Low Energy Role Play

This evening I suddenly realized why toy doctor's kits are so popular. It's not about alleviating your child's fear of the doctor or starting them on the path to a prestigious and lucrative career. It's about being able to play with your child while half-asleep on the couch.

Tonight after dinner, Tai asked me to lay down on the floor and asked me if anything hurt. I promptly presented with a severe headache and backache. For this, I was examined with a stethoscope, given an elbow x-ray, and had several vials of blood drawn from the tip of my finger. I milked it as long as I could before he moved on to the next activity, which involved me having to stand up.

But my acting skills are nothing compared to Minh's. He really takes his imaginative play seriously and is especially good at the persistent vegetative state.

Death.

Tai's experience with death, thus far, has been limited to:

(a) Asking us to re-tell the story of our cat, Gorby, who died long before Tai was even conceived.
(b) Being told that my parents' dog, Taz, died and that they got a new dog named Cassie.
(c) Hearing that two of the fish in the tank at school died. And then meeting the replacement fish.

Friday we got word that our neighbors' dog, Red Dog, had passed away. On the way home from school Friday I gave Tai the news and we talked about drawing a picture for Red Dog's youngest owner (and Tai's friend), Lila, to make her feel better. Naturally, he had some questions.....

"Why did red Dog die?"
(Well, because he was old and sick and his body stopped working.)

"What is their dog's name now?"
(They don't have a new dog. Red Dog died last night and now they don't have a dog.)

"Was his tail moving?"
(No, once an animal dies it doesn't move anymore.)

"Why is Lila sad?"
(Because Red Dog died and she loved him. Wouldn't you be sad if Buttons died and then she wasn't here anymore?)


Oh Boy, this is where I went a little too far in my explanation and opened a huge can of worms.....


"Is Buttons going to die?"
(Yes, everything dies eventually. But Buttons is young and will probably live a long time.)

"And Smudge?"
(Yes, someday.)

"And Nibbies?"
(Yes.)


I watched the wheels turning behind his eyes and cringed as I waited for it.......


"And Quynh??"
(Ummmm........yes. But not for a very very long time.)

"And Me?????"
(Um yes. Again, not for a long time.)

"And you? And daddy?"
(Yup.)

"Who is going to live in our house when we are all dead?"


So, pretending that I did not just emotionally scar my child and cause him to live in constant fear of his own death, we went on with our afternoon. He painted Lila a picture and then we played and talked about the usual mundane stuff. When Minh came home, Tai made sure he heard the news about Red Dog. And then the topic of death was dropped, for a little while.

Just this evening, while attending a Super Bowl party at a friend's house, we were standing around the kitchen, eating guacamole and chicken wings, and chatting with several people whom we had just met. And then there was a lull in the adult conversation. So Tai filled it with:

"Someday I'm going to die."

Summer Olympics, here we come!

All the cool kids take gymnastics lessons. Mine included.

Tai had his first gymnastics class this week and Minh and I were both bursting with pride (and shock) as Tai boldly walked into the gym, by himself, and took a spot in a circle of about 15 kids and 3 adults, none of whom he'd ever met before. "Who is this usually brave child?" we thought.

"Ohhhhh, that's more like it," we thought, when everyone in the circle stood up and started stretching and jumping around, while Tai sat open-mouthed on the floor and stared around the unfamiliar room. For 10 solid minutes.

After abstaining from the warm-up, Tai readily joined in the small group activities, which basically consisted of going through various little obstacle courses. (Crawl through a tunnel, go down a slide, hang from a bar, walk along a balance beam, etc).

The very first step in his very first activity? Do a somersault. "Oh no," I thought as I watched child after child (who were all older than Tai and who had all clearly been taking gymnastics since birth) do perfect somersaults down the wedge-of-cheese-shaped mat. Knowing that Tai cannot do a somersault, my anxiety mounted. Would he balk at even trying? Will there be tears if he tries and fails? Will the Russian judge be unfairly hard on him?

Watching all this through a window, we could not hear any of the conversation, but we saw Tai climb up to the top of the Cheese Mat and the teacher gesture to him to squat down and do a somersault. Mere seconds later the teacher realized who he was dealing with and decided he needed to give more hands-on help. With Tai squatting at the top of the mat, and the teacher's hands on his waist, I can only assume that the teacher verbally instructed Tai to tuck his head down and roll. And Tai promptly flopped onto his belly, legs sticking straight out behind him. The teacher, apparently, decided not to push the whole curl-up-into-a-ball component of somersaulting and just helped Tai flip down the mat, his body straight and stiff as a board. Clearly, Tai is already training for the roundoff-backhandspring-layout that will no doubt become his signature move by age 5.

The good news is, Tai had a really great time and can't wait to go back next week. This means I get to look forward to 12 more weeks of sitting in a crowded waiting room among seasoned parents who sit in the front row, blocking my view of my kid, while they do work or play with their iphones. Someday maybe I'll be that seasoned, but for now I'll enjoy watching Tai try his hand at gymnastics and hoping that he someday masters the back handspring, which I never did. Or at least a somersault.