Pictures and Music
At night, I usually hang out with my 7 year old daughter E and 2 year old son L in the playroom before bed. Most nights are really enjoyable and E has gotten into listening to her Yoto player again. There is a daily podcast that she loves and it just so happened to be art day that day.
They were supposed to draw a picture according to how they felt when they listen to music. E drew a few amazing pictures of the elements and then wanted to keep drawing. I had to keep L away from destroying the artwork, but it wasn’t anything too bad since he didn’t throw any tantrums (surprisingly!).
On the second round of the podcast, E needed to go to sleep halfway through since my wife was calling her to the room. I told E that she could finish the next day, but she reminded me that the podcast wouldn’t be there tomorrow. She was right and I promise to record it for her on my phone so she could listen to the music. She was really happy and went to bed.
Later that night after I put L to sleep, I put the Yoto player near my phone used my voice recorder to record the entire podcast. It was about 15 minutes long, so I sat there and listened to the whole podcast to make sure that it was on my phone. I knew this was important to her and I didn’t want to have it messed up somehow.
The next day, I told E that I had completed the mission. The podcast was on my phone and she could listen to it when she wanted to do her artwork again with the music. She was really happy and later that afternoon, we were in the playroom. She wanted to listen to the podcast, and I decided to check the Yoto app. I’m not sure why I didn’t check it the night before, but there was a library of the daily podcast available on demand. That was an amazing find, and I could play the original podcast straight to her Yoto box.
Even though we didn’t use the original recording, I’m glad that I remember to do that. It’s important to keep promises to kids so that they have trust in your words. I’m not always the best at remembering promises, especially if they are really small in comparison to the rest of the things on my to do list, but I try my best to keep my promises if I know it’s a really big deal to my kids. If I can keep my promises to them, I’m holding up my end of the bargain…and when they promise to do something, I expect the same results!
