Don't Want to Discuss It

One of D's frequent comments in the last several months has been, "What a busy day, Momma!" I'm sure he got this from hearing me say it, but I'm not sure exactly what it means to him. Sometimes he, very appropriately, says it in the car on the way home in the afternoon, when, indeed, we have had a full day of fun. Recently, though, he said it to me on a gloomy Friday morning when I was stressed and exhausted and had allowed him to watch at least an hour of TV. "What a busy day, Momma!" uttered at 10AM after the end of Sesame Street seems to miss the point.

In any case, the teacher in me responded to this comment eagerly. It seemed an ideal opportunity to work on some language, recall, and sequencing skills by recapping all that we had done that day. I'd ask him to help me, and he consistently seemed unable to recall or express his recollections about the day's events, so I'd proceed with a careful retelling. "We had breakfast, we played with play-doh, we went to your friend Danny's house, we came home and had lunch..."

Alex had just recently expressed concern that we not encourage this line of thinking too much. We both desire that our kids' lives would not be defined by the cultural idol of busy-ness, so despite D's foggy understanding of the concept, we don't want to encourage him to equate full or fun with "busy." So lately as D has said, "What a busy day, Momma," I've tried to respond instead by saying, "Yes, we've had some fun today. What was your favorite part about today?"

But still he resisted becoming any part of the retelling process. Not sure what's going on in his mind.

In the last couple of days, the phrase, still oft-repeated, goes like this: "What a busy day, Momma, I don't want to talk about it."