A new outlook

A new outlook means a new schedule.

As an early childhood educator, or even someone that has a background in education...I have went to school, taught children of all ages birth and up, and more...and instead of saying that I have failed or that I am failing, I am going to embrace my knowledge in education and start putting it to good use.

Over the weekend we had our potty training party (which no one attended), but I am very happy to say that Destin is just about done training. At just 2 years old (and almost a month) she is trained (minus the awful mishap last night). We also had a short play date with some friends on Sunday - which was wonderful! Destin just lights up so much when she has another child to play with!

I have to say its so hard to NOT compare other children to mine. There are so many things right now that Destin is not doing...sleeping in her own bed, sleeping all night, staying with us when we go somewhere (which timeouts only work temporarily), no ABCs, no numbers, no colors, no shapes (she has all of these things mixed up - which makes me feel horrible...I am a teacher for goodness sake & she still acts likes we have never talked about those things).

But I am not going to dwell on what she doesn't know, I am going to share what she does know...she is extremely polite (says please, thank you, bless you, excuse me); has a vocabulary unlike any I have ever seen at her age (she can have conversations, talk in five plus word sentences, repeats pretty much everything we say, and more!); she knows all of her animals and animal sounds, she remembers every place we go to and associates something with it (example - Walmart and the horse); she loves to read books (long ones, short ones, and memorizes each page); she loves to sing and dance (to pretty much anything); she loves to pretend, dress up and play with her baby dolls.

She probably knows a lot more than that, but for now I have to say that I cannot wait to teach her all of her numbers, letters, colors and shapes until she knows them by heart. I want my child to succeed in life - school, home, when we go places, etc. Maybe with more structure or more of a schedule this will happen. We will have less chances of bad behavior - eventually I will get to proudly say she is sleeping in her own bed (all night, every night), that she is staying with us when go places, that she behaves when we go out to eat (which is never right now), that she knows all of her letters, numbers, colors, shapes and more!

Destin is so smart and I know she is very capable of doing all of those things and more! Wish me luck in designing my new schedule, and we will see what happens in the next month or so. Eventually, Arwen will be able to follow this same schedule too.