News From Hawkhill Acres

One of those sayings that I’m really tired of hearing is: “It takes two to argue.” True, but it only takes one to disagree. For instance, if one says to one’s child, “The sky is a beautiful shade of blue today,” and one’s child says, “No, it’s not really blue. It’s blueish-gray,” and you bite your tongue and go into the bathroom and shut the door and pound your head against the edge of the tub for a few moments of downtime, it’s not an argument. But it is a disagreement which means that someone is being disagreeable, which gets old when it happens almost every time one opens one’s mouth to make an innocent remark.

We’ve run into these phases before. They stand out as I look back over my kids’ developmental continuum “like quills upon the fretful porpentine” and seem to occur about every two years. They last for a month or a couple of months and then recede. I’m sure my late mother could have charted my bouts of being oppositional about everything also and the poor woman didn’t have the resources we have today to deal with disagreeable kids.

Nope, her method for dealing with kids who disagreed was direct and unyielding. She sent us outside or told us to shut up. Or both. Since we liked being outside anyway, it wasn’t a hardship. And we were used to adults telling us to shut up, and thought it was their loss when they did, so that wasn’t a self-esteem smasher either.

Me, I don’t tell anyone to shut up. (Well, sometimes the dog when she barks at a squirrel, but she doesn’t listen anyway.) Instead, I try to give my kids a little more space, so that they don’t have so many remarks to disagree with. (And I don’t spend so much on blood pressure lowering meds and the tub gets less abuse.)

If your kids are at a delicate developmental stage at the moment, or even if they’re not, here are some links to places they can go to get out of your hair. I think they’re all educational and fun, although your kids might disagree. If they do, don’t tell me, okay?

Kidipede History that doesn’t bore the pants off kids.

Mango Kids can learn to argue in a dozen languages for free with fun interactive lessons.

Funology No attention span? No problem. This site changes every time you log on. And it has ideas for offline fun too.

Whyville An alternative to Club Penguin where kids can get clams for playing learning games and make an avatar that can chat safely with other kids’ avatars. Or argue with other kids, if they like.

If you have bibbits - very young kids - check out Poisson Rouge. No words, just lots of animated games with no wrong way to play. Give yourself a nice break from that Dora video and let your tot explore music and coloring pages here too.

Then, after you put the little darling down for a nap, go back to Poisson Rouge and click on the first alphabet block or the mobile or the ladybug or any of the other icons for a soothing, zen-like experience that’s better than a bubble bath and almost as good as chocolate. I love this site. No arguments, just my favorite sound in the whole world: a happy baby’s laugh.