Parenting Done Right.. Or not?

The fear in my little sister's eyes when someone is yelling frightens me. Looking at her eyes scared me more than my mother's yelling. The way she looked at my mom when she was yelling; I couldn't help but hug her. I held her so tightly in my arms and at that moment, I did not want to let go. At that moment, I realized how much I love her and as a big sister, I have to do everything in my power to protect her and that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

For the past five years since my little sister had been born, it's been tough; for the both of us. Life was hard. As a baby, she went through a lot and I think that's a good thing. I don't want her to ever remember the hardship we went through or go through it ever again. Abigail and I have different fathers. Without Abigail yet, it was just my mom, my big sister, my big and little brothers, and I. My mom had her first boyfriend and he was nice. The second one, not so much. A couple years went by and Abigail was born. I don't remember how I felt five years ago, I'm not sure I even had feelings or maybe I didn't knew how to think or how to perceive things. When Abigail was growing up, life for her was like paradise. We babied her until we couldn't baby her anymore. Abigail's dad spoiled her and as for the rest of us, we we're given things here and there but we were fine with it. It was understandable that Abigail was his daughter. Since he had been with my mom for awhile, he acted like a father figure although we never looked at him as a father. He had us on check. We had to check in if we were to go outside and play, we had to be in bed by ten, and we had to have manners. Growing up and becoming more observant, I didn't like him. In fact I hated him. Living with him was hell. But while I appreciate what he had taught us, the way he taught us was not acceptable. Constant yelling and telling what us what we had to do affected Abigail, in a bad way.

Abigail has manners, she says please and thank you all the time. She is growing up right. However, as she grew up, she would get in trouble like the rest of us too. Her dad was a drunk so he would yell and she would cry and as she grew up, that fear grew bigger and bigger. 

11 Nov. 2014

"I don't like yelling." My little sister is literally crying right now and she isn't even the one in trouble. My mom is yelling at my little brother to shower and clean his room. I don't know why it affected her?"

- Field notes

In "Parenting and Child Health," they say yelling can harm a child's feelings and can make them very afraid. That's exactly why Abigail cried. One of the family influence information said "if parents shout at children when they are angry the child can feel the parents' anger and it can make children fearful" (Wiley). She was in fear because of how her father always yelled.

Even though children tend to listen more when they feel like they are in trouble, children have feelings too. There are so many other ways to make a child listen, yelling is not one of them. It will forever make them fearful of everything. Including its own parents.

Wiley, John. "Parenting and Child Health." Women's and Children's Health Network. N.p. 8 Nov 2013. Web. 16 Nov 2014.

Definitely Growing Up

I don't know if it is just my little sister but she probably talks on the phone more than I do. It's not a doubt that influence is huge to her. It's also not a doubt that as children, all we want to do is grow up. A toy phone, a Chucky-Cheese medal, an AC remote, a calculator, a broken MP3 player, and everything small; she would use them as a phone.

This morning I was laying on the couch watching TV and she comes out of her room with her Frozen princess toy phone. She started talking. Being used to it, I figured she was "talking" to her friend. I have no idea what goes on through her head when she has the phone to her ear. 

She then says, "We're not going yet, we're not going yet. I'm waiting for my mom." My mother and her we're going to church when she said that. I kept listening. 

"No. I said I'm not going yet. Ughhhhh, listen to me." 

She gets the attitude from me. I asked her, "Abby, who are you talking to?" 

She said, "My friend, duh."

Talk about doubling the attitude. Recently, she started kindergarten and she's meeting all these new faces that she claim are her friends. When my friends come over, she has this habit of just watching us and staring at us and I think that's where she got "talking on the phone" and everything else she does that is familiar  from. Even when I'm by myself in my room and I'm talking to my friends on the phone, she would come inside to check up on me and see what I'm doing. Basically, everyone in my household talks on the phone. 

My little sister has the biggest imagination ever. THE BIGGEST. As I write this blog, my sister is sitting next to me. Clueless with what else to write, I thought maybe I should just ask her why she talks on the phone; her respond, "Because people text me and they want to talk to me all the time." 

I thought she would say something like "because you do it" or "because I see everyone else do it." I had no clue how she came up with "because people text/talk to me all the time." I mean, she uses a Chucky-Cheese medal as a phone for goodness sake. I was shocked. It's like she's really talking on the phone, like someone on the other line is talking back to her. It's crazy. I started searching the web about why children do adult things and I came across this website called "Supporting Make-Believe Play" and I saw one line that answered my question. This line said "at the age of 3-5, children have the idea of HOW to pretend but need ideas on WHAT to pretend." Talking on the phone was an idea of what to pretend and she knew exactly how to pretend that she was talking on the phone. Genius. 

I'm sure she does a lot of other things that she had seen us do other than talking on the phone. When I was little, I don't remember wanting to grow up and doing adult things like she does. Maybe I did do them, I just don't remember. But, why is it that when we're young we want to grow up so bad but when we get older we just want to go back to when we were young? Life is complicated and we contradict ourselves. I'm definitely going to remember this when she gets older and she tells me she wants to be young again. "Abby, I remember when you were like 5 years old. All you wanted to do was grow up. You used to pretend you would talk to your friends on the phone." I cannot wait. 

Deborah, Leong. "Supporting Make-Believe Play." Tools of the Mind. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2014.

Changes

As children grow up, all we, as older people, really notice is their height changing, their shoe size becoming bigger, their clothes shrinking and we never realize how much they truly are changing; inside and out. As a big sister, I would have never imagined noticing every little detail about my younger sister. Well, considering that's not really expected for a big sister. There is so much life brings to us and with observing for awhile, I cannot fully say I know my sister like the back of my hand. There is always things changing: with her attitude, with her appearance, with the way she eats, the way she talks, the way she carries herself, even the way she snores. It is always different. It's understandable that I probably will never know my sister like the back of my hand, in fact I probably wouldn't even know myself like that. We all change, regardless of age. It just so happens that children change more often than we do, I mean they are growing up.

When we want to really get to know something or someone, we usually will ask questions or do some research, maybe even examine it. It's not that easy with children. We can't really ask them questions, what do they know? They are just curious as we are. We can research specific things that they have life freckles or birth marks and learn more about those. But I'm thinking deeper, I can't research why my sister chews as if it's the last time she's ever going to chew. I can't research why my sister knows big words like "frustrated." I can't research why she grabs anything that is shaped like a phone and puts in next to her ear. But I can research one thing that all these are branches to; influence. I truly think she eats the way she does because she sees the way my mom eats or even sees a random stranger eat that way. She probably knows words I would never expect her to know because she hears it from me or my other siblings. She's easily influenced by her surroundings and the people around her. Also, she watches a lot of TV, maybe she gets influenced by those shows too.  

Nightmare on Abigail Street

Halloween is right around the corner.

On October 23, as we all peacefully slept inside my house, I heard crying. I knew it was my little sister crying but the horrible big sister I am, I continued to sleep. The next morning on the way to school, I asked my mom why she was crying. My mom had no idea. Wow, I guess I wasn't the only horrible family member. Anyways, when I got home from school that day, I thought maybe it would be a good idea if I asked my sister if she remembered anything.  

24, Oct. 2014 8:06 P.M. 

Me: "Hey Abby, why were you crying last night?"

(Silence)

Abby: "I don't know."

Me: "Did you have a bad dream?"

Before that day, I would occasionally ask her if she had a dream without knowing if she knew what a dream was. 

Abby: "I don't know. I don't remember."

Me: "Do you remember waking up and crying? You were hecka loud."

Abby: "I didn't wake up to cry?" 

She gave me the most confused look ever and that was the moment I became suspicious. This definitely gave me something to research. On a website titled "The Truth about Dreams, Nightmares, and Night Terrors," an anonymous person asked, "When does a child start to dream? And at what age do nightmares or night terrors begin?" From this, I learned that children start to dream and know they had dreamt at the age of 3-4 --- my sister is 5 years old. In fact, at 3-4 years of age, children dream just as much as adults do (Greene). Why didn't my sister remember her dream? As I kept reading on, I learned that if a child wakes up crying, OBVIOUSLY the dream was not happy (Greene). By that, I concluded my little sister's dream was definitely more of a nightmare considering the facts that she cried really loudly and my room is not close to hers. 

I really wished she remembered what she had dreamt about. It would be fascinating to listen to her stories, maybe it will even make a cool Halloween story. I hope one day she does remember. I would ask her every detail about it. 

Greene, Alan. "The Truth about Dreams, Nightmares, and Night Terrors." DrGreene.com:Let's Talk  
       Kid's Health! N.p. 23 Jul. 1999. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.

freckles

What are freckles? When I first looked at my sister, I was really not noticing anything at all. Whether it was her smile, her eyes, her hair; she looked like a normal child to me. Then I thought, maybe I was not looking deep enough. However, I noticed her freckles. Now I know this would be a stupid question to ask because we all know freckles come from genes but I want to know where freckles come from and why are they there. What is their purpose? As I googled, "what are freckles?" I learned that I was not wrong and there is really nothing behind freckles. Freckles are genetic and they come out when your face is hit with the sunlight as said in the website "Other Traits." Some say it is "a kiss from the angels" (Gnanashanmugan).

Look at her being silly. Do you guys see her freckles? It might not be much but they make her so beautiful. Nobody in my family has freckles and I am so jealous. I think I secretly have a fetish for freckles now. I am now wondering. Since they get bigger each time they see the sunlight, there must be a certain limit as to how big they get right? I can only imagine a freckle covering your whole face. I have never seen that before. 

 

 

 

Gnanashanmugan, Devasena. "Other Traits: Stanford at the Tech Understanding Genetics."  N.p. 20. Oct. 2006. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

"About the Little Girl that Beat Her Sister" (NOT LITERALLY)

About the Little Girl that Beat Her Sister by Ann Taylor

Go, go, my naughty girl, and kiss
Your little sister dear;
I must not have such things as this,
And noisy quarrels here.

What! little children scratch and fight,
That ought to be so mild;
Oh! Mary, it's a shocking sight
To see an angry child.

I can't imagine, for my part,
The reason for your folly;
She did not do you any hurt
By playing with your dolly.

See, see, the little tears that run
Fast from her watery eye:
Come, my sweet innocent, have done,
'Twill do no good to cry.

Go, Mary, wipe her tears away,
And make it up with kisses:
And never turn a pretty play
To such a pet as this is.

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/ann_taylor/poems/5388

Such a harsh title for a poem, don't you think? When our fall break project was assigned to us, I thought wow. How am I going to find poems that relate to what my topic is? But, I read the assignment paper and it gave me something really helpful to find poems that were related and that was to use the search engine. Guess what? That TRULY helped me. As I skimmed through the websites and used the search engine, I came across this poem. Let me just say, the title caught my attention. At first I wondered why someone would write about beating their sister. I was shocked. Then, I read the poem and I felt really unintelligent. How can I think someone was literally beating their sister? 

This poem, however, really REALLY relates to me and I bet for many of us. Our younger siblings will always have our parents' back. It is always us bigger siblings who have to apologize. I don't think that's fair but I know it's life. My little sister can cry for almost anything and everything. It's like she can make the crying noise and tears will just come out naturally. I have always wondered if little kids truly get their feelings hurt in certain situations or if they just do it to get the attention of their parents. It is definitely something to find out. I can never stay mad at my little sister though. I am the one to wipe her tears away, I am the one to apologize but it's not that I get forced to but because I want to. My little sister is my world, regardless of how great of an actress she is. She can break all my stuff and at the end of the day with fault or not, I would still "make it up with kisses." 

My little sister is something bigger than what I've expected her to be. Observing her made me realize that her actions were not just random, it's because she actually thinks. I know it might sound mean but her being five years old and everything that's what I assume. She seems to think real hard before she actually does something. Whether it's throwing up when she was sick or eating a cracker. She also has this really bored look on her face when she thinks. It's never really a different facial expression either. But her face lights up when she's doing "homework." Her eyes get bigger and she seems to really enjoy it. She also just started school and the fact that she can write her name on one line, amazes me.

I did not think she would be able to write so well or learn to write so well in such a short period of time. I guess I just underestimated her a bit.