The Perch
At night, I usually hang out with my 2 year old son L before putting him to bed. My wife puts our other two kids to sleep, so it’s just good quality one-on-one time with L. A few weeks ago, we started to sit on a perch in the playroom to just look outside as the night goes by.
At first, I didn’t know how long L would stay settled for. It was a test to see and I tried to make it entertaining for him by talking about all the different things we saw. I pointed out trees, cars, people, dogs, and all sorts of things. He was trying to participate in the conversation, so he would say those same things back to me.
He then wanted to read some books, so I grabbed a few and read them to him. When he loves a book, he makes me read it over and over and over again. Most of the time, he pays attention and we can get through each repetition of the book. L was laying on top of a huge llama-corn stuffy and I just thought about how small he was in comparison.
Surprisingly, L sat there the whole night on the perch that first night. It was such a calm and relaxing time that we did it again the next day. Still lots of silly talking and reading. Still a calm evening. We didn’t really do that again for a while since he was back to being a very energetic version of himself at night, so we went back to playing all over the playroom.
Fast forward a few weeks and L asked me if he could go on the perch. I said yes, but only if I sat with him (since I don’t want him breaking the window doing something crazy). He said yes, so I picked him up. We sat there and he asked if he could go get me the Lego Mater since he had the Lego Lightning McQueen. I said yes to see if he would actually go get it and he did. He asked to be picked up again, so I did. We didn’t spend the whole night up there, but it was a good moment.
Even though only a few weeks passed, his speech improved so much. He was able to voice all his sentences and ask for what he wanted clearly. It’s so crazy watching L develop and if we enjoy more nights on the perch to hang out, I wouldn’t mind it.
