. Jet hasn't taken apart anything we haven't been able to put back together again, on the most part. A few broken toys, but nothing truly valuable, yet.