It is great when children start getting more independent and have a desire to do things on their own. That is until they take their independent streak to the extreme. A brief story to explain what I mean. Windsor is fast when he wants to be and going after a baseball is one of those times. During his last game he sprinted to a ball, picked it up, and eventually threw it in. In the process of all this his hat fell off. One of his friends picked it up and was going to hand it back to him. Windsor had a fit. He demanded it be put back where it was and wouldn’t stop fussing until it was. I took the hat from the confused kid and threw it on the ground where I thought it had been. I was wrong. In order to redirect Windsor I reminded him we were getting Happy Meals after the game and put his hat back on, and he was good to go.
Windsor wants to do things his own way and figure it out by himself. These are qualities that at first blush look good on paper, but in practice they can have quite negative outcomes. Compare that to his twin brother who wants to color within the lines and follow the rules as they are laid out. If he doesn’t know the rules he will ask. Roland has looked at me before completing an action and asked, “Like this?”
We live near a round-a-bout and like other round-a-bouts in America it is deeply confusing to many people despite the fact there is only one instruction, yield to the car in the round-a-bout. I have seen the wildest things from people driving the wrong way, people treating it like a four way stop, and people stopping in the middle of the round-a-bout. It is frustrating and one day when someone was in the four way stop mode I had to slam on my brakes behind them as I was expecting them to enter the round-a-bout since there were no cars and no reason to even yield let alone come to a complete stop. Like a good American driver I yelled at them, but what came out was, “You are messing with the rhythm of the universe.”
Roland does not want to mess with this rhythm whereas Windsor creates his own rhythm and loses his mind when it is messed with. The thing with Windsor is he can be easily distracted and redirected. He needs structure. Clear expectations and goals. When I look at a lot of Windsor’s issues with school it makes me wonder if a different teacher would have been a better fit. Instead of messing with the rhythm of his universe, change the beat. Give him expectations and goals before he creates his own and when he gets lost on his own path redirect him back to the one he needs to be on.
At the same time that Windsor’s independent streak needs to be managed it doesn’t need to be crushed out of him. Trying to figure out new ways to do things and to find ways to make school work interesting isn’t inherently a bad thing. It only becomes bad when it is taken to an extreme or allowed to overtake a more effective method. It is like the round-a-bout. It is already optimized for efficiency. A driver going in and doing things their own way only hampers other drivers and slows down the overall process. It is a tried and true method with one simple instruction. It is not a place for independent thought or creativity.
My hope is that as Windsor matures he will come to understand the value in going along to get along and can save his desires for independence and creativity for the proper outlet, and that next year he gets a teacher that can offer him the guidance and instruction to assist him on this journey.
David Huzzard Writes 