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Tap Taps / I Love School

I was at home alone with Nico and Max for a few days while Steve was on a work trip. As I was folding laundry, Max asked me for the small towels/napkins I had in my hand. Oh great, I thought, he’s going to make a mess throwing these all over the place. I cut the pile I had and handed him a small number of them. 


A few minutes later, Max walked up to me and handed me a rolled up napkin. “I wolled it,” he said.  What? He rolled it? I’ve never seen him do this before.


“Can you do it again and show me?” I asked. 


Max led me back to his space where he was rolling the small towels. He carefully laid one out in front of him and began to roll the bottom end closest to him towards the top. “Tap, Tap” he said as he used his hands to mimic a gesture of making sure the roll was aligning and not skewed. With the lightweight towels, it really didn’t do any good. But it was adorable to watch.


“Wow Max! You did that so carefully. You’re really good at that! Did you learn that in school?” I asked him. 

“Yeah,” he answered, “can I do ‘nother one?”


He continued to roll more of the napkins and I took a sneaky video to share with Steve. “Tap, tap” he would say, and proudly passed me 4 or 5 of these rolled up little napkins. “I do tap taps,” he declared.


I share this story here because it was a pure moment of joy watching my tiny human perform a new skill. One that I certainly hadn’t taught him. It also made me realize how capable he is and that maybe I am not doing enough to foster his capacity to learn.


Max attends a Montessori daycare, which is where he learned this new skill. Where he learned to confidently count to 10 (11 or 12 sometimes) and where he learned his ABCDs (why can’t I just say “alphabet” any more?!). It’s after moments like this when I really appreciate the teachers who work there and the fact we can afford to send him. 


When Max is home with me, I try to create focused activities for us. I often find he’s so involved in all the toys here that it’s hard to bring his attention to learning a new life skill. The Montessori approach, though, is to have focused activities, and not just a huge pile of toys all over the place (oops!).


I don’t want to mom-guilt myself, but I’m always wanting to do better. I see the toys and think, how can I organize these better? Which ones could be put away? Would he still be entertained if we had fewer toys out in the rotation? Frozen by the weight of not really knowing what to do. 


I definitely tried. I purchased bins, I organized toys by categories, I put many away. I even rotated a couple of times. Then we moved house. So many of the toys came out. And I haven’t prioritized it again.


I wish I had some good answers or a nice conclusion to this post that could say I dedicated the time and taught Max to finally get dressed by himself, or to be potty trained (Oh my goodness, we are so far behind on that one! He’s more than ready). But I don’t… I can just share this little story and tell you all that despite how organized I thought I was, toy rotations are hard. 


I’ll also tell you that daycare and early school should be free. Not for me necessarily, but for all the parents who can’t afford to send their kids to daycare but would want to. We make raising children such an individual burden, but the benefits of educating and caring for young people today has huge societal benefits now and in the future. 


The Head Start program was set up to address this, I think it should be available to more families. I don’t really know anything about the program, except that it’s purpose is to provide early childhood education and support to parents with young kids. More of that please. Universal early childhood education!


Well I didn’t want this post to become a point of view on why investing in universal early childhood education is beneficial to families, individuals and society as a whole. So, I’ll just say I love school and leave it at that. 





 

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