So this morning started my marathon babysitting expedition! I have Tommy from 8 am Friday morning until 3 pm Sunday afternoon. His parents are out of town at a wedding so I'm being his pretend mommy. This morning I dropped him off at daycare and in a half an hour I will go to pick him up. (I guess if I was a better mommy I would have picked him up as soon as I was done with my conference today.)
Tonight we (Tigran, Tommy, and I) are going to a cookout at Nicki's and then tomorrow we have developmental screenings with ECRN in the morning followed by COSI or the Zoo. Then in the evening probably pizza and a movie with Matt and Kara and babysitting Danny. Then Sunday morning possibly the art gallery!
They are one of the best people to babysit for (besides Nicki of course) because they gave me their Toyota Highlander to drive, their credit card for an emergency, money for takeout all weekend, their family pass to the zoo and cosi! I'm set....now if only they would pay my college tuition!
Today I went to a conference for Early Childhood Educators. The first speaker was Dave Peltzer..the author of A Child Called It. He is a great speaker; I urge you all to listen to him if you can in your lifetime. Then I went to a speaker from wright state university. Very interesting. He is really big on reasearch and he is a MD, a professor, a reasearcher of early childhood intervention programs, and in the air force reserves! AND HE HAS 5 KIDS! Very amazing! Anyways he was great and had a lot of statistics that were very interesting and intriguing so I'm going to look up his research studies to find more out about his studies and findings. (Many of his quotes were of others' research so I want to find them too.)
Some interesting facts (from research):
1- Only 13% of child care facilities and preschools are developmentally appropriate for children.
2- 80% of children who are mentally retarded are that way because of environmental factors not genetics. And this occurs during the first 3 years of life.
3- 50% of your learning is done in the first 3 years of life.
4- With proper early intervention, IQ points can be raised 15 points in the first 3 years.
I find that fascinating, scary, and motivating.
Well I learned a lot today and felt very lucky to have been able to attend for free (ECRN paid my way!)
Updates to follow on my pretend motherhood!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I love Dave Peltzer!!! I love "A Child Called It!!!"
I'm very jealous you were able to hear him speak. When I was in high school I read his books and I couldn't believe he had lived through all of that. I'm sure you enjoyed it. You must read the book if you haven't!
This babysitting gig sounds awesome! How old is Tommy again? Is he a good child? I would love to cruise around in the family car and go to the zoo! :)
Haha. I actually just read the book about 2 months ago.
Tommy is 22 months old and he is a really good baby. Todau however he only napped for 30 minutes and his babysitter could have used a good 3 hours nap! Oh well. He goes to bed around 7:30 or 8 so only a half hour left!
Did you know that I am going to be nanny-ish this summer? So I am going to be a pretend aunt (cose to mommy) for a couple of months:)
That's awesome. Who will you be nannying for? Its a lot of work but it is fun. I'm sure you already know this though from your experience with Seine!
Post a Comment