Man down

I met with Robbie’s teachers a few weeks ago for a parent-teacher conference and said that we were having trouble getting Robbie to understand and communicate his feelings. She said they had been working on that a little in class, but she could send home some “emotion cards” for us to try using outside of class. They’re working! I was flipping through them last week when I found them in his backpack and said, “Look Robbie. This one is about Mom. I’m sick.”

I caught the bug he had but much worse. I went down hard. On Friday I managed to get to the grocery store, and through the weekend I continued my normal chores and household stuff, but I was in bad shape. I think (and I say this every day) today will be the last of it and tomorrow it will be gone. So keep your fingers crossed for me!

Other cards in the set include the basic emotions of happy, sad, tired, upset, hungry, etc. Parenting skills put to use no doubt in trying to explain the differences between “mad” and “angry.” So far, I’ve been pretty generic, but some day I’m going to get nailed on this one. He’s picking the words up pretty quickly, but Robbie being Robbie, he does like to just play with them and line them up on the table. You can tell he learned a few in school already. When he picked up the “frustrated” card, it was so cute to try to hear him pronounce it – what came out was a cross between frustrated and refrigerator. And as always, be careful what you wish for. As I lay on the couch over the weekend, he comes up and tries to tickle me, thinking it’s funny. I say, “No, Mommy is sick! Please don’t tickle me.” But he continues to anyway, and says, “Mommy, are you mad?” Tickle, tickle.