Learning about Waiting

Madeleine is actually a pretty patient kid, but if you ask  her about Christmas or her birthday she'll say,

"I'm not excited. I'm sad, because I have to wait."

She's been exploring more the words "irritated" and "bored" lately, but I figured we could take a quick detour and talk about patience and waiting for a few days, especially since we are waiting on the baby to get big enough to be born.

It's easier than most emotions since she already knows the word "wait". I'm not trying to give her a definition on something that is abstract. "Irritating" has been hard since she doesn't understand how it's different than angry, and bored she gets that it's negative but not really the definition.

Anyway, I had picked up a great book two weeks ago when I was browsing the library called "Emily's Balloon" by Komako Sakai. 

I love this book. It is good on so many levels. But what I liked the most is that the word "wait" isn't anywhere in the book. She loses her balloon in a tree and she has to wait for her mom to get it the next day. This book and "Waiting for Mama" both don't actually end by the child getting what they were waiting for. The books ends with the reader waiting just like the child in the book. This book show her upset and dreaming about all the things that she wants to do , but she knows she wants to wait. I feel like it validated her emotions and made the book more relatable. 

The four I did remember to take a picture of are pretty good. I already mentioned "Waiting for Mama" above. "Waiting" is supposed to be a big hit, but really I don't like it much. Madeleine does though because after I read it once she could "read" it to herself. "Waiting is not Easy" we talked about how people can be annoying when they are waiting. We talked about how waiting can be hard but that doesn't mean we need to be rude or annoying. The "I Am Patient" was actually better than I expected because we were able to talk about situations that Madeleine is really good at waiting. She just learned the phrase "Excuse me" and we talked about how we sometimes have to wait our turn etc.

The last thing we did was think about times we have to wait. Sometimes we have to wait to eat dinner or standing in line. But other times we have to wait a very long time like for a baby to come or for strawberries to be in seasons again. Madeleine is really into "good choices and bad choices", so we ended by talking about how standing close to me is good and screaming or laying on the ground is a bad choice. She reminded me if we take "3 deep breaths" how that was good and then we could stand still. I wish it was that easy right? :)