Expectations

Chris pointed out to me recently that I was sometimes having unrealistic expectations of Eleanor. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how I’ve forgotten a lot of what it was like to have a two-year-old and, even when I remember how Rosemary used to behave, that doesn’t really guarantee that Eleanor will react the same, or develop at the exact same rate. Then, too, there are the raised expectations because Eleanor picks up a lot of things (as, I believe, do many younger siblings) from her sister earlier than she probably would otherwise have done.

So I’ve been working on adjusting my expectations of Eleanor a little recently. This includes expecting her to have a meltdown a few times a day and, for the most part, ignoring them all. It includes, not getting uptight or telling her off about fairly minor things – if she tips all the Duplo out on the floor, leave it there; if she pours her drink on the table or the floor, take her cup away and give her a cloth to wipe it up; if she runs off when out, pick her up and carry her for a bit, or stop and kneel/sit on the floor and have a chat about the stones or the ants or something. Distraction, ignoring unwanted behaviour (unless it’s dangerous), using a simple ‘no’, rather than making a big fuss. These are all things I should know, but somehow I think I was expecting her to behave just like Rosemary (perhaps because she does copy her so much).

I’ve found it’s working pretty well. Today, she played with the Duplo by getting pieces out and putting them together, rather than just tipping them over the floor, and put them back when she’d finished with them. She didn’t pour any drinks anywhere. She walked slowly and calmly to nursery school, running in the places she’s allowed to run. OK, so she did then take an age to get to sleep and got up two or three times, but I didn’t have to deal with that, because I was walking Wesley.

Being reminded of the need to adjust our expectations of Eleanor has made me think about our expectations of Rosemary. As with Eleanor, I think I (we) tend to expect Rosemary to be a lot more mature than she is. Of course, as children get older, it is important to increase our expectations, but it’s also necessary to balance them and ensure they’re not too high. Too high expectations and the child will always fail to meet them; too low and they won’t push themselves at all. Trying to pick up when Rosemary is ready to move forward in some area, and help her to do so, while at the same time not pushing her to move too far is very tricky.

Take reading, for example. Rosemary tends to come to a point with reading where she doesn’t want to do it much – where she’ll have been reading whole books in a night, she’ll suddenly refuse to read more than a page, or she’ll read half a book, wriggle and moan and act silly and make it take a huge amount of time. This usually comes at a point when she’s getting ready to move on a stage, but sometimes I jump in too soon and it will have the opposite effect and mean she refuses to read entirely for a while. The teachers are usually pretty on the ball about when to move her forward, at least they have been so far, and I’ve stepped back in pushing for her to move up a stage without at least checking with them first.

But there are other things that can be done. This week, Rosemary’s been reading her school books in her head and I’ve been asking her questions about them – she reads a page and I ask her about that page. She asks for help with any words that she’s not sure about. We’ve also done some reading in her head and then reading aloud with expression – she did a brilliant rendition of ‘Dad looks so silly.’ said Wilma last night. I suggested these because it seems like she’s really wanting to start reading to herself and I thought this would be a step in the right direction. But then I jumped too far ahead this evening, when I suggested that she might have a go at reading the first Jack and Annie book to herself. She threw herself on the floor and acted like – well, like her little sister.

So I’m now determined to work on reassessing my expectations of both children on a more regular basis. We don’t need to do this as much with the adults in our lives, as we’ve worked out what our expectations should be of them and and know they’re not going to change much (for example, Chris is rarely going to put the tea towels back on the oven door and I’m rarely going to put my shoes in the shoe box; these are things that we each have to live with). But children – especially young ones, I think – are changing and growing and developing at such a rate that we really do need to adjust our expectations of them regularly.