So nice to see

I have to say it was one of those mornings at gymnastics to just melt a mom's heart. Nico showed so many examples of how much he actually is learning on how to behave with other kids. First he bounded up to a kid with one of the big balls but when he realized that the ball was taken, he said 'hi' (or what I assume to be his variation of it) and grabbed the other ball rather than knock the kid down and take his ball. Then he actually followed the course for about 1/2 the time we were there rather than running around like a maniac (that was the other half the time but still, we are down from full-time so it's an improvement).

He held my hand on some parts so he could practice balancing. He slowed down and waited for other children to go ahead of him. He stopped and let me show him the numbers on the number walk and when we went back and they were out of order, he put them all back in order as I handed them to him. He shared and was gentle with the other kids. In the whole 45min, there was only one instance of typical toddler behavior when a little boy was playing with the big ball he had been playing with first. He did try to take it away but was very easily pulled off by the offer of the other ball. He also did a lot of listening to me with color matching.

The biggest surprise of the class tho, was how well he listened to me about jumping off the big blue block. Normally his favorite game is to climb up the block and jump down from the top to the floor. This is not recommended since even tho it is a padded floor, toddlers have still been known to break their legs doing this as it's a jump off of approximately 42". They are supposed to jump onto the padded wedge and roll down. Today, he only jumped once and when I talked to him it actually seemed to sink in. He would climb up there, go over to the tall edge, stop, look at me with a grin and point off the edge. I would tell him "no, we don't jump off there" and he would go over to the correct edge, stop, look at me with a big grin, and point. I would say "yes, that's where we jump" and he would proceed to jump and roll. He did this several times, even going so far as to start climbing down the high side but climbing back up when I told him no, that's not how we got down.

So wow, not only can he hear, he can listen too!

For the record, no, I do not expect to see this same level of wonderful behavior next week and fully expect we'll be back to daredevil child but it's nice to know he is capable of it and that the constant encouragement and repetition has not fallen on totally deaf ears. It gives me hope that he really will eventually use all this boundless energy for good.

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Insight from the Dalai Lama:
I get the impression that when people are not much interested in religion they also neglect values like compassion, a sense of sharing, a sense of caring-all the things that people consider to be a religious message and reject. That's a mistake. These are secular ethics, not a religious message, and they are for everyone.