Parker's Latest

Parker's two favorite number related topics of conversation these days are maps and money. He has to know which freeways we are taking to every destination we go. Then he likes to tell random people about it. He said to a preschool kid's mom the other day, "We are going to an amusement park and to get there we take the 580 to 238 to 880 to 101 to 152!" "But to get to Los Angeles, we only have to take 580 to 5 to 405, even though it is much longer to get to Los Angeles. Like 5 hours!" He even told my doctor, "When I am talking about the number 580, I say 5 hundred and eighty, but when I am talking about the freeway, I say five eighty."

With money, he has this book 26 letters and 99 cents and yesterday he added up all the money in the book, for fun. Twice. And he is very interested in prices at the store. "Mom, that one is $2.89! And that one is $4.62!"

After he starting asking me why we couldn't just buy anything at the store all the time, a gave him a chore chart of sorts with each chore equaling some amount of money. So he could earn his own money. Like bringing your dishes to the sink = 1 cent. Getting dressed quickly by himself = 10 cents. And to get a dollar, he has to eat his dinner without complaining. We thought he would never do that so having it such a high value wasn't an issue. But then, we had a dinner he did not like at all. He looked at me. He looked at Michael. He ate it all (and actually seemed to like it) and said, "I get a dollar!" I though this approach would help him learn money and would help him do stuff he didn't like to do. I was right on both, but I'm sure I'm causing some sort of other damage in the process. My guess is he'll get bored with all this soon and forget all about it.