Pay attention to "Me"

After our breakfast this morning, Faith and I were as usual sitting in the living room with the TV turned on to Playhouse Disney.

I had the newspaper in front of me and was thinking to catch up with the day's news. After flipping through a few pages, I found Faith with her Doodle Pro, sitting next to me.

She signalled to me to doodle along with her on the Doodle Pro. Since she was conveniently sitted on my right, I used my right hand to draw vague circles with one of the magnetic shapes while I continue to read the newspapers.

Seeing that my attention was not on her but on the newspapers, Faith stood up and yank up my hand to signal that she wanted me to stand up. I was reluctant to as I wanted to continue reading the headlines. My dear daughter was fairly insistent that I stood up and made lots of noises until I finally caved in.

Then, she bent to pick up the Doodle Pro by its handle with one hand and with her other hand, dragged me into her room. When we were in the room, she clambered up awkwardly with her Doodle Pro and indicated to me to sit by patting the sit next to her.

When I smiled and sat down next to her, she happily started to push the Doodle Pro next to me and make me draw alongside with her. Finally, she had gotten me away from whatever distractions that were occupying my attention to now focus on her. Just her. Alone.

I was highly amused and very tickled. She's following in the footsteps of her daddy. Doing what he does whenever he wants her to focus on something instead of being distracted by the blaring TV in the living room.

Admittedly, I conceit to letting her watch lots of TV programmes on weekday mornings. It arosed out of habit when she was younger and would want to cling on to me. Letting her be distracted with the TV allows me to make up our bedroom, prepare her morning meals, start her lunch porridge cooking, prepare her bath and other morning chores that I otherwise wouldn't be able to do.

Now, its become more of a habit than a need to keep her occupied, especially when she started walking and became more mobile.

It is usually on Saturdays or public holidays, when Louis is around that there's someone else in to play with her while I do the morning chores. During these times, Louis prefers to have the music playing in the background instead of having the TV turned on becos he doesn't want her to be too hooked onto watching TV.

On a few occasions, he would bring her to the bedroom to play when he felt that she's too distracted to concentrate on the task at hand. I hadn't realised that Faith had observed and has now put to use this particular practice to get my attention.

So while I was in the room with her - with no further distractions - we both sang and danced to a few songs after we were bored with doodling. Following that, she pointed to the few books that I left on top of her chest cabinet and asked me to read to her.

I couldn't resist calling Louis halfway through and telling him about what Faith did, even though I knew I was interrupting him at work :)

I'm glad and proud of my little one. She'd used an effective method to get what she wants instead of crying or throwing temper tantrums.