Oh my god this is adorable. I am really glad to see Todd enforcing the things he believes in while still being a gentle soul. Selkie, on the other hand, is clearly a kid š I love the way you write, Dave! Keep it up! š
If Selkie was my child, I’d make a deal with her. If she willingly works on her speech impediment then I’d do something special in return, kind of a tit for tat deal. Its the same as I’d do if my child wanted something like a video game, I’d tell them that to get it they’d have to work for it so as to set in a feeling of earning what they want rather then getting it straight off.
Having lived and hunted in the Great Lakes and rivers, Selkie hasn’t had the chance to try the incredible variety of tasty creatures from the ocean. Now you have millions of species’ worth of new and probably tasty creatures to bribe her with. You’re welcome.
Tuna and swordfish are both ocean fish. Technically salmon is also, for part of its life cycle. And Selkie has eaten, and expressed interest in, all of these delicious fishes.
You don’t even have to limit yourself to food. I would sit her down and say that if she went to these classes, I would buy her a fog machine so she can make her room look like a forbidding evil lair. Every mad scientist needs one right?
It gets her to want to go, and when it’s in use, it can humidify the air, which being a marine based person, might make her feel more comfortable. A win either way.
I got this idea while replying to a comment below, and thought of this “thread”.
Todd could trade English for Tensei! Selke ould teach him Tensei words, and laugh at how he talks. Todd can teach Selkie how to say English words and plurals properly.
This will not only show that Todd cares about her keeping in touch with her Sarnothi heritage, but will also show her that even grown-ups can have trouble speaking a foreign language. Double confidence-boost!
I can see how it might be hard for Selkie in a way…just another “You’re weird, what’s wrong with you?” message like with her lack of ears etc. Not what it IS, but she might be over-sensitive to it thanks to the bullying. Good for Todd though on standing his ground. Speech difficulties clear much faster the sooner you jump on them.
(Wanted to strangle a parent I knew when I worked in a preschool – wouldn’t let her daughter go to speech therapy because the horrific lisp “sounded cute”…never mind it was actively interfering with the poor kid’s communication!)
i think that if she bite her tongue by accident could learn to stop the pluralism… ĀæOr the way she talks don’t move the tongue enough to happen this accident?
I remember being annoyed about missing music class to see one of those “speech therapists.” She showed me pictures and wanted me to pick “this one” or “that one,” and I kept saying the one with the whatsit and so on. She kept going back to “this one” or “that one.” It dawned on me that she wanted to here how I sounded the “th” sound—annoying me even more. Boy, if only my elderly self could go back to my second-grade body, I’d blister her ears with a few more sounds.
Avoid speech therapists right now—they’re charlatans. She has more important things to chose than an odd speech habit. When she’s grown up more she can see about breaking out of ’em…
I got out of history class for my own speech therapy. Felt awkward to walk out of class when everyone else was staying but also glad to skip the stupidest class of the day. XD
I remember how I had an arrangement to go to speech therapy during my Government and Civics class, since it was the biggest blow off class I had at the time. But the teacher was convinced that her class was SUPER IMPORTANT and that if we weren’t in class we wouldn’t be able to understand, so she wouldn’t let me leave to go to speech a lot of the time. And then since my speech therapist hadn’t seen me that day, she’d pull me out of my 5th or 6th hours, which were Algebra II Honors and Honors English, which were the worst classes of the day for me to be pulled out of. It was pretty annoying.
You clearly had a bad speech therapist, but they are most certainly not all like that.
I developed a severe throat disorder that essentially rendered me muteāI was using a computer to āspeakā, Stephen Hawkings styleāuntil a speech therapist figured out what was going on and taught me techniques for working around the issue enough to let me talk again.
I sound pretty much normal now, and I owe a great deal of it to that guy.
Likewise, the speech therapist my mom worked with after a stroke wiped out the part of her brain that handled speechāas in, she couldnāt say anything at allādid a pretty good job. A few of her techniques were frustrating, but she clearly knew what she was doing, and my mom can more or less carry on a conversation now.
Donāt apply one bad experience to an entire profession. Thatād be like saying one idiot psychologist who thinks drugs are the solution to everything means antipsychotic medication isnāt useful for anyone.
I should make it clear it eas a one-shot test I was yanked out of class for, not full-blown therapy. Annoying, but maybe less than all your experiences—and there wasn’t anything wrong with my speech.
I have to disagree about them being charlatans. There are good and bad ones, as with everything else. Had speech therapy from the time I started school, just about, all the way through graduating high school, because I am deaf. While some of them definitely made more effort to help me than others, the overall effect is that I have much clearer speech than many people with my level of hearing loss do; few people realize I’m deaf based on my speech.
So because you personally had one singular experience that you remember as bad – likely because you were six or seven years old, didn’t understand what was going on, and were annoyed at being pulled out of a class you enjoyed – that makes the entire profession charlatans? Boy, I hope you never have a bad experience with a physician.
I am very sorry you had a bad experience; unfortunately, there are going to be incompetent people in pretty much every field. However, it does bug me when one bad experience leads people to paint every other professional with the “all doctors/psychologists/professors/scientists/lawyers/etc. are incompetent” brush.
I had to go to speech therapy when I was in grade school (as I know I’ve mentioned in other comments) and my therapist helped A LOT. I didn’t have a major speech impediment but it was nice to not be told that I “talked funny” any more. My youngest sister had a more serious speech impediment, to the point that only our family could understand her at times. Again, she benefited a lot from speech therapy.
After reading this installment, I’d been expecting some comments that I haven’t seen so far on the issue of whether or not Selkie has a RIGHT to continue to speak the way she does. I’m an English professor and the issue of “standard English” versus various other modes of communication is a big issue. By that I mean things like “street” talk, slang, “Black” English, ebonics, Spanglish, etc. A lot of educators feel that making someone’s language conform to an external standard (which, at least for the English language, was set by dead white men) represents a form of opression and intellectual colonization. As Gloria Anzaldua said, “Language is not just a means of communication, it is a carrier of culture.” Is Todd “colonizing” Selkie’s culture when he says her speech can be “fixed?”
Personally, I am not sure where I stand on this one. On one hand, I think it’s really important to be careful to allow people to preserve and express their individual cultural identities. On the other hand, being able to communicate in the “standard” mode brings with it a LOT of advantages. I expect that, as a caring parent, Todd wants Selkie to have all the advantages she can. š
I am typing on an iPad and as soon as I posted that I noticed a BUNCH of typos, for which I apologize! The biggest one is that I did NOT mean to put the word Black in Black English in quotation marks. (Black English, NOT “Black” English) That was really accidentally insensitive and I apologize. I recommend looking up some of June Jordan’s work on linguistics to find out more about Black English.
My typos were from going through a Nook Color…haven’t yet upgraded to a proper tablet between that and my computer.
Also this person wanted me to say “cookie,” by pointing to a picture of a round thing with a red thing in the middle. I didn’t recognize it. She hinted by saying “Oatmeal…” And I’d never *heard* of an oatmeal cookie before that!
I dug out (eventually) that this speech-test thing had something to do with the way I pronounced something in kindergarten…a delay of two years in doing something about it. Outrage on outrage.
(Two years minimum—it might’ve happened in third or fourth grade—I left the school partway through the fifth grade for…other reasons.)
While Selkie has a right to choose how she speaks, she should definitely learn to speak standard English.
Selkie was unaware she was even speaking improperly– she’s basically ignorant of what proper plurals are supposed to be like. Ignorance isn’t a choice.
What’s more, her current form of communication could hold her back in school, and in business later in life. Imagine what her essays must look like. What about written letters, receipts, orders, etc.? Sometimes, regardless of how you express yourself culturally in your personal life, clarity trumps all when it comes to communication.
Not to mention, altering the wordforms of English isn’t the only way to communicate your cultural identity. She could speak Tensei, or integrate Sarnothi words, phrases, and cultural references (translated or not) into her speech. I’d argue that this is even better, as it doesn’t imply ignorance or outright defiance of the accepted English language, but rather a purposeful, deliberate addition of cultural flavor.
How old is Selkie again? She comes across as anywhere between five and thirteen…and the writings of people that age usually have problems besides an additional “S.” (You should see what spelling and grammar errors by adults get palmed off on me.)
Probably if she doesn’t hear it herself, it doesn’t reflect in her written schoolwork. I’d have to see a sample to know for sure…
Heh, my brother would overcome speech difficulties by giving the dictionary definition of words. Never liked to repeat anything. But by now he talks perfectly fine (and can even fake an Irish accent, which is fun).
Now my nephew’s got a different speech impediment, and the government pays for the therapy. My mom and I have mixed feelings about this; we don’t feel he’s all that bad, and think it could be handled at home. In fact, I question what factor is actually causing him to mispronounce in the first place.
As for the “th” sound (which actually stands for two distinct phonemes, one voiced (buzzy, as in “this”) and the other voiceless (as in thin)), I find it’s easiest to actually point out what the tongue is doing, and how it differs from the “bite the lower lip” motion of “f” and “v”. Been doing that with the kids for a while. I seriously doubt that any normal school program ever bothers to give a good rundown of phonemes and how the mouth changes to create them (certainly not something most adults seem to be schooled in). I hold that kids need a good mental anchor for the phonemes, and the “th”/”dh” sounds as well as some others (“zh”, and some vowels, just to begin with) don’t have good anchors due to our spelling system being all wacky.
Which means that trying to discuss English phonemes is difficult – doubly so in writing – and I think some adults are sort of handicapped by how they weren’t explicitly taught them. I think this lack contributes to some of the bad spelling habits we see in lower-literate adults, because if they had a better grasp of the existing phonemes and how they can (and can’t) combine, they wouldn’t make some of the widespread errors I see online.
I had a Selkie dream last night, but I can’t remember it! I just remember waking up and thinking “wow, I had a Selkie dream,” before settling into the next dream, where Phil Khan decided to use magic markers to draw a superhero costume on me. I’m pretty sure the Selkie dream wasn’t as weird as that.
As a father, I like how he is handling this. Being me, I would jokingly tell her to go to her room. Then I would eat some of her bacon.
Laughing, I would then make more bacon.
I like this comic.
“I’m perfect just how I am. TV says so!”
Well, if the TV says it, than it MUST be true! š (That particular one happens to be true, most of the time, but most of the stuff on TV now isn’t very true.)
That’s a valuable message to counter the one kids are all too often bombarded with: “You’re defective. That’s why people don’t like/love you.” Children can’t change their inherent nature and it’s cruel to make anyone feel bad about things they can’t change.
However, children do often need to learn new behaviours. It’s important for parents to make a clear distinction between the child (valuable, loved unconditionally, no matter what) and a behaviour (sometimes not acceptable).
Kids can’t make that distinction on their own, as Selkie is demonstrating right now. Todd will have to convince her that those extra ‘s’es are not part of who she is.
I tell my niece that she’s a great little girl, and she can only get better. I also emphasize that everything worth doing is hard work so while already great, she still needs to work hard to get even better.
Positivity combined with teaching work ethic. This is a good thing.
So the arrow-key bug is still unfortunately working.
I don’t like the watering down of the word “perfect” to mean plenty of other things we already have words for. “You’re perfect the way you are” means “There is absolutely nothing about yourself that you should change because any change would be creating imperfection,” and that is a horrible, HORRIBLE idea to give ANYONE.
Isn’t life itself a challenge to continually better yourself? You say oh, I’m not as patient as I’d like to be, and so you work on that; or oh, I’m not as brave as I should be, and so you work on that; or oh, I don’t know how to juggle yet, and so you work on that.
There’s certainly a distinction between the innate (the part of me that makes me ME) and the incidental (the parts that could change and I’d still be me), and that’s what’s being discussed here. All the incidental parts are somewhere on a scale from vital (I can hardly see myself without my creativity) to inconsequential (the color of my hair, or my primary language being English, doesn’t make a huge change in who I am). Anything that’s not incidental but not inconsequential should be improved, but one of the wisdoms of life is knowing how much time and effort to put into improving each one: Some things could be better, but the time is better spent elsewhere.
And one of the other wisdoms of life is knowing that society categorizes a lot of aspects as “vital” when they’re really “inconsequential” – and vice versa.
Take her to see the First Star Wars Trilogy! After listening to Jar Jar’s speech patterns, Selkie’ll be practicing un-pluralizing things like whoa! ^_^
No bribes. “Give to a child but promise him nothing.” If you use bribes then every bribe has to be bigger than the last one or the kid feels cheated. Furthermore that gives the Selkie the right to opt out of the speech therapy if she opts out of the bacon.
Either getting speech therapy is necessary, like going to the dentist and no bribe is required, or it isn’t necessary in which case Selkie should be allowed to choose to go or not to go.
Now, having said that, a good, loving and over-involved parent would try to make sure that the speech therapy sessions were something the kid could enjoy or look forward to, such as by ‘coincidentally’ combining them with pick up for a weekly play date with Georgie. It would be only practical to run two errands at the same time after all. But one is not contingent on the other.
Its simple, no, don’t bribe, but a rewards system is a good thing. “You can get the comic book you want, but you need to do this first.” Then never change the offer, and make it contingent on the child successfully doing what you asked them to do. If they refuse, well, they don’t get what was promised. People work better with obvious rewards than just telling them what to do.
I think Todd is trying to put more on her plate when she hasn’t even finished chewing on the name issue (let alone the bacon). It would serve Todd better if he drops the subject for now and waits for a time where she could deal with it on its own. However, with soon having to deal with Amanda’s issues, such matters could likely get pushed into the background.
Oh my god this is adorable. I am really glad to see Todd enforcing the things he believes in while still being a gentle soul. Selkie, on the other hand, is clearly a kid š I love the way you write, Dave! Keep it up! š
If Selkie was my child, I’d make a deal with her. If she willingly works on her speech impediment then I’d do something special in return, kind of a tit for tat deal. Its the same as I’d do if my child wanted something like a video game, I’d tell them that to get it they’d have to work for it so as to set in a feeling of earning what they want rather then getting it straight off.
Todd already gave up the bacon.
Two words, Todd: Seawater Aquarium.
Having lived and hunted in the Great Lakes and rivers, Selkie hasn’t had the chance to try the incredible variety of tasty creatures from the ocean. Now you have millions of species’ worth of new and probably tasty creatures to bribe her with. You’re welcome.
I’d go with freshwater aquarium, though. Since her species is freshwater, I don’t think they’ll deal well with salty food.
A Seawater aquarium would give any inhabitants a longer life expectancy.
Tuna and swordfish are both ocean fish. Technically salmon is also, for part of its life cycle. And Selkie has eaten, and expressed interest in, all of these delicious fishes.
You don’t even have to limit yourself to food. I would sit her down and say that if she went to these classes, I would buy her a fog machine so she can make her room look like a forbidding evil lair. Every mad scientist needs one right?
It gets her to want to go, and when it’s in use, it can humidify the air, which being a marine based person, might make her feel more comfortable. A win either way.
I got this idea while replying to a comment below, and thought of this “thread”.
Todd could trade English for Tensei! Selke ould teach him Tensei words, and laugh at how he talks. Todd can teach Selkie how to say English words and plurals properly.
This will not only show that Todd cares about her keeping in touch with her Sarnothi heritage, but will also show her that even grown-ups can have trouble speaking a foreign language. Double confidence-boost!
Kids. Can’t live with them, can’t bury them in the garden.
That is awesome.
Offer more bacon if she listens. That’d work on me.
I can see how it might be hard for Selkie in a way…just another “You’re weird, what’s wrong with you?” message like with her lack of ears etc. Not what it IS, but she might be over-sensitive to it thanks to the bullying. Good for Todd though on standing his ground. Speech difficulties clear much faster the sooner you jump on them.
(Wanted to strangle a parent I knew when I worked in a preschool – wouldn’t let her daughter go to speech therapy because the horrific lisp “sounded cute”…never mind it was actively interfering with the poor kid’s communication!)
It could be worse: it could be Gungan… “Mesa no gosa to da bad-bombing school”
Darns its yousa stoles missa jokes XD
did any one else read selkies purpousefully speech in skwisgaar’s voice from Metalocalypse? no just me? well i geuss im the weird one then š š
No…but thanks to you now that is the only way I can hear it lol
i think that if she bite her tongue by accident could learn to stop the pluralism… ĀæOr the way she talks don’t move the tongue enough to happen this accident?
You know, I don’t really know. I would think a bitten tongue in her case would REALLY hurt though. XD
I remember being annoyed about missing music class to see one of those “speech therapists.” She showed me pictures and wanted me to pick “this one” or “that one,” and I kept saying the one with the whatsit and so on. She kept going back to “this one” or “that one.” It dawned on me that she wanted to here how I sounded the “th” sound—annoying me even more. Boy, if only my elderly self could go back to my second-grade body, I’d blister her ears with a few more sounds.
Avoid speech therapists right now—they’re charlatans. She has more important things to chose than an odd speech habit. When she’s grown up more she can see about breaking out of ’em…
I got out of history class for my own speech therapy. Felt awkward to walk out of class when everyone else was staying but also glad to skip the stupidest class of the day. XD
I remember how I had an arrangement to go to speech therapy during my Government and Civics class, since it was the biggest blow off class I had at the time. But the teacher was convinced that her class was SUPER IMPORTANT and that if we weren’t in class we wouldn’t be able to understand, so she wouldn’t let me leave to go to speech a lot of the time. And then since my speech therapist hadn’t seen me that day, she’d pull me out of my 5th or 6th hours, which were Algebra II Honors and Honors English, which were the worst classes of the day for me to be pulled out of. It was pretty annoying.
You clearly had a bad speech therapist, but they are most certainly not all like that.
I developed a severe throat disorder that essentially rendered me muteāI was using a computer to āspeakā, Stephen Hawkings styleāuntil a speech therapist figured out what was going on and taught me techniques for working around the issue enough to let me talk again.
I sound pretty much normal now, and I owe a great deal of it to that guy.
Likewise, the speech therapist my mom worked with after a stroke wiped out the part of her brain that handled speechāas in, she couldnāt say anything at allādid a pretty good job. A few of her techniques were frustrating, but she clearly knew what she was doing, and my mom can more or less carry on a conversation now.
Donāt apply one bad experience to an entire profession. Thatād be like saying one idiot psychologist who thinks drugs are the solution to everything means antipsychotic medication isnāt useful for anyone.
They aren’t all cut from the same cloth. My nephew’s speech therapist was critical in getting him to actually speak despite the difficulties he had.
I should make it clear it eas a one-shot test I was yanked out of class for, not full-blown therapy. Annoying, but maybe less than all your experiences—and there wasn’t anything wrong with my speech.
I have to disagree about them being charlatans. There are good and bad ones, as with everything else. Had speech therapy from the time I started school, just about, all the way through graduating high school, because I am deaf. While some of them definitely made more effort to help me than others, the overall effect is that I have much clearer speech than many people with my level of hearing loss do; few people realize I’m deaf based on my speech.
So because you personally had one singular experience that you remember as bad – likely because you were six or seven years old, didn’t understand what was going on, and were annoyed at being pulled out of a class you enjoyed – that makes the entire profession charlatans? Boy, I hope you never have a bad experience with a physician.
I am very sorry you had a bad experience; unfortunately, there are going to be incompetent people in pretty much every field. However, it does bug me when one bad experience leads people to paint every other professional with the “all doctors/psychologists/professors/scientists/lawyers/etc. are incompetent” brush.
I had to go to speech therapy when I was in grade school (as I know I’ve mentioned in other comments) and my therapist helped A LOT. I didn’t have a major speech impediment but it was nice to not be told that I “talked funny” any more. My youngest sister had a more serious speech impediment, to the point that only our family could understand her at times. Again, she benefited a lot from speech therapy.
After reading this installment, I’d been expecting some comments that I haven’t seen so far on the issue of whether or not Selkie has a RIGHT to continue to speak the way she does. I’m an English professor and the issue of “standard English” versus various other modes of communication is a big issue. By that I mean things like “street” talk, slang, “Black” English, ebonics, Spanglish, etc. A lot of educators feel that making someone’s language conform to an external standard (which, at least for the English language, was set by dead white men) represents a form of opression and intellectual colonization. As Gloria Anzaldua said, “Language is not just a means of communication, it is a carrier of culture.” Is Todd “colonizing” Selkie’s culture when he says her speech can be “fixed?”
Personally, I am not sure where I stand on this one. On one hand, I think it’s really important to be careful to allow people to preserve and express their individual cultural identities. On the other hand, being able to communicate in the “standard” mode brings with it a LOT of advantages. I expect that, as a caring parent, Todd wants Selkie to have all the advantages she can. š
I am typing on an iPad and as soon as I posted that I noticed a BUNCH of typos, for which I apologize! The biggest one is that I did NOT mean to put the word Black in Black English in quotation marks. (Black English, NOT “Black” English) That was really accidentally insensitive and I apologize. I recommend looking up some of June Jordan’s work on linguistics to find out more about Black English.
My typos were from going through a Nook Color…haven’t yet upgraded to a proper tablet between that and my computer.
Also this person wanted me to say “cookie,” by pointing to a picture of a round thing with a red thing in the middle. I didn’t recognize it. She hinted by saying “Oatmeal…” And I’d never *heard* of an oatmeal cookie before that!
I dug out (eventually) that this speech-test thing had something to do with the way I pronounced something in kindergarten…a delay of two years in doing something about it. Outrage on outrage.
(Two years minimum—it might’ve happened in third or fourth grade—I left the school partway through the fifth grade for…other reasons.)
While Selkie has a right to choose how she speaks, she should definitely learn to speak standard English.
Selkie was unaware she was even speaking improperly– she’s basically ignorant of what proper plurals are supposed to be like. Ignorance isn’t a choice.
What’s more, her current form of communication could hold her back in school, and in business later in life. Imagine what her essays must look like. What about written letters, receipts, orders, etc.? Sometimes, regardless of how you express yourself culturally in your personal life, clarity trumps all when it comes to communication.
Not to mention, altering the wordforms of English isn’t the only way to communicate your cultural identity. She could speak Tensei, or integrate Sarnothi words, phrases, and cultural references (translated or not) into her speech. I’d argue that this is even better, as it doesn’t imply ignorance or outright defiance of the accepted English language, but rather a purposeful, deliberate addition of cultural flavor.
How old is Selkie again? She comes across as anywhere between five and thirteen…and the writings of people that age usually have problems besides an additional “S.” (You should see what spelling and grammar errors by adults get palmed off on me.)
Probably if she doesn’t hear it herself, it doesn’t reflect in her written schoolwork. I’d have to see a sample to know for sure…
Heh, my brother would overcome speech difficulties by giving the dictionary definition of words. Never liked to repeat anything. But by now he talks perfectly fine (and can even fake an Irish accent, which is fun).
Now my nephew’s got a different speech impediment, and the government pays for the therapy. My mom and I have mixed feelings about this; we don’t feel he’s all that bad, and think it could be handled at home. In fact, I question what factor is actually causing him to mispronounce in the first place.
As for the “th” sound (which actually stands for two distinct phonemes, one voiced (buzzy, as in “this”) and the other voiceless (as in thin)), I find it’s easiest to actually point out what the tongue is doing, and how it differs from the “bite the lower lip” motion of “f” and “v”. Been doing that with the kids for a while. I seriously doubt that any normal school program ever bothers to give a good rundown of phonemes and how the mouth changes to create them (certainly not something most adults seem to be schooled in). I hold that kids need a good mental anchor for the phonemes, and the “th”/”dh” sounds as well as some others (“zh”, and some vowels, just to begin with) don’t have good anchors due to our spelling system being all wacky.
Which means that trying to discuss English phonemes is difficult – doubly so in writing – and I think some adults are sort of handicapped by how they weren’t explicitly taught them. I think this lack contributes to some of the bad spelling habits we see in lower-literate adults, because if they had a better grasp of the existing phonemes and how they can (and can’t) combine, they wouldn’t make some of the widespread errors I see online.
I had a Selkie dream last night, but I can’t remember it! I just remember waking up and thinking “wow, I had a Selkie dream,” before settling into the next dream, where Phil Khan decided to use magic markers to draw a superhero costume on me. I’m pretty sure the Selkie dream wasn’t as weird as that.
As a father, I like how he is handling this. Being me, I would jokingly tell her to go to her room. Then I would eat some of her bacon.
Laughing, I would then make more bacon.
I like this comic.
“I’m perfect just how I am. TV says so!”
Well, if the TV says it, than it MUST be true! š (That particular one happens to be true, most of the time, but most of the stuff on TV now isn’t very true.)
That’s a valuable message to counter the one kids are all too often bombarded with: “You’re defective. That’s why people don’t like/love you.” Children can’t change their inherent nature and it’s cruel to make anyone feel bad about things they can’t change.
However, children do often need to learn new behaviours. It’s important for parents to make a clear distinction between the child (valuable, loved unconditionally, no matter what) and a behaviour (sometimes not acceptable).
Kids can’t make that distinction on their own, as Selkie is demonstrating right now. Todd will have to convince her that those extra ‘s’es are not part of who she is.
I tell my niece that she’s a great little girl, and she can only get better. I also emphasize that everything worth doing is hard work so while already great, she still needs to work hard to get even better.
Positivity combined with teaching work ethic. This is a good thing.
So the arrow-key bug is still unfortunately working.
I don’t like the watering down of the word “perfect” to mean plenty of other things we already have words for. “You’re perfect the way you are” means “There is absolutely nothing about yourself that you should change because any change would be creating imperfection,” and that is a horrible, HORRIBLE idea to give ANYONE.
Isn’t life itself a challenge to continually better yourself? You say oh, I’m not as patient as I’d like to be, and so you work on that; or oh, I’m not as brave as I should be, and so you work on that; or oh, I don’t know how to juggle yet, and so you work on that.
There’s certainly a distinction between the innate (the part of me that makes me ME) and the incidental (the parts that could change and I’d still be me), and that’s what’s being discussed here. All the incidental parts are somewhere on a scale from vital (I can hardly see myself without my creativity) to inconsequential (the color of my hair, or my primary language being English, doesn’t make a huge change in who I am). Anything that’s not incidental but not inconsequential should be improved, but one of the wisdoms of life is knowing how much time and effort to put into improving each one: Some things could be better, but the time is better spent elsewhere.
And one of the other wisdoms of life is knowing that society categorizes a lot of aspects as “vital” when they’re really “inconsequential” – and vice versa.
Take her to see the First Star Wars Trilogy! After listening to Jar Jar’s speech patterns, Selkie’ll be practicing un-pluralizing things like whoa! ^_^
No bribes. “Give to a child but promise him nothing.” If you use bribes then every bribe has to be bigger than the last one or the kid feels cheated. Furthermore that gives the Selkie the right to opt out of the speech therapy if she opts out of the bacon.
Either getting speech therapy is necessary, like going to the dentist and no bribe is required, or it isn’t necessary in which case Selkie should be allowed to choose to go or not to go.
Now, having said that, a good, loving and over-involved parent would try to make sure that the speech therapy sessions were something the kid could enjoy or look forward to, such as by ‘coincidentally’ combining them with pick up for a weekly play date with Georgie. It would be only practical to run two errands at the same time after all. But one is not contingent on the other.
Its simple, no, don’t bribe, but a rewards system is a good thing. “You can get the comic book you want, but you need to do this first.” Then never change the offer, and make it contingent on the child successfully doing what you asked them to do. If they refuse, well, they don’t get what was promised. People work better with obvious rewards than just telling them what to do.
And all I can think is this being read by someone with a severe lisp.
thats just adorable
Woow. some pretty serious comments here. And the only thing I thought was “she starts to sound like smeagel”
I think Todd is trying to put more on her plate when she hasn’t even finished chewing on the name issue (let alone the bacon). It would serve Todd better if he drops the subject for now and waits for a time where she could deal with it on its own. However, with soon having to deal with Amanda’s issues, such matters could likely get pushed into the background.
OH GOD IT HURTS.
I think I got brain damage from reading that.
Her doing it on purpose is like translating with a note instead of a book
P.S.
Youtube key words “Sos” “-ses” “-seses”
SUS.