Enforcer of Conformity

My Josiah has shown me a piece of how his mind works...

I've been working with him on writing his name neatly and in a straight line. The straight line thing is big, because Josiah doesn't really feel he needs to put all the letters in the right order or even next to each other. I'll have to take a picture to show you what I mean. Well needless to say, he has the neat part down... but if he feels like writing the "J" in the upper part of the page, the "O" in the lower half of the page, the "S" in the left corner somewhere, the "I" huge and smack dab in the middle of the paper... and so on and so on... HE WILL! And it is different each time. All the letters are there, just not in a straight line.

He's creative!! Yes, I know.... so here I am the enforcer of conformity... will make sure he writes left to right and within two parallel lines... But he does have plenty of art expression opportunities so I don't feel horrible at all. :-)

Anyway... we were in Red Robin a couple of weeks ago and Josiah out of nowhere says that's an "R" mom. I looked at the picture and yes, the words "Happy Birthday" were written out in cursive. I was surprised because we haven't even touched cursive writing yet, not even with little Ry... so I asked him which letter he was referring to. There was a lower case cursive "r", but I couldn't imagine he knew which one. So he points to a letter "y". Ry and I smiled and said "Oh, Jo, that's a 'y', good try".

Well he got indignant and said "No it isn't. Its an R!". So we went back and forth for a minute or two and he finally jumps up frustrated with us and traces the "y" with his finger. "See its a 'R'!" and sure enough... an upside down cursive 'y' does look like an upper case "R".

To say I was stumped is not an exaggeration. I turned my head to look at it upside down and my baby was right. I just laughed and said, Josiah you are a smart young man and a very creative thinker! Definitely a little artist in the making.

Little tid bits like that are giving me a great insight into how his little brain puts things together. He can see things right side up, upside down, in the correct order or not. AND he's just as happy either way. Makes my job fun. So I am working on creative ways to teach him during school time...while still being the enforcer of conformity!

I am also signing him up for art classes next month (smile).