Tomāto and Tomäto
People speak a lot about effective communication. It’s so important that we taught both of our children to use sign language before they could speak…in an effort to decrease frustration (on everyone’s part) and to get a jump start on vocabulary.
This afternoon I revisited the basics of communication with my son…I think we’re saying the same thing but we are saying something quite different!
This card system of Nicholas’ make good sense to us…all of us. Red, yellow, green…got it! However, I discovered today that when we ask “Did you get a green card today?” Nicholas says “yes” and we’re all excited. Then we find out later that he did NOT get a green card but rather a yellow one. So we’re angry that he’s lying…a lot…until this afternoon.
Ya see, to me “getting a green card” means at the end of the day you still have your green card. To Nicholas it means I got my green card out of the pocket [so now yellow is showing].
This revelation came to me this afternoon as I became more and more irritated that he was arguing that he did not get a red card, when in fact I had a note from the teacher that he had…then he communicated effectively…”but Mom, I didn’t pull my red card today”.
AaaHaa! came with some relief that maybe he hadn’t lied all that much (although there were definitely some very false “great day’s” in there). So we sat on his bed and made a color card pocket for home. We talked about each color and came up with ways to remember what each one means.
We named all of the green things that he likes and talked about how they were all good things. (trees, grasshoppers, broccoli, bean sprouts, money, grass…).
Yellow reminds us of the sun. And thought the sun is very important to us and is nice to play in the sun, sometime we get sunburns and they hurt. We don’t like sunburns.
Red reminds him of blood so we talked about the most prominent “blood” event in his life form when he was in the car wreck with Rob, and Rob was bleeding. Nicholas was very scared and he agreed that it was a very bad thing!
Where is the line of truly understanding one another and only thinking you do?
This afternoon I revisited the basics of communication with my son…I think we’re saying the same thing but we are saying something quite different!
This card system of Nicholas’ make good sense to us…all of us. Red, yellow, green…got it! However, I discovered today that when we ask “Did you get a green card today?” Nicholas says “yes” and we’re all excited. Then we find out later that he did NOT get a green card but rather a yellow one. So we’re angry that he’s lying…a lot…until this afternoon.
Ya see, to me “getting a green card” means at the end of the day you still have your green card. To Nicholas it means I got my green card out of the pocket [so now yellow is showing].
This revelation came to me this afternoon as I became more and more irritated that he was arguing that he did not get a red card, when in fact I had a note from the teacher that he had…then he communicated effectively…”but Mom, I didn’t pull my red card today”.
AaaHaa! came with some relief that maybe he hadn’t lied all that much (although there were definitely some very false “great day’s” in there). So we sat on his bed and made a color card pocket for home. We talked about each color and came up with ways to remember what each one means.
We named all of the green things that he likes and talked about how they were all good things. (trees, grasshoppers, broccoli, bean sprouts, money, grass…).
Yellow reminds us of the sun. And thought the sun is very important to us and is nice to play in the sun, sometime we get sunburns and they hurt. We don’t like sunburns.
Red reminds him of blood so we talked about the most prominent “blood” event in his life form when he was in the car wreck with Rob, and Rob was bleeding. Nicholas was very scared and he agreed that it was a very bad thing!
Where is the line of truly understanding one another and only thinking you do?
posted by Rob and Walker at
9:47 PM
1 Comments:
You all are great! Thank you for your stories and recording life! I appreciate this small window into your world.
momma el
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Anonymous, at 10:43 PM
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