Thursday, January 3, 2013

Calendars

This year for Christmas  my children each got a calendar, the kind with the cute little baby animals on them.
Aidan is 9 and has aways struggled with days, months, years and time...he has no interest in it, what so ever! Timothy was born wearing a watch, her learned to tell the time when he had just turned 5. He always knows the time and date, he is the type of kid that if you say you will do something in 5 minutes, he will be tugging at your shirt saying "but it's been 5 minutes and 40 seconds...when are we going to bake cookies"!
Here is a photo of Timothy, notice his watch which he wouldn't take off! (please excuse the bad photo it was before I learned how to use my camera in manual)
When Aidan was little he would play and play for days, he never knew if it was breakfast, lunch or dinner that he was eating and he didn't care! But now Aidan has a problem, he doesn't know his months of the year. He has tried to learn them, but it is just like his brain refuses, his brother Timothy will rattle them off trying to teach  Aidan. I knew Aidan was feeling bad about this,  Aidan started to hide that he didn't know it and  when I tried to help him with it he told me he had already learned it.
So when he got the calendar for Christmas I wasn't sure how he would receive it...turns out he loves it! Everyday when he gets up he checks it and when he walks out of his room he will announce to the house "Today is January 3rd"!

Did you guys ever struggle with something that came easy to others? When I was about 6 or 7, I had a teacher that use to take turns calling on a kid in our class to go outside into the hallway and read the big clock on the wall and come back inside and announce the time to the class...I hated this because I couldn't tell the time, when she looked for kids to choose I would sit quietly and avoid eye contact, but inevitable one day I was picked to tell the time. So I stood outside the class staring up at the huge clock on the wall, trying to remember which hand did what, it felt like for hours. I could feel my cheeks burning as I prepared myself to go back into the class and tell EVERYONE that I couldn't tell the time, I was so embarrassed and ashamed. An older boy passing by saw me ( I must have looked pitiful ) and he asked me "do you need help telling the time?". He told me the time and I went back into the class and told the teacher, pretending it was me that had told the time.

I was about 9 before I really learned how to tell the time, but I got there in the end and so will Aidan. Here's Aidan up the tree that he loves to climb so he can stare up at the sky and watch the earth...losing all concept of space and time....