Monkey See

[trickykitty]

Every time I show up at my parents' house with a new string working hobby, Little Bit gets interested and wants to learn what I'm doing. Tonight, I had a little face in the middle of my knitting, so I gave him a ball of yarn and showed him how to make a slip stitch and long-tail cast on, which he did until he was bored (meaning, an entire long knitting needle worth of casting on). Later, he forced me to go ahead and show him the knit and purl stitches. I opted to teach him the Continental method first. I'll teach him the English method later once he's made good progress with holding his needles while making the stitches.

Eldest came around and started giving him a hard time about doing "girly" activities, which spawned me asking what was so wrong about MY activities. This sparked a little conversation with the boys about sexism. I don't try to push those conversations, but I do take advantage of pointing out such things when they come up. Besides, Little Bit is very much not afraid of his effeminate side, so I have a more vested interest in making sure Eldest doesn't grow up anti-effeminate, let alone anti-gay, just in case Little Bit goes in that direction. Today, Little Bit rotated between learning knitting, playing with Eldest with the electronics kit, playing with toy cars, and trying to build a fort out of scrap wood in the back yard. I'd say he's pretty well balanced so far. I'm doing my best to counteract negative socialization that I feel they are learning from their peers.

Once our sexism conversation was out of the way, Eldest actually started to show an interest in learning what I'd been teaching Little Bit. So, tomorrow after work, I'll take him to Jo-Ann and if he really wants, we'll pick out some yarn (he says he'd like red and black, and I know black is not a good color with which to learn, so I'll get him red) and I'll get a couple more sets of knitting needles for them both.

In other news, my plans to get the boys interested in audio books went without a hitch. We first watched Ender's Game, and I talked to them about the differences between the movie and the book, namely that a lot of stuff was left out. I then proceeded to read the first few chapters of the book while they in turn practiced knitting and played with the electronics kit individually. I'm picking up the audio book tomorrow during my lunch hour, since my voice can't handle too much reading, and I'd also like to be knitting while listening instead of reading out loud. Come vacation time next weekend we'll be ready to move on to Ender in Exile Speaker for the Dead, and they'll both have string working projects and laptops/tablets to play with while we drive to our destination.

Comments

That is cool

[disgruntledgirl]

Good job!