Out of the mouth of my babe

A few things Biscuit has said recently: 


He did it his way: Biscuit is such a creature of routine and habit. There are some positive aspects of that and some negative ones.

The positive is that once he learns to do something, that's that. He can do it every time. The negative is that he is often SO SLOW! And he can be quite contrary when he isn't able to do things the way he's used to doing them.

And sometimes, it's just funny. Like last week. 

Jeff usually gets Biscuit ready for school in the morning while I make his breakfast and lunch. But Jeff had an early work assignment, which meant I would be taking over his usual morning duties. 

As Biscuit was getting dressed, he felt that he needed to give me a running dialog. He acted as if I had never gotten him dressed or witnessed him dressing himself.

"See, Mom, here's the thing," Biscuit said. "I put my clothes on smallest to largest."

"Okay," I said, really just hoping he would hurry up so we could get going.

"I start with my socks," he said. "After I get my socks on, then I put on my underwear. Then I move on to my pants. The last thing I put on is my shirt. Now I know my shirt is actually smaller than my pants, but I like to put my pants on first because if I put my shirt on first, some of it gets tucked into my pants. And I don't like that."

"Sounds good to me," I said. "Now if you could only put all those things on a little faster ..."

Sensing his way: Biscuit has a guidance class once a week at school, and a couple of weeks ago, they talked about how to handle stress.

It kind of disturbs me that my 6-year-old needs to worry about stress.

His teacher mentioned that some people use yoga and meditation to help ease stress. So that evening, Biscuit came home and asked me if I would teach him yoga and meditation.

"Well, I can teach you some things about meditation, but if you want to do yoga, I'll see if I can find you a DVD," I told him.

Just as I suspected, they have kid yoga DVDs. The one I got him has a space theme to it. It has four sessions and relates everything to outer space.

On the first one, they begin by sitting on the floor with their legs straight out. Then they reach down toward their feet into what's called a seated forward bend. The teacher tells them it's time to put on their space suits, so they grab their imaginary suits and start pulling up their legs until they're in a seated position again. They're doing real yoga poses, but they make it fun and relatable to the kids.

For the meditation, I told him that it was all about him calming everything down, including his body and his mind. I told him to sit quietly, close his eyes and breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth and think about something he really loves.

"I'm going to think about nature, Mom," he said.

His group leader in his after-school class wasn't sure whether to believe him or not when he mentioned it to her.

"I finished my homework," he told her. "Would it be okay if I sat on the floor in that corner over there to meditate?" 

She told him it was fine, but she asked me about it when I picked him up. I explained what was going on, and she was all in favor of it. She told him he could do it any time he wanted after his homework was done.

I told Biscuit that another relaxing thing was to sit quietly and pay really close attention to his surroundings. 

"That can help take away stress, too," I told him.

I'm not an expert at any of this stuff, but I figured if it would help him ease his mind about his schoolwork and other stuff, it couldn't hurt to talk to him about it. I guess he was listening because as I was tucking him in one night, he started telling me about how he wakes up in the morning.


"Mom, when I wake up, I try to use all my senses," Biscuit said. "I use my eyes to look around and see all the things I love in my room. And then I use my ears to see if I can hear any birds outside or maybe rain falling. Then I use my touch to feel my warm covers. Then I use my nose to see if I can smell anything, like bacon cooking or something like that. And then ... well, I actually only use four of my senses. I don't really taste anything until I get downstairs for breakfast. ... Well, unless you count toothpaste."