Resolutions

Fast away the old year passes, fa-la-la-la-la...you get the idea.
You've made New Year's resolutions yourself, and you've broken them many times over.
Lose weight, save more, work harder, try and accomplish some other goals, they run the gamut.
But how many of you make them for your kid?
Do an annual review of your child's progress.
Seriously.
What are some of the accomplishments your child has made, developmentally, in the past year?
And how could they get better?
Our daycare center, sanctioned by the YMCA, does this.
At an informal conference just before Christmas, the center's director, spoke to me and my wife about our child's progress.
She meets the average in almost every category, and those that she doesn't, she's 'advanced'.
That does make me feel good.  But when we get to the more formal sit-down one, I can't help but be anxious about the details.  Where is she advanced?
Not that I'm obsessed about it.  My wife and I have worked very hard to make sure she's a step ahead of other kids, if we can do it.
We've never engaged in 'baby talk' or tried to talk down to her.  We've tried to raise her under the premise, 'if you want to be treated like a grown-up, act like one'.
We played her Baby Einstein classical music for her when she was a baby as a means to lull her to sleep, and   she had the Baby Einstein Beethoven DVD, and did watch go through her Sesame Street stages.
And she's outgrown that fairly quickly.  Even her interest in Dora the Explorer is fading.
Though she has lots of toys, she's shown a preference for electronic devices.  She owns an InnoTab and V-Reader, and plays with those so much that if I didn't buy an AC adapter, we'd have to buy stock in Ray-O-Vac.
Despite these advances, she has a tendency to regress.
She expressed an interest in Max and Ruby lately, and not having ever seen the show, I thought nothing of it. But one day I did happen to watch it in passing.
If you're not familiar, it's a Canadian-produced show that airs on American cable TV, aimed at preschoolers. Max and Ruby are brother and sister rabbits, with Max communicating in a series of gestures and noises, occasionally forming one or two word sentences, but very seldom a complete one.
After Savannah, who normally speaks with a very clear vocabulary and can out-talk some adults I know, began making gestures and noises, rather than words, my wife and I became concerned.
Then we told her one day that we would not talk to her unless she talked to us like a big girl.
She responded by referencing that she was pretending to be Max.
After this revelation, I paid more attention to the show, with it becoming evident to me that she was clearly imitating one of the titular characters.  While I have no desire to stifle our child's imagination, I do see this programming as counterproductive to my daughter's development, as she had communicated exceptionally well up to this point.
So my New Year's resolution for Savannah is to eliminate Max and Ruby from her TV habits, and Margie's contribution is to reduce her TV viewing habits altogether and encourage more active play with her toys.
Not that she watches a lot, but we don't want her planning her life around TV shows.
And we sure won't teach her how to use the DVR...like we do.


NEXT WEEK:  Long Live the King