Being Spontaneous

I’ve learnt in recent times to not plan our days. Whilst both children thrive on routine, Toby doesn’t have a real awareness of time and you could literally drop him on the moon and he wouidn’t really give two hoots. Rosie in the other hand really needs to know what is happening each day, but what’s even more important than that is enduring her routine or the plans then don’t change. If something doesn’t go as planned her world falls apart. So it’s better to have no plans, and reveal nothing and then she’s happy! Our problem with plans is our lovely Toby - whatever we attempt to plan or do he thwarts it somehow! Whether it’s by being a step ahead of us or getting a different toy out or something random happening. Weather will change any plans too.

So we live a lovely spontaneous life where the only daily plans are rough, changeable ones in my head!

So today’s rough plan was to ensure we were all showered, do some ipad work / targeted TV programmes on safety with Toby and hopefully relax a bit...although I have to say the latter never ever happens here!

Toby has other plans. First he decided that he wasn’t having a shower and that Mr Tumble on the DVD player was more exciting. Then he decided he had no interest in Fireman Sam and preferred to do a 200 piece jigsaw that he insisted I helped with.

Meanwhile Rosie I knew was hankering after playing her new Robolox game with her friends but I could already see 60 text messages from her friends and I wanted something a little bit more constructive done first. So I set her off doing piano and violin practice before requesting to see her schoolwork.

Rosie is a real star pupil and is really brilliant but sometimes she rushes things to get finished and her spelling isn’t great. I found lots of mistakes and big gaps missed out where she claimed she didn’t understand what to do. I didn’t believe her!

The problem at this point was I knew her (unspoken) plan for the day was to play with her friends. So when I suggested she sat down and we worked through her work together, she instantly looked like a little black thundercloud: she made every excuse in the book to try to get out of working, but she sat down and off we went.

The grumps soon evaporated when she realised I was there to help her, and not just to get her to work. We started out with comprehension; then some history, followed by science. I’m no scientist and I admit I was struggling in places to trawl my memory banks on forces, levers and cells. But with the help of a microscope, books and Google, we had a really good science lesson. The thunder cloud slowly lifted and Rosie declared she had really enjoyed our session and having things explained properly.

We had a really lovely unexpected visit from a Blogger friend of mine who I hadn’t seen for ages. She and her children were on a walk from the next village, and so she phoned to see if we were in. We had a fantastic socially distant chat on the doorstep. It was so lovely to have some human contact. Truly lovely and it’s lifted all our spirits tonight and put a smile on our faces.

Tonight we dug out an old toy. It doesn’t come out very often because it’s noisy and large. But it’s such good fun!! It’s always lovely to watch the children having fun together. Originally posted on 14.6.2020