Joshua has been slowly eeking into the developmental stage where his mind is a few steps ahead of his body, and it's causing some serious frustration. This morning, he crawled over to the edge of his little gated play yard, pulled up and stood there, holding on with one hand as he eyed a toy about three feet away. I watched as he leaned forward, clinging to his hand hold and reaching with his other hand. When he started to fall, he pulled himself back and furrowed his brow. He repeated this a few times, then tried to scoot along the wall closer to the toy. Repeating the lean and stretch each time, each time growing more and more frustrated that he couldn't reach. Eventually he hit the point where he was standing right by the toy, but he still couldn't quite reach it while clinging to the wall and I watched as he looked between the toy and his hand hold, growing more and more annoyed that he couldn't figure a way to have his toy and stand securely at the same time.
He finally gave up and let himself down to the floor where he could get the toy, then spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out how to pull himself back up and still hold on to it.
All throughout, he was expressing his growing frustration very clearly, but it seemed to me that the better course of action was to encourage him, but let him try to figure it out, which he did. And then, after a few seconds of standing while proudly holding his toy (while we celebrated his accomplishment), he looked at the toy, chewed it for a second, then dropped it and motored off in another direction.
It occurred to me that much of life is like this - child or adult - it's just that the toys change.
2 days ago
Good for him for not giving up and/or crying! You've got a problem-solver on your hands!
ReplyDeleteThey grow up so fast! My son has learned how to go upstairs really fast....but he can't go downstairs yet. Today, he tried to launch himself head first, down the four steps leading to his room. I grabbed him, and tried to teach him how to go down backwards. He looked at me as though I were insane. :)
ReplyDeleteMatt, be not confused, there was some crying, but as it was intermingled with his other little ramblings, I let it go. I figure it's ok for him to express his feelings as long as I know there's no danger/hurt/injury/whatever going on.
ReplyDeleteMichelle, it's crazy how fast they grow, I was putting him in 9mo pants this morning and trying to decide if it was last week or the week before that the things were so long that he tripped on them and now, they're perfect. *sigh*
Very true! Sometimes we just want to know we can get to our toys/goals if we want to. ;-)
ReplyDelete