Roots Day 8: Who Am I?

Again, I got busy and I should have written this Wednesday or Thursday, but I just forgot.  (My daughter was sick with croup.  Yikes!  Better now.  Yay!)

This class was our penultimate session.  It makes me a little sad for two reasons.  I’ve liked taking my son out to these classes; the kids really do seem to be getting something out of it.  The second reason is a little more selfish.  It means I’ll be heading back to work soon.  Only about 2 and a half months until I have to give my kids to other people to take care of while I work so I can afford to give my kids to other people to take care of.  I miss them just thinking about it.  I digress.

We did two fun/interesting things.  The first is that the class got to watch me feed the baby, now that he’s on solid foods.  The first food I gave him was something he liked, strawberries (not an allergen in my family, so okay).  He loves strawberries (chopped up very fine).  The next food I gave him was supposed to be something he didn’t like.  It was supposed to show the class how he reacted to something he didn’t want to eat.  So, after a couple bites of the yummy fruit, I gave him cold spinach.  He ate it and kept eating it.  I told the Roots instructor and the teacher I was sorry, he didn’t like it the last time I gave it to him.  The teacher was smart and used it as a teaching moment for the class.  She said, even though the baby didn’t like it the first time he ate it, he tried it again and likes it now.  So when you think you don’t like a food, give it another chance, you might change your mind.  I thought it was smart of her.

The other fun thing we did was discuss my son’s name.  I know I don’t use my kids’ names on the blog and I don’t plan to.  I also don’t use my husband's.  While I like all my readers/followers/blogging buddies, I like to keep a level of anonymity on the blog.  So, I’ll talk about the name thing in a general sort of way.  What the instructor wanted me to explain to the class is how my husband and I picked our son’s name and if it had any meaning to us.  I told them that my husband and I are from two different cultures, so we decided that one of his names would reflect my culture and one my husband's.  The class’s assignment was to go home and ask their parents why they were given their particular name.  I thought it was a nice way to end the session.

In about three weeks, we’ll have our last visit with the class.  Then that will be it for Roots of Empathy.  I think it really has been worth it so far.