Muffling Z-man's Fears

My Z-man had one ear infection after the next for the first year of his life. We literally would finish the antibiotic, wait a week, and be back in the doctor's office asking for more. About this time last year, he had tubes put in his ears and has been infection free since then. As we were doing pre-surgery appointments, we learned that Z had significant hearing loss in one ear (about 90%). The surgery, thankfully, returned his hearing to 100%, as the damage to the ear drums from infection after infection healed.
I am so thankful that Z-man had the surgery but since last August, he has been sensitive to loud sounds. Vacuum cleaners, loud trucks, blenders, his vibrating tooth brush, music too loud...It seems to have become more pronounced recently (as fears often do around two).
We were at the aquarium with my brother this summer and he offered to take Z to wash his hands after they played in a touch tank. Z hesitated and then asked me to take him instead. He got very sad in the bathroom and explained that he wanted to go with his uncle but he was scared that the hand dryer would be loud and his uncle wouldn't have known not to use it around him. This was such a small thing, but it crushed me. I hate that his fear of something prevented him from doing what he wanted to.
My challenge? Equipping Z-man with a way he can be in charge of managing this fear (and hopefully a starting ground for doing the same with future fears). Until then, I had been quickly ushering him out of bathrooms, turning noise down if possible, and walking out of the hallway the janitor at school was cleaning. As much as I want to be able to solve it all, I have to give him the tools to resolve things himself.
Now, we pretend to put on "head phones." They are magical headphones that can

stay on, even when we take our hands down. We talk about using this strategy, I modeled it, and we practice it together. The panic over loud noises seems to have subsided. He even helped me vacuum the other day, "head phones" on, of course.

Putting on headphones as a train passed by the playground today.

Stuffing Kids with Hearts for Service!

So many cool things happened at the elementary camp that I ran earlier this summer. I wish I could do a blog post for each day and share all the great activities we did. Camp was so exciting and challenging to lead and definitely a highlight of my summer.
One part of the camp that I struggled with planning was the service project component. It was important to me that each day, the kids took time out of the other activities we were doing to discuss needs in the community (and world) and do something about it. This is just an important value to instill in children and an awareness we, as adults, have a responsibility to grow in the kids we hang around. Thinking daily service projects that elementary kids could get excited about with relatively few supplies and without leaving the building proved to be challenging.
One of the projects that I actually thought would turn out pretty lame was cleaning used stuffed animals to donate to children in need. I planned for us to clean the toys and then write notes to go with them. After tying bows onto them and attaching the notes, a church member took them to All God's Children Camp, a camp for children with incarcerated parents. This turned into one of my favorite moments of camp. The notes became stories that the campers wrote about the different animals. The stories reflected our conversation about the children would be receiving them. The campers talked about what those children might like to hear in a story and how they could help make those kids happy.
My favorite story?
"There once was a little leopard. He was sad and lonely because he lost his family. Then he found you! Now he is always happy and smiley! Take good care of him, he needs you!"
The story made me pretty happy and smiley, too!

The ABCs of Sand

Z-man has become very interested in letters, especially Z's. He always wants me to draw "Big One Z's!" When he asked me to draw one at the beach, I jumped on the teaching moment. I drew a big Z with a shovel and then continued with the rest of his name. He traced over my letters with his shovel (blue of course). We walked along the letters, making footprints on top of the tracings. Then, I yelled out "Go to the Z!" and we ran and jumped on the Z. We did this for all his letters. Much to my surprise, he got the letters right more than half the time! Yea for teachable moments!

Two-Proofing Sand Castles

Z-man is only ten days older than his cousin so it's like we brought twins to the beach this week for our family vacation! Wonderful, hilarious, entertaining...until its not. Then there are tears, shrieking, and more tears. While these moments are brief and everyone quickly goes back to enjoying each other usually, building sand castles was an exception. It just kept getting worse and worse. What was supposed to be fun beach play turned into making towers at lightening speed, quieting anxieties about impending Godzilla attacks, and lots of high-pitched shrieking. I built something with THING 1 and THING 2 knocked it down. Stomped it. Buldozed through it. Then, I built something for THING 2 and THING 1 would attack out of nowhere. YIKES.
Then, I realized that if you build up, it can (will) be knocked down but if you build down? Magic.
So far this week we have dug out a boat, an airplane, and a train in the sand. I think a fire truck is coming tomorrow. Both toddlers have helped dig and both have played, climbing in and out of the sand structure without doing serious damage to the "vehicle". Best part? I even got a chance to sit back and soak up some sun, while holding out my train ticket seashell of course.