This may be obvious to those of you who have had children, or who have worked with kids, but that wasn’t me. Even with five nieces, I didn’t see them nearly every day, so I’d failed to pick up the subtleties in their changing language skills.
For instance, in the last few months, Lydia has picked up the notion of the past tense. My wife, the English teacher, explained to me that, just by listening, they pick up the general rules, in this case, the -ed suffix. Then later, they, at least native speakers with people around them who give them examples of standard English, will pick up on the nuances in the language. So, I needn’t necessarily correct Lydia when she says throwed when she means threw, except to reply with the proper form. And I’ve noticed that this is working with growed and grew already. An interesting scientific laboratory in the home.
Meanwhile, she’s doing her numbers, though she seems to skip 14, for some reason. And she prints her name. The L she’s got down pat. The Y looks like an I with a little arrow quiver on the top. The D resembles a paramecium. The I is good. The A is fine, too, but then she augments it with little dots; maybe it’s an artistic statement.
As they say, Reading Is Fundamental. And we do read to her a lot. They are often the same stories, so that memorization often takes place. My favorite book to share with her is Madeline:
“In an old yellow house in old Paree”
“Paris!”, I’m corrected.
And later, I read “again” to rhyme with “rain”, and I’m corrected, well, again. One of these days, I’ll get it right. Or maybe not. 
ROG
Category: Lydia
The Lydster, Part 39: Dancing Queen
I know you’ve all been asking: just what music does Lydia like to dance to? The answer is just about anything with a beat. Sure, she’ll do the routines on the Barney video or move to the tunes on her albums, which I’ll play at her request, but will not initiate…
…but just as often, it’s whatever music I might be playing: Stevie Wonder (“Boogie on Reggae Woman”), Traffic (“Glad”), Dylan (“I Want You”), Beatles (“Lady Madonna”), some blues or reggae or jazz. She really isn’t all that particular. Most recently, it was some Brian Wilson album.
And she’s pretty good at it. The still photos don’t do her justice.
ROG
The Lydster, Part 38: Dr. Jeykll, Ms. Hyde
OK. I wrote this story about a rare period of sustained testiness of my otherwise wonderful daughter last Saturday.
But somehow, the entire post disappeared from Blogger, pictures and all.
While I could reload the pics, and have, recreating the text is too much like work, especially since it’s suddenly getting warmer in the home office Ah, well.
She’ll Need Schoolin’
For me, one of the motivating factors of urban life is my long-standing belief that if the middle class leaves the city, the city will die and the ‘burbs around it will as well.
Anyway, I was having this discussion about wanting Lydia to go to school in the city, if at all possible. There was a story last month in the paper about the 38% graduation rate at Albany High School. (A later story noted a reporting error on the part of the school, so that the number was really a still dismal 53%.) Her elementary school is brand new. The middle school is problematic, though I don’t know how it’ll be seven years from now, and I indicated that, by the time she’s ready for that level, perhaps we’d put her in private school, or even home school her, but that abandoning the city was not my desire. To which someone noted, “Do you want to sacrifice your daughter for an ideal?”
You have no idea how much this ticked me off.
I never criticize those people who move out of the city to do what they think is best. But I don’t want to be criticized for staying and trying to make things better. I noted that suburban schools are not bereft of problems; note the location of many of the mass school shootings.
Anyway, this article, which eventually be at a different address in the Metroland archives, best expresses my love for the city.
ROG
The Lydster, Part 37: Miss Independence
There was this old commercial for an OTC headache reliever in which a woman of a certain age is trying to assist her teenaged or adult daughter. The younger woman snaps, “Mother, please, I’D RATHER DO IT MYSELF!” (Anyone actually remember the name of the product? I’m thinking Anacin, Bufferin or Excedrin, but I’m not sure.) Anyway, the daughter, after taking the headache remedy, is happy, smiling, working together with Mom.
Now, what, pray tell, does any of this have to do with my lovely, sweet-tempered, cooperative daughter?
Well, I have become aware of the rhythm of the things that she can do herself – or thinks she can – and it is not always prudent to offer assistance at these times. She wants to pick out her clothes, and most of the time, she does, even if her mother would not have selected that particular pair of socks. The only time we try to change her mind is if the clothes might be too warm, or not warm enough – a difficult thing to gauge given that it’s below 30 and above 80 in the past week and a half. She can carry things I didn’t think she could, and successfully.
Yet, there are times, usually in the beginning of the day, when she’s not quite awake, or the end of the day, when the eyelids are drooping, when she wants to be carried downstairs or upstairs, and I try, we try to be sensitive to those nuances.
Lovin’ the little girl. Sorry, I’ve been corrected: BIG girl.
***
Sometimes, I think I’m the only proud father in the world, even though I know intellectually that’s not the case.
ROG