Thursday, January 7, 2010

quality time together

Having a pair of siblings 13 1/2 months apart can be a blessing and a curse. Believe me, when they are trying to attack each other, to the point my husband & I have to physically hold them away from each other, over hand sanitizer....the thought does enter my mind "What the heck were we thinking?"

Luckily for us, the blessings do seem to outnumber the curses. Oh don't get me wrong, they fight. Fight hard. And that is why my latest book of choice is Siblings Without Rivalry. But when they are getting along, they are the sweetest friends.

That is why I feel it is so important for them to spend some quality time together. Without me. Unsupervised. I think it is a growth process of relationship-building for them to spend some time together without anyone else. (Of course some adult should be in the house to intervene, if needed)
I have been doing this for a while and I think they both love that time also. I find they are much more imaginative if I'm not around. Maybe having to please an adult stifles the fearless, innocent imagination. As I type this I can hear them talking---They are getting on a boat (Kaya's bed) with their baby alligators to go to a party. I just heard Kaya say, "Zander, stop the boat! We have to go get the party decorations!!"

I've also eavesdropped on them when they snuggle in bed together and have "real" conversations.
Yesterday I went to check on them and Kaya said, "Mom please leave us alone. We are talking right now." Of course, I was curious to see what they were talking about.

"Don't worry Kaya, if you have bad dreams just pretend you are Batwoman."
"But Zander, I don't want to be Batwoman when I grow up, I want to be a mommy when I grow up."
"You can be both Kaya. Just become Batwoman when you are scared."

Yep, I think that was a good conversation for them. They learn so much from each other that they could never learn from Mom.

3 comments:

RYD said...

Korisa, you know I love that book, too. But you should definitely check out Easy To Love, Difficult To Discipline in terms of sibling rivalry and tattle-tale behavior. It teaches parents how to respond better (in my opinion) and my kids have become much better communicators with each other as a result. Good luck!

craftykorisa said...

Sounds good Roxanne! I will check it out---thanks for the recommendation!

RYD said...

If you don't want to waste $$ on the book just go to my blog and search Becky Bailey - I write a lot of the fundamentals on it. Hope that helps!