my lil'Chomel

I'm trying to bring up Jon as a gentleman. He was refrained from snatching other kids' toys when I brought him to the playgroup. If there are too many kids going through one obstacle, he has to wait for his turn. That happened when he was 9 to 14 months. I had to stop bringing him to the playgroup because I just couldn't cope with driving 30 mins to the playgroup place, accompany/ play with him for 45 mins, do some groceries, drive back home and look after him all by myself.

Pppfffzzzzttttttttzz.... fast forward.

We just started letting him play in the mock-up obstacle-based playground in one of the shopping malls near our house. I really appreciate the sponsors for putting up such playground in conducive environment. It is clean (hope that they will maintain the cleanliness), air-condition (Jon doesn't have to sweat like the rain just poured on him) and it is spacious (the kids can run around like headless chicken and not crash into things). The playground is particularly crowded during the weekends. To my surprise, Jon acted like a true gentleman while playing there. He will try to avoid kids running towards him. If there are kids occupying the slide, he'll go to another one. Or when all the slides are occupied, he will wait till the kid in front of him slide down completely. Sometimes kids will try to be funny and walk up the slide from the bottom (Jon does that too). He will quickly move to another slide if he sees anybody trying to walk up the slide he is playing with.

Once there was this boy sitting at the entrance of the tunnel-type slide. Jon wanted to play and that was the only short tunnel-slide in the playground. Others were doubly long with double swirls for bigger kids. Guess what? Jon just waited patiently for his turn. The boy still didn't budge from his position. We were just watching from the fenced perimeter. We did not intervene because we wanted him to learn how to deal with situations like this and I was just curious to see how he would react to it. After awhile, the boy was still there (yeah, where are the parents?). Jon try to slow talk him. I dunno what he was saying but he was pointing to another direction. Only then the kid moved away and Jon quickly made his way into the slide. I am glad he did not resort to pushing or screaming or fighting with the boy.

In another incident, Jon acted like a gentleman again. The kids in school are taught to take off their own shoes and put them on the shoe rack. As Jon was taking off his shoes today (I get to witness this cos I went down to see the teacher), there was a mother attending to her girl's shoes too. In order not to bump into her, Jon stood by the side to let the girl's mother put her shoes on the rack before he did his. What a gentleman!