Rough days on the playground

It was one of those mornings.  Somedays I have to "convince" my little guy to go outside.  In hindsight, maybe sometimes it's safer, easier, quieter "inside."  He screamed / cried all the way back home.  With every person along the way stopping to watch, or offering advice like "don't cry, you'll catch a cold," or "you shouldn't let him cry."  Have I ever mentioned that Chinese parent's don't like it when their kids cry, so tantrums of course happen, but perhaps not quite like this one. 

He was upset because another little boy let him play with his car and when I said it was time to go home and return it, it was a tragedy.  I walked home with him and his bike with all the gawkers and people in their apartments listening to his screaming:)

Ohh yes, he has a new bike.  It's blue.  Not red.  You may wonder if that's an important detail, but it seems to be the quite a significant one.

I'll backtrack to last week.

Our friend told us she wanted to buy my little man a bike.  A bike!  We arranged to go last week to the store and made our way to the shopping center and looked through the selection.  She obviously had scouted them out before, knew which one she wanted, had bargained with the seller (she bought 2) and thought all was a set deal.  It's a very nice bike!

But my son only had eyes for the red bikes.  He went straight to them and wanted to get on them and would only say RED BIKE.. 

She asked him if he wanted the blue bike.  Bless his heart, he said "NO."  She hoped that he would come around to the blue bike with a bit of persuading.  

Let's just say we walked out of the store with the blue bike and he paid no attention to it. 

As a parent, it's hard to know what to do.  I have our friend who wanted to bless him with a bike.  She thought that the "blue bike" would last longer and that it was a better quality bike.  The red bike's wheels were made of hard plastic and was also a wee bit more expensive.  Had it been less expensive, it probably would have been cool to have said, "you know, let's just get the red bike."  But "I'll pay the difference and let's get the red bike," doesn't really work here.    

Has he come round to his blue bike?  Not yet.  Maybe he just needs to grow into it.... 

He loves Dora at the moment.



It's been a rough week of bad sharing days. I've wondered how to tactfully tell people to not let their son's or daughter's "snatch" his toys.  This culture teaches parents that every "older" child has to let a "younger" child play with his or her toys.  So I get a lot of confused looks when I don't make my little man share (give up the toy he's playing with) his toys.  I try bringing other toys along.  (If I don't bring toys, balls, etc. there isn't a "nice" playground area for him to play on.  So I try to keep him entertained!)  Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a complete diseaster.  It can be all together distressings!  My son gets upset and for the last few days I've felt like I'm offending everyone and totally going against what they all "know."  Since we live in an apartment complex, there are LOTS of kids who come outside (love it!) but many of those haven't quite figured out that we "play differently." 

I was playing catch today with my little man when a mom and toddler approached us.  She saw this as her opportunity for her son to have fun and told her son to "play with his ball."  I tried asking my son if he'd play with him and throw him the ball to him.  Then I thought, I'd best just get down to the grain of it (hindsight is a beautiful thing and directness usually isn't in this culture:) and I told her that my little guy was probably not going to give him the ball.  They quickly left and I realized, I should have communicated in a more indirect way. 

So between tantrums and continued "bad sharing days" it's been "one of those mornings!"

Thankfully my little guys's asleep and hopefully will wake up in a better mood and won't be quite so explosive on the playground this afternoon.