St. Nicholas' Day and the gift of schedules...

Happy St. Nicholas' Day!

Did you set out your shoes? Did you get a treat? 

We are trying to instill some fun traditions for Holly to learn about Christmas, things a bit more than Santa and the tree and presents. We have the nativity scene, the wise men are "traveling" to see the baby Jesus, and I gave her an advent calendar for her house. I have one, too-- more sophisticated, with a stylized scene of the manger, etc. (it looks pretty, but clearly not historically accurate). Hers is a nutcracker one-- I've no idea if they are opening the windows at her house (Holly says she forgot). I hope so. Or maybe they can play catch-up.

One reason for doing an advent calendar besides the little treats or, in our case, little pieces of the story, is to help children manage the waiting. It helps them develop a sense of time. I think this is really important; with digital clocks and streaming services, among so many "instant" things, children are having a really hard time envisioning and internalizing time. My students often cannot read an analog clock-- this is insane, I think. I finally figured out how many of them "tell" time-- the time of a quarter in basketball, or a half in soccer. Baseball and softball are no help; those games are not timed. 

It's hard to wait when you are little person (okay, for any of us), but if children don't have a sense of time, of how long things take, and how to measure it, that's a real deficit. 

So-- we do Advent. And Lent. And she'll learn how to tell time on an analog clock. And hopefully, she will also learn how to measure time internally, so that waiting is not so confusing. 

In the meantime, we have never done St. Nicholas' Day in our home-- we are a mix of Scots/Irish/Canadian/English in our grab-bag of heritages. Holly's dad's family is, however, Swedish on his mother's side, so I would think they might like to start that tradition with her. I'll drop a hint for next year. Celebrating traditions is a way of making time manageable, too-- the cycle of the year is another thing that is hard for kids to grasp. 

So many families don't even have a weekly chore schedule, they don't attend church on Sundays, and the weeks just stumble by. It's not too much to ask, I think, to help kids learn time management as well. That's another thing so many of my students struggle with; they get overwhelmed, they forget things, they have zero clue what is going on what day-- or even what day it is, sometimes. No wonder due dates are ignored.

I need a schedule in order to maintain emotional and mental order. I am not good with too much loosey-goosey; yes, I can flex, but there needs to have been at least a plan to start with. When things get chaotic, at least the architecture is there to help me move through the uncertainty. My dad used to tease me: "Oh, right...it's Monday. Clean the bathroom day." And it was. When I was juggling babysitting, working, keeping my house clean, and doing the running around and visiting and calls and cooking and so on in his last couple of years, trust me-- schedules helped me not lose my grip entirely. 

I have had enough of chaos, and I want more unstructured time that is just for me. I still write things down on the calendar and transcribe them to a weekly reminder on the fridge, but that's mostly so everyone else knows what I am up to. And it's always in pencil now.

Have a good day!

C