Yes and No

When was the last time we all said "yes" to our children?

I wonder, because my son recently learned the Dreaded Toddler Negative, or "No."  Knowing that all kids use "no" a lot, my husband (and myself, to a lesser extent) tried to say "Please don't do that" instead of "No," hoping that it was too many words for our son to string together.  I suppose it worked, since he's not actually saying "no," but he has figured out that he can shake his head to negate something.  *sigh*  I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.

After he learned it, my husband and I started discussing why toddlers don't say "Yes" as often as they say "No."  Is it because we don't use the word as frequently around them?

After all, they hear "No" a lot:  any time they do something they shouldn't, for whatever reason.  So it's no surprise that kids pick it up quick.  Even when we tried not to use it, it slipped out a lot--it's just the first word that comes out when you need to react quickly.  But how often do we say "Yes?"  He does hear it, don't get me wrong (along with "yeah,") but most of the time when he does something good (or new or milestone-worthy,) praise comes in other forms, like "Good Job," "Good Boy," "Thank You," or "Hooray!" 

In the great irony of behavior, we say some variation of "No" every time he does something he oughtn't, but we don't always praise him (or even notice, *hides face in shame*) when he does something right.  I do try to notice and say something when he doesn't make a mess of his food, or when he obeys when I ask him to do something, but I know I don't always succeed--and really, we don't want our children to expect praise when they do something right, especially something mundane.  Too much praise could become a crutch.  I'm not just referring to myself here, I'm referring to all parents, teachers, etc.  Bad behavior always gets noticed (and gets attention,) but good behavior is often taken for granted.

Not all children don't use "Yes," of course, it's just not as common.  I met a friend at a Playplace a few weeks ago, and I once had to keep her son (six weeks older than mine) from sneaking out an open door.  When I asked him if he was trying to escape, he said "Yes!" :)

It is because of this revelation that I will be trying to say the word "Yes" more often.  "Yes, you just climbed up into the chair."  "Yes, you may have your milk."  "Yes, it's time to tickle Daddy."  My son has nodded a few times--enough that I'm pretty sure he means "Yes" when he does--and I'm hoping to get more of that from him.  And perhaps, if I can remember this bit of wisdom with the next child, I might be able to insert the word "Yes" into their vocabulary just a bit sooner.

It's worth a try, anyway.

Critters Round Two

A story of mine, Pandora's Time, goes through the Critters queue today.  I'm wondering what kind of turnout I'll get this time, since last time I got 25 critiques, which took me several days to sort through.  I'll be happy if I just get close to average (15,) though I'd be flattered if I get so many again.  I think this is a tighter story than the last, though it's longer, so it'll be interesting to see what holes people find in it.

It takes about four weeks for a story to reach the head of the queue after I submit it, and each person is only allowed one story in the queue at a time--although I'd mentioned before that there's one way to jump to the head of the queue:  by doing 10 critiques in one week.  I know I'd talked about trying to do this but...  Well, it's probably not necessary (even if I could make the time to do it.)  Yes, I currently have a backlog of stories I'd like opinions on, but I'm also constantly working on rewrites and new drafts, so there's no shortage of things to occupy my time.  I haven't even rewritten The French Maid yet, and it's been four weeks since I finished getting those critiques.  I've been busy working on something new instead, and The French Maid rewrite is the next item on my list.  (Unless something else inspires me first.)

Yes, this way it takes a while before a story is ready to be sent to the slush piles, but it will always take a while.  After I finish a first draft, I let it sit and marinade for at least a month before reading it again, and I always have things I want to change at that point.  It's only after this month-long cooling-off period and rewrite that I offer it to anyone else for opinions, and who knows how many times the process gets repeated before I feel it's ready to enter the world.  My point is that one story critiqued every month is plenty, since that's probably about what I produce.  It will probably even help me fall into a nice groove once my backlog disappears (if it ever does.)

Now, some people send novels through the queue a few chapters (no more than 20,000 words) at a time, and if I am to ever do that, I probably will want to get some Most Productive Critter awards, in order to keep my novel fresh in people's minds.  There's another way to crit a novel, which is to ask for dedicated readers to read the whole thing as quickly as they can/want to.  Being inexperienced when it comes to writing and getting critiques on novels, I would think that the Request For Dedicated Readers (RFDR) would be superior since it will guarantee that all readers will know the whole story.  However, in my limited (two month) experience, I've definitely seen more chapters go through the queue than RFDRs, so I have to wonder if chapters attract more readers.  I guess I'll find out when I'm ready.

Introducing the Sensory Bin

Lately, I've been feeling that my son needs more to do during the day, and more to stimulate him.  Not that I don't think he's having fun with, and learning from his cars (there's only 14 1/2 more years before he gets his license, he's got to practice!), books (who doesn't want to read Brainy Baby's Animals or Goodnight Moon twenty times each day?), blocks (you don't get a degree in architecture overnight), running around outside or at the park (Olympian in the making, here), or helping Mommy run errands (by carrying items through the store and flirting with checkout clerks.)  It's just that on days we stay home, I sometimes get bored with our options, and I don't want to fall behind his curiosity.

Now, my son is still too young to participate in any craft with an end result in mind, so I've been looking for activities that are more about exploration.  Enter the Sensory Bin.

A friend of mine, Sela, homeschools her children, and she has a sensory bin for her preschooler.  After looking through her blog and some of the blogs she uses for ideas/curriculum, I decided to give it a shot.

It's a 28 quart plastic tub I got from Target, and I filled it (for now) with elbow macaroni and kitchen utensils I got at a dollar store.

I'm enforcing strict rules:  the macaroni stays in the tub, and the tub stays on the blanket.  As soon as he purposefully removes macaroni from the tub, we put it away.

It's definitely a hit.  On day one, he played with it three separate times, each for a pretty long time.  It's a hit with my husband too, who gave me a tragic look before agreeing to put it away after our son poured a handful on the floor while they were playing together.

On day two, he played with it half-a-dozen times, requesting it frequently throughout the day (by banging on the lid with his hand.)  He wanted to play with it so much while I was fixing breakfast that I relented and put it in the kitchen, so I could keep an eye on him and make sure he was following the rules.  It's been in the kitchen during meal prep several times since.

After the first few days its appeal died off a little, but he still wants to play with it just about every day.  Sometimes he wants to play with it so badly that he'll try to spread the blanket on the floor himself.  He's been practicing things like burying items or his (or our) hands, scooping and dumping from one container to another, and filling containers to the brim.  He's even climbed into it a few times and buried his feet, and yesterday we showed him how to lodge macaroni between his toes (we're definitely NOT eating this macaroni!)  I'm very glad we introduced it.  I plan to change the filler material approximately every month.

I'm pleased to report that he's been very good about following the rules, even going so far as to pick up stray pieces that fall out as he notices them.  I guess clearly defining rules before introducing a new activity, along with follow-through, is the way to go!

My Name In Print

Library of the Living Dead, who will be publishing my story Night Terrors, has the table of contents up on their forums!  My name is in print, connected to a publication, on the web!  Woohoo!!

Click here for a link to the forums
Then click on "Library of Science Fiction & Fantasy Press" (fourth one down)
Then click on Doomology : The Dawning of Disasters TOC (currently the top option)
Assuming they'll retain this order, I'm number seven!

May Stat Check

During the month of May, I wrote (or did research) on 27 of the days (woohoo!)
I worked on research for a new story (that might become a novel,) came up with some ideas for a rewrite after receiving a ton of critiques from Critters, and worked on a new story.
I made no submissions (because everything was out already)
I received no rejections.  Instead...
I SOLD ONE STORY!!!  (Hooray for an acceptance instead of a rejection!  WOOHOO)
I have 6 stories currently in slush pile circulation
I made 12 blog posts
Between writing, this blog, and Critters, I took 4 days off.

Analysis
This month will always hold happy memories for me as the month when I made my first fiction sale.  I am still quite jazzed from that.  I will keep everyone updated, and will shamelessly promote myself (hey, it's my blog) when the anthology is ready for purchase.

Something I learned this month is that I don't feel very productive when I'm doing research.  I've been researching orbital space colonies (yes, I know there aren't any yet, but that doesn't mean there isn't information on them!) for a story (or possibly a novel) that I want to write.  At the beginning of the month, my creative time each day was mostly spent on the research, and I felt a bit unsatisfied because I wasn't actually producing anything.  However, while we were away on our writing retreat, I decided to pause the research and start writing a different story (my hope had been to finish a short story while up in the mountains.)  I didn't finish the new story during that week, but I'm making steady progress on it even now.  However, I have stopped doing research entirely--which means that I don't have enough time to do both.  I know intellectually that research is important to the creative process, but I guess that I'm going to have to learn to silence the voice that says "But I'm not writing," at least in order to do the major research required for a longer work.

I'm keeping up with Critters pretty well, although I took a week off when we were on vacation (you need to keep your ratio between number of critiques to number of participation weeks at 75% or greater to have your own stories go through, so I'm still in good shape.)  The one thing that has NOT happened is any attempt to do ten in one week.  It really would require a huge time committment to do that, so I'm not sure it'll happen anytime soon.

When it comes to networking, I get a huge fail.  I did a tiny bit at the beginning of the month, but just haven't been very good at browsing the blogosphere and leaving comments.  Maybe this month will be better.

For June, I'd like to have another good month like May (it'd be really nice to have another acceptance again!) with more networking thrown in.  Have a good June, everybody!