I am been a literal working mom since I had my firstborn. I already shared it here about My Life of a Single Mom. Now after I had another kid. Just like the way I worked before with my daughter with me all day, I take my 3-year-old son with me at work. Well, most people will tell me why I didn't leave my son with my mom or with my mother-in-law.
Asthmatic
Well, one of the reasons why I want him to be with me at work is he is asthmatic, whenever I leave him in my laws his asthma attacks. My son is very active and that's the reason why his asthma attack more often.
When my husband started working in Agriculture last February this year I told him I would bring my son with me to work. He was just around 2 years and 8 months at that time.
Adjustment
I really had a big adjustment in terms of working while taking care of a toddler. It honestly tested my patience especially since he was also adjusting to our daily routine.
I usually lose my patience especially if I am busy working and he wants my attention. Slowly as the months go by working while taking care of him is going smoothly as he is also growing up. He slowly understood when I said I was busy working.
For now, when he asks me what I am doing I will say Mama is working he will just say Okay Mama.
Daily Routine
At his age, he easily gets bored of doing one thing. So our daily routine when we arrive at work is to feed him his breakfast as I don't have time to feed him at home. As much as I wanted him to learn to eat by himself here at work I didn't want the workplace to be messy so I chose to feed him. So if I get busy while feeding him he usually finishes eating an hour after or so depending on my workload.
He drinks milk more often more than 8x a day. So mostly when I get busy with my work and he asks for milk I have to pause for a while just to give him milk since he will not stop bugging me if I do not give what he wants.
Struggles
One of my struggles too is when he wants to poop or he already poop on his pants. I've been telling him to tell me in advance if he wanted to poop but most of the time I will just notice him not moving and stay silent so when I will try to ask him if he wants to poop he will say No but I know he wanted to poop. Hopefully, he will learn to ask me whenever he wanted to poop instead of staying silent.
Education
Now that he is three years old I slowly introducing him to how to write letters, numbers, and shapes. He is already familiar with the whole Alphabet yet he doesn't know much about the small letters. He only learned and memorized the Big letters.
By the way, he learned and memorized the Alphabet, numbers, colors, and shapes by watching educational videos on YouTube. So I guess YouTube is his first teacher. Since YouTube can't teach him how to write that's my job to do daily.
Since we have some scratch bond paper here at work I use them to print out some worksheets for my son. I bought him crayons in 16 colors and I wrapped each crayon with tape so it would not break easily.
I've been amazed by my son on how he learns some of the secondary colors even if I don't teach him about it.
Teaching him everyday day how to hold the pencil or crayons properly on Alphabet tracing, tests my patience. I need to find ways for him to cooperate and don't get bored right away.
Playtime
For now, I am trying to give him time to play with his toys so he will not keep on watching videos on his iPod. I wanted to set a time limit for using his gadget as I don't want his eyes to get damaged by the radiation he gets on facing the screen for longer hours.
I bought a storage box so he can store his toys in one place whenever he doesn't want to play them. I also teach him to clean up his toys after playing them.
Communication
Sometimes if feels bored he will make friends with the kids that use the computer here and he watches them play or watch YouTube videos. Being surrounded by kids inside my workplace developed his skills in communicating with other kids. I can see how he behaves with other kids. It's just sometimes he finds it hard to communicate with other kids who can't understand or speak English well since my son speaks English and only knows little Bisaya words. I can still remember the first few weeks that he was with me at work he was so shy and even scared of other people coming in inside my workplace but now he has changed a lot from being shy to a friendly kind of kid because he will be the one to greet the other people by Saying Hi or Hello to them.
Sleeping time
He usually sleeps around 1 or 2 pm until 5 pm. Sometimes he slept on his own and sometimes he wanted me to be with him.
I bring 1 pillow and 2 blankets. I bring also 10 pcs of his mat so he can have a place to sleep on.
By next school year, he will be in school. Well if I just can afford to send him to a private school, he can be in school by his age now or He can be a visitor in a public school but since my work schedule is still complicated we decided we just enroll him by next school year. Since I work inside the public market and the public school is just nearby I will enroll him next year in the same school where I studied before. The funny thing is the teacher that teaches there was my teacher when I was in my daycare days.
Mommies and daddies, are you the first teacher of your kids too, or is it YouTube?
That's wrap-up my blog for today. I hope you can share with me your tricks on how to control screen time with your kids.
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Photos used in this article are all owned by yours truly unless it is stated
Published: 10/11/2023 02:34 pm (GMT)