Sunday, May 09, 2010

Time time time

Charlie is trying valiantly at the moment to get his head around the notion of 'tomorrow' and 'yesterday', it's all very confusing.

We deliver gold stars on a month-view star-chart for good behaviour and we're really trying to use this to underline 'that was last week, that was yesterday'. It's working to an extent, although he will still tell anyone who listens that Father Christmas came 'last week' and tomorrow is always Friday.

I have this abiding memory of a beautiful Neanderthal I dated in my final high school year; I met him during a brief stint flipping burgers, he was a gorgeous Italian called 'Romano', lusted after by all the female McStaff. For some reason he chose me and we dated just long enough for me to show him off smugly at graduation in a sort of 'ugly duckling gets swan' moment. I went to pick him up from his house one day to find that he wasn't dressed, he was sitting in the livingroom in his shorts and his Mother was apologetically dressing him. He raised his arms, she put on his t-shirt, he raised a foot, she stuck it in a leg of his jeans... it was about that point that I started to go off him fairly substantially.

Anyway, one morning a few weeks ago the spud was robotically eating peanut-butter toast and watching Chuggington with the sort of glazed stare he normally reserves for doing a poo, while I was standing in an apparently sound-proofed bubble waggling a t-shirt at him. He raised his arms. I put on his t-shirt. He raised a foot...

So. Now he gets a star every time he undresses and dresses himself, one for eating dinner without our help and one for tidying his room. When all the stars are gone he's been promised 'a big present'.

it's good, the star chart, but it's not without it's difficulties. The upside is that he is now reliably dressing himself. The downside is that this involves an hour of him dancing about in various stages of undress, displaying 'Mr. Bum Bum' gleefully and crowing about each item that's been taken off or put on. If he takes too long and we intervene there are hysterics over the loss of the star. Getting out of the door at all these days is pretty much completely out of the question.

Still, it's all progress, of a sort and he is beginning to understand about the days of the week. I guess it's a little much to think that he'll suddenly grasp the intricacies of the past and future but at least in that future I won't be dressing him before he goes out on dates. Hopefully.

10 comments:

Peter John Godwords said...

priceless...we all have a "beautiful Neanderthal" in our stories somewhere. Mine was called Judy, and I'm sure she would not have known how to flip a burger...fear not, Charlie is entering the evolutionary chain well ahead of the neanderthals.

Sparx said...

Gladly, he doesn't have many Neandarthals in the gene pool so hopefully he'll turn out like one of his male relatives!? Some good ones in our family ;)

Lisa @ Boondock Ramblings said...

That is it...I am so implementing a star thing, just to eliminate having to stare at my son's private areas for half the day while I dry to convince him that everyone wears undies!

Gringa-n-Mexico said...

LMAO I'm just starting to come around in that area MYSELF as far as speaking in Spanish goes. I feel ya Charlie!!! :D

Helen + ilana = Hi said...

I'm sorry but I'm still stuck on the role reversal issue. In my world you have always been a swan even when half your head was shaved.... in fact perhaps most especially then. What a thought neanderthal ugly duckings. Doesn't bear thinking about. Oh dear I think I'm stuck in rant mode. Entirely your fault my dear!

Sparx said...

Helen - haha! I'm off to read your rant now... Man, I can barely remember the head shave, except I loved it. Do you realise that was about 25 years ago? How damn young we were! I still make the latkas you taught me back then too.

Metropolitan Mum said...

Ahhh, Italian boys... :) I love when some people live up to their clichés. There's something deeply reassuring about predictability.
Tell us more about the head shave in another post!

PS: I have given you an award: http://www.metropolitanmum.co.uk/2010/05/spread-the-blogging-love/

lady macleod said...

He'll get there...

...on the other hand.... the mystical "Prophets" on Deep Space NIne, who were to some "worm hole aliens", and to some "gods" - had no grasp of the 'past' or the 'future'.

And it has been posited by the best of the Cosmology community that the space-time continuum is not linear.

All this to say that Spud may just be on to some scientific theory that mere mortals like you and I can't grasp.

Sparx said...

MM - thanks so much! I'll endeavour to do this - like you I'm rubbish at getting around to tags and memes...

Lady M - Aha, so THAT's it! I have a little Einstein on my hands, who knew? I really hope he's on to something with this tomorrow always being Friday business in that case!

Helen + ilana = Hi said...

Hark at you. You were indeed young. I, unfortunately, was just as much older than you as I remain to this day!