Life Skills

Nate is six-going-on-seven and let’s just say, he pretty much floats through life.  Maybe it’s a youngest kid thing?

He’s never entirely sure where he is in time and space.  Most mornings he asks, “Is it a school day?”  He still references things that happened months or years in the past as “yesterday.”  Most things he’s looking forward to are optimistically “tomorrow.”  There’s a lot of asking, “The tomorrow after tomorrow?”  Minutes and hours and weeks are essentially decades and eons and millennia respectively.  He requests things like going to Granddad’s or going to Pennsylvania on a weekend afternoon.

So James has us focusing Nate on life skills.  There’s a lot of emphasis on clocks and calendars and being aware of the body language and emotions of those around you.  His questions are generally answered with questions.  The kind of questions meant to promote critical thinking, thinly veiled by just a smidge of eldest child snoot.  Poor kid is outnumbered by a bunch of bossy first-borns.

Today we were discussing finishing up our Christmas shopping— we’ve had a plan to split-up the boys and let them pick something out for each other.  James lays-out two options: get our lists crossed off today, or wait until next weekend.

Nate votes for before Christmas.

We explain that both options qualify.

So then he chooses next weekend, because that’s closer to Christmas than today.

I try to explain to him that it’s better to get your Christmas shopping done early, rather than waiting until the last minute.  Procrastination is not a Fucillo family core value.

A beat… “Why?”

Looks like 2018 will also be about life skills.

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