What is considered as toilet trained?

Is it when they can go to pee by themselves or when they don't need to wear diapers anymore but we are still helping them with the cleaning up?

I've finally decided to make Sean sleep without diaper. He was good for 2 days, but last night he wet his bed, so I changed him, put on a diaper on him and let him into our bed. It's a good thing he was on his own bed. I don't look forward to sleeping on soggy bed =P

But today I decided that it's time to send him to school sans diapers. And he was quite alright. So does it mean that he's toilet trained? I don't know.

I think we've been to dependent on the convenience of the diapers that actually it's just who's finding it difficult to have him out without his diapers. What if he wets himself in the car? outside? what about when he needs to poo when we are out? Other people don't seem to worry too much about these.

I guess, I just have to let go of the diapers and tell myself that there will be wet accidents and it's just part and parcel of growing up. and maybe bring extra clothing from now on.

No diaper last night

Last night I forgot to put diaper on Sean before bed. He slept the whole night through without wetting his bed! Wow!

I'm not sure if that's going to repeat tonight. He has been napping in the afternoon without diaper but until yesterday, he's always had a diaper at night and going out. He still wants to wear his diaper most of the time. I have to say "No!" to him all the time.

I'm going to put him to bed without diaper again tonight. Cross fingers, hopefully he doesn't wet the bed, but even if he does, I think it's just part of the process of growing up.

Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 3

I've just finished "Reading" 2nd edition by Frank Smith. The book is about the process of reading. In his book, he claims that whatever reading methods you use, children will learn to read all the same because children are learning beings. They are thirsty for knowledge and are learning all the time.

Franks Smith does not think the reading methods, either phonic nor sight reading, are the best way to teach reading. He feels that it's important that reading is made interesting for children, which means the best way to learn to read is by reading. The more you read, the more you learn. Therefore, it is important to give them reading materials that interest them.

The book itself is a rather dry reading because he talks a lot about scientific data about how the eyes and brains are involved in reading. However, his insights helps me confirm my intuition about reading, i.e. Phonic rules can be dry and boring. I tried teaching Sean some basic ones such as "c-at" "m-at" "b-at" "h-at". It just switches him off and he refuse to even listen. I think he's not ready for it yet. And that, interesting books are very important. Otherwise, you won't be interested to even start reading.

So all I've been doing is to borrow many books from the library, all sorts of types and read them to him. Sometimes he's interested, sometimes he's not. But most of the time he's interested. It's a trial and error thing because I don't know what will he like until we read it.

His current favorite books are "Shiver Me Letters, a Pirate ABC", " ALPHABEEP". This is because they are books about the alphabets which he already recognizes by heart. He has begun to parrot me when I read them to him. Not every page since some of the sentences are rather long.

Recently, I borrowed a book called " Good Night Gorilla" which caught his fancy. The illustration tells the story about how a small gorilla steals the keys and open all the cages of the animals, and then all of them followed the night watchman back to his house, which woke his wife up and she then brought the animals back to the zoo. Unknown to her, the gorilla stole the key again and followed her back to her bedroom.

The few words in the book are just " Good night gorilla", "Good night elephant", "Good night Lion", " Good night Hyena", " Good night Giraffe", " Good night Armadillo", " Good night dear"

This is a great book, not only it's a cute story, the words are so easy that even Sean can read them by himself (except for armadillo and dear). I wish there are more books like this. It tells so much with so few words.

Today, he read (with a bit of help from mummy) a small booklet by himself. It's a scholastic reader from his playgroup, a very short story about little and big. It reads like this:

Little and Big
This truck is little.
This truck is big.
This house is little.
This house is big.
This flower is little.
This flower is big.
This balloon is little.
This balloon is BIG!

I need to prompt him on "this" and " is" and I think he looks at the picture to give him a clue about the objects, but he can read the book! I'm so proud of him =D

And then, excitedly, I got him to read another short book which I scanned and made into a booklet for him.

Costume Party
I am a pirate
I am a doctor
I am a fire fighter (written as fire man)
I am a butterfly
I am a cowboy
I am a space girl (written as space boy)
I am a crocodile.
Snap! Snap! Snap!

He needs prompting on "I" "am" "a", which is basically most of the sentence, and he reads the rest from memory, because "fire fighter" and "space girl" are actually written in the original book that the school let him bring home.

From all these and from what I've read, I just think that early reading is all about memory. It's difficult for children to remember " I", "This" and grammatical rules because they are interested in the meaning of the story, not the actual sentence. To them the words "the", "is", "am" are not important and are omitted in their reading.

In fact, Frank Smith feels that by insisting on word perfect reading, you are actually interfering with the process of reading because it's the comprehension that's important, not the actual perfect reading of a sentence.

Actually, Sean still omits all these grammatical words even when he speaks, so I guess, it's natural for him to omit them when he reads. However, it is already exciting enough that he's started to want to read by himself and not always insisting that I read for him.

I still think Phonics has a lot of benefits despite Frank Smith's disregard. If you are interested in learning more about Phonics, read " Why Johny Can't Read" which deals with phonics and it even teaches you how to teach phonics. However, I don't think I'm going to teach Sean phonics yet. I'll let him enjoy reading from memory first and later helps him with his phonics when the time comes, maybe when he's 4 years old.

Sean, congratulations on reading your first books, "Good Night Gorilla" and " Big and Little". Mummy is very proud of you. =D

ear infection and bad cold

I have been neglecting my blog shamelessly. And now I can do a bit of blogging because everyone is out and Sean is with PIL out to the supermarket.

Firstly since we were Jakarta, we've all been feeling listless. The weather there was too hot and Sean was coughing and I was just tired from the trip.Then we went to the farm trip, which was really hot. After that, I just felt terrible every day. I think we all got a bit of sun-stroke. I was tired all the time. Sean wasn't feeling well too and so he was behaving quite badly and I just didn't have the energy to deal with it most of the time. The haze gave me terrible allergies which made me sneezzy and tired all the time.

Then on Sunday night, Sean had high fever, which turned out to be ear infection, and then I got a terrible cold. Totally blocked my nose and parched my throat. So it has been a sick house over here.

But some good things happen at least before the haze started.

PIL started bringing Sean to the park in the evening (before the haze started) and with the extra exercise, Sean behaved better. Once he expends all that energy, he's quite calm in the evening. He also starts playing more with the maid, and therefore mummy can do her work. Anyway, mummy just hasn't had the energy to play much with Sean.

But since the haze started, Sean hasn't been able to go for his daily run with Akong and Ama. And then when he has ear infection, he hasn't been going to school in the morning. So I've got this bundle of energy, with his chesty coughs, runny nose, and fever to entertain. Hubby is equally sick but not as bad, so he has been taking over nap and night duties. And when MIL comes home in the evening , she helps me with Sean.

I wish this terrible cold of mine and Sean's ear infection go away. We'll be so much happier.

Darn.... I hate to be sick.

Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 2

Suffice to say, all efforts in teaching Sean to read stopped just before we went to Jakarta. Since we came back, I haven't had the energy to do anything about it. So I'm just back-blogging about what I did before the trip.

Each book I read spurred me on to do different things. After all, these are just experimenting with different ways.

From the "Teaching you child to read in 60 days" I followed a game they did which uses cars and stuck on words. It went well for a few days, after that we were fighting over the fact that he didn't say it correctly and yet he still wanted to eat the Twisties. So I said, forget it for a while. He was more interested in the Twisties (the rewards) than in the game itself.

Then he was into "Brown bear brown bear what do you see" book.
Soo, I made a simple game which I stick on the wall from the book. It says:

Sean, Sean
Sean, Sean
What do you see?

I see a _____ ______
looking at me.

The blank spaces are replaced with the different colors and the animals from the book. He can recite it but I'm not sure if he's reading or reciting from memory. We played this for a few days and then I stopped it so he doesn't get bored with it.

Then I read another book that suggest a simpler idea on teaching a young toddler. The book 'Teach your baby to read" suggests using very big red colored fonts (6 inches high) to begin with when teaching the first few words. So I printed huge "Sean Wee", "mummy", "daddy", "loves" and pasted them on the wall. "mummy daddy loves Sean Wee" and just casually tell him what each word sounds like. I've left it on the wall and he can read it on his own now. Currently it says "Jesus loves Sean mummy daddy"

Following the book's suggestion, I've also put up words on body parts such as head, eyes, ears, etc, but haven't been telling him as often. Maybe it's because these words aren't interesting on their own. I think I should sing more "Heads shoulders knees and toes" to get us going on body parts. He already knows his body parts but don't know how to read them yet. =D

I've also started to borrow beginning reading books which have very few and easy words. From our nightly reading, I think he can read some words now, such as "cat", "hat", "bee","flower", "butterfly", "car", good night", "tree". I think he knows more than these, I just haven't been noting down what they are.

So I was doing these reading lessons at a very leisurely pace and try not to push too hard and try to remember to be very enthusiastic every time he gets something correct.

I haven't been doing anything much to teach Sean recently because I just haven't had the energy nor the inclination to do so. But I've had some time to read one or two books which help me to understand what the "war on reading" is all about.

It's about the different views of educators in terms of teaching how to read. Some views that sight reading is the way to go. A lot of beginning to read books are actually about sight reading. They repeat the words in many different ways so the child will recognize the words. The new reading schemes have more interesting stories that the old ones like Peter and Jane, and they use many stories to show how each word can be used. However, this method doesn't really teach reading. It's more like memorizing how a word looks like (the chinese words method) and therefore cannot help a child to read any words they have never seen before.

Another method is Phonics which teaches a child how the letters sounds like. There are about 44 (I think, I can't remember exactly) sounds of words which include the 26 alphabets. They also include ck, sh, th, etc. It's harder to teach because the child needs to learn how break a word into different section.

We think it's easy because as adults we automatically do it. But a young child has to start from scratch so it might be easy to learn the alphabet because each letter sounds different, but when you put them into a word, they need to learn that combination such as ck, sh, th, need to be sounded separately.

So it is harder to teach but once the child can do it, supposedly he/she can read new words, which mean reading will become interesting because they can read more types of books and can build up their vocabulary easier.

Now that I understand all these, it doesn't mean that it's easier to teach Sean how to read because whether or not you can do it in "60 days" like the way the single dad in the book claims, it really depends on the readiness of each child.

In "Teach you child to read in 60 days" He was a single father (impressive) who uses the time he had (in the morning and evening) with this 2 daughters to play these reading games. Firstly, he has 2 daughters. One 4 years old and the other 2 1/2 years old. I just think daughters are easier to teach because many starts speaking earlier and therefore have a bigger vocabulary already. They were already pretending to read, which means they were interested in learning how to read. And there were 2 of them, competition between siblings helped to egg them on to learn since it was done in a form of a game.

In Sean's case, he has too many distractions. I think I need to hide the toys before I start the games again. He's also very stubborn and just wouldn't listen when corrected. So it may be that he's not ready to learn yet. At the moment, the few words that he knows is more from sight reading because re recognize the words, or he may just guess it from the pictures. I haven't really taught him phonics yet because I think I should do it when we are in better mood.

But whatever the case, I think I'll get better first before starting again. Being sick shortens my temper and I wouldn' t want him to associate these games with mummy being grumpy. =P ha ha ha. After all, I'm suppose to be super enthusiastic! Shudder..... I'm just not in the mood to be enthusiastic.

Sean @ 33 month

Personality
He is being a rascal!
He's pushing his boundary further and further and is getting more and more mischievous. Actually I find it cute that he's a rascal. He has this twinkle in his eyes when he is trying to evade us or purposely do the opposite of what we tell him.

But being his mummy, it means that I can't show my smile every time he's being naughty. He'll think that mummy likes him being naughty! Which is why we've been rather strict with him because I feel this is the time to set discipline.

Speech
He has gotten more chatty and is trying to string words into sentences. His pronunciation is still terrible and needs lots of work, but I guess it's a matter of us correcting him.

He's always been crazy about the alphabets, hence he could say almost the whole alphabets before he could speak properly. Now he knows all the words to the Alphabet song. Sometimes when he's playing, I can hear him singing the Alphabet to himself. It's probably the one thing that he gets right at the moment.

Teaching Sean to read
I decided to cool it down a little since I found that I became quite pushy while trying to play the reading game with Sean. We played it for a few days and then I stopped it first because I think it's easier to start with teaching "sight words" at the beginning. I've decided to teach him phonics later when he knows how to read some simple words first. More about this on another blog entry.

Toilet Training
We are still at the stage where he still sleeps in his diaper and still wears his diaper when he goes out. I tried getting him to nap without diaper, sometimes he's ok, sometimes like today, he wets his whole bed. Luckily I put a rubber mat, so the mattress itself is not wet. Maybe next week I'll send him to school without his diaper.. LOL....

Farm Trip
We went on a one day farm trip last saturday. It was a very hot day. I have to say, us adults did not enjoy it very much because it was hot, rather boring and smelly. But Sean loved it. He loved sitting in the back of the truck going from one farm to another.

We visited vegetable farms, chicken farms and a goat farm. I stayed less than a minute in the goat enclosure. It was just too smelly for me.

Swimming lesson
Sean started his swimming lesson yesterday. He hasn't done much swimming, so the lesson was good for him. It was to get the children get over the fear of water over their head.

Trip to Jakarta - May 09

We just came back from Jakarta on Monday. Boy... I was totally exhausted. When we arrived home I told the maid to wash Sean up because he pooped and just crashed on to my bed. I was so glad to drop Sean off at school on Tuesday and this morning. At least I could catch up on my rest. It's already Wednesday and my body is still aching.

We were there for my cousin's wedding, so we got to meet many relatives at the wedding, which was great because otherwise I wouldn't know when I would get to meet up with them. Although the trip was great for me because I get to catch up with family, it was an exhausting trip for all of us.

First, while we were there, his toilet routine was totally gone. He refused to pee or poo on the potty and wanted to wear his diaper all the time. And rather than pooping at home before we leave the house, he pooped outside so I was always looking for the toilet to wash him up. On the first day we were out, he pooped twice within an hour, so we had to cut short our outing since I only brought one with me. I know I should have brought more but he rarely poops outside. I guess all bets off when it's a holiday, everything that don't usually happen, happened!

Second, I totally forgot to be careful with Sean's food and drink. On the 3rd day, he got diarrhea and a very bad rash which was painful to the touch. Since Sean has not had diaper rash since he was a small baby, I didn't bring any cream. So we tried all sorts of cream to ease the pain. The next morning we bought some diaper cream but it was expensive, about 1.5 times the price for half the size!

Next, I don't know why but Sean was double hyper when in Jakarta. He just couldn't keep still and was like an Energizer bunny the whole trip. I guess he was excited to have older boy cousins to play with. He ran around like crazy. I guess a small active boy couldn't be counted to sit still for the entire church ceremony so after bribing him with gummy bears, I decided to just sit right at the back of the church so we don't disturb the ceremony.

The wedding dinner was packed as Jakarta's weddings usually do. It's a good thing we got to eat before the dinner start in the family area, because we couldn't eat during the cocktail style dinner. We spent most of our time watching him so he doesn't get lost.

I still enjoyed the trip. I got to catch up with my family and friends, Eny, Yulius, Paula. I got to meet relatives who live elsewhere whom I probably will not get to meet unless there's a wedding or a special occasion. And my mum and I managed to do some shopping too =D.

Lesson learnt: Bring steroid cream when on a trip. It's probably better to have a complete first aid kid. Our bags were packed so I didn't bring a first aid kit but next time I really should bring it along, even when just going to Jakarta.

Also bring extra extra diapers even if Sean is already toilet trained. And bring extra clothes. Gosh you really cannot travel light when you are travelling with a child.

I thought I already brought extra diapers and clothes but we were still short. I had to tell the maid to wash our clothes more than once a day so we have enough clothes. And I got Sean to sleep without diapers towards the end. He wet the bed once, but luckily we had an extra mattress.

Coming home is so good. Sean stopped being such an Energizer bunny. He missed his toys and was really glad to come home to them. So he's been behaving very well since coming home.