Monday, April 18, 2011

if he grows up to be a garbage man, i won't lie, i'll be a little disappointed

Whoever said you shouldn't let babies play with plastic bags is crazy. Because Abraham spent - I kid you not - over 30 MINUTES straight playing with one today. And if you know him at all, you'll know that, of course, it was a garbage bag. Anderson took out the trash and the recycling, and I got out two new bags. While I was putting one in the garbage can, Abe took the other and put it in the recycling bin. And then took it out and shook it, just like he saw me do to get the bag open. Then he adjusted it, put it back in, put the lid on, moved it around, adjusted, took it out, put it back in...you get the drift. I actually MADE and ATE dinner, uninterrupted! (Okay, the dinner was mostly made at this point...but I finished!)

Actually his whole process was really fascinating to me. This is where some of you might roll your eyes, but I'm serious! I have been reading a lot about Montessori education, and one thing that is talked about is the focus and concentration that a child will have when a task matches exactly right with his/her developmental needs. The child will spend a lot of time and energy on the task, repeating it over and over again, in a way that may seem super boring to us adults. And then when finished, instead of being tired, the child will feel calm and satisfied. The task is fulfilling some sort of developmental need that we may not even understand. And I have seen Abraham focused and spending time on different activities, but this was the longest I have ever seen him do just one task this way. I don't know what sort of need this was fulfilling for him at all - order? precision? mimicking adult tasks? And he might have even gone on longer except I unfortunately did something that distracted him.

Anyway, totally cool, garbage bag! I owe you one!