Thursday, August 16, 2007

Day One, Continued.

Well, he has been here for a couple of hours. He's been pretty busy. He sorted through all the boxes of things from storage. He now has a pile to toss (too small), to store for winter, and to use right now. He found his poker set, and sorted his Legos. Now he is on the Internet trying to learn how to communicate with the Furby his sister gave him.

He is definitely young for his age (15). During the clothing sort he worked independently, quickly, not wanting any interference, but then demanding my attention (not impolitely) to look at a t-shirt. "We all got this for volunteering!" He waits a moment for my response of "Oh. Neat." Then he tosses back into his pile and and continues to sort without telling me who the "we" were and what the volunteer project was. In any case, my attention is no longer required.

Brian brought up his box of Bionicles (a Legos product) and Frankie has been totally absorbed by them. He is content in Brian's bedroom (Frankie's for the week) playing with the toys.

When he gets his allowance he wants to "go downtown" and buy more Furbies so that they can all talk together. He hasn't realized yet that Our Small Town is too small to have a place that sells Furbies. For that we would have to go to the Next Town Over.


I told him we would need to do an inventory of his clothes to find out how many new things he needed. With any of the other boys this would be a cue to tell me how little they owned that was fit for respectable company. Frankie said, "I have like 100 pairs of pants." After a bit of discussion he decides that maybe he doesn't have 100, but definitely enough to last him a couple of weeks.

David called. We were going to have him come over for dinner tonight, but I told him that I thought I should not let Frankie get over-stimulated and we re-scheduled for tomorrow.

[He just asked me what time it is. "Ten to Three" I say. "Ten o'clock?" "No. Ten to three." "Does that mean ten o'clock?" "No it means that it is almost three o'clock." Odd. Did he have trouble hearing me, or does he not understand what "ten to three" means?]

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:51 PM

    Hi! I'm usually a lurker, but I love your blog!

    I'm delurking to comment on the time telling thing. I'm a grad student in a psychology department, and one of my friends runs an experiment in which undergrads are asked to tell the time as fast as possible as they see a series of clocks. The VAST majority of them don't use or understand expressions like "ten to three". They will always say 2:50, even if they're asked to do it the other way. Many of them can't pick out the right clock if they're asked to pick the one that says "ten to three" or "a quarter to one" or whatever. This is endlessly frustrating for my friend! She thinks it's because they've always had digital watches and clocks and never learned to tell time using relative expressions. Anyway, it's not just Frankie... the majority of college students (at least at my school) wouldn't understand that either!

    Again, I love your blog! Good luck with everything!

    -Laura

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  2. Thank you Laura! That is very helpful, and reassuring.

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  3. I guess I should thank my mom for never allowing me a digital watch. A tradition I kept with my own children, thus even my 10 year old understands "10 to 3".
    Love reading your thoughts, hope things continue to go well.

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  4. Glad to hear things have started out pretty well. I like Shari's idea of not allowing a digital watch. I think I will try that with my kids when they are old enough. I assume Em will start learning to tell time this year (1st grade???) No clue though.

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  5. Anonymous8:40 PM

    I just recently had to explain the "quarter to xxx" expression. Callie gets it now, but Bug still doesn't.

    I'm glad it is going well. :)

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  6. Slugger doesn't get the quarter to, ten to, type expressions of time either.

    It does sound like Frankie is a bit younger than his chronological age. But nerves could be exacerbating any regressive behaviors, too. Time will tell.

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  7. Anonymous6:29 AM

    TOots and Noodles don't get the "quarter to", "ten to", etc. either. And Noodles' class spent a lot of time on clocks and telling time (ha), this past year in fourth grade.

    Good luck. Hope things go well for Frankie and all of you over the weekend.

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