Little Man Smith

I've signed Tysen and myself up for the "Roots of Empathy" program. We will visit a grade four class once a month at a local elementary school. Through this program the children discuss nine different themes (meeting the baby, crying, caring and planning, emotions, sleep, safety, communicating, who am I? and goodbye baby); for each theme the class has a pre-family visit with the ROE instructor, a family visit (with Tysen and me) and a post family visit to discuss what they've learned. It is the hope that this program will help children to identify with another person's feelings (mainly Tysen).
The point of the program - "This ability to see and feel things as others see and feel them is central to competent parenting and successful social relationships in all stages of life. When children are able to understand another person's point of view and respect their feelings, aggressive behaviour is less likely to occur". ROE's mission is to help break the intergenerational cycle of poor parenting and violence (the school we will visit is an inner-city school).
The specific goals of this program:
- to foster the development of empathy
- to develop emotional literacy
- to prepare students for responsible and responsive parenting (and hopefully decrease the number of teen pregnancies)
- to reduce levels of bullying, aggression and violence in children's lives
- to increase knowledge of human development, learning and infant safety
Currently this program runs in 26 different schools, from kindergarten to grade 8! I am so pleased that we are going to be a part of it!
We will meet our class for the first time tomorrow - I'll let you know how it goes!

Today Tysen had his four month check-up and shots - I can't believe he's four months already!! Anyway - he did much better with the shots, just a quick cry and then he was fine. He is currently sleeping it off. He weighed in at a whopping 17lbs 4oz and is now 27 inches long! That puts him in the 90th percentile for weight, the 80th for height - and his head circumference is still in the 40th (he has a little head). In the last couple of days he has taken to spitting at people - how lovely. Glenn blames me for this - saying the airplane noises that I make when I fly him around are what gave him the idea (I have to admit that he does try to copy me and ends up spitting a lot). But it's cute spitting.

I've been using a different website for my pictures. I've added links along the side to the different albums. I much prefer the shutterfly site - it's so much easier to use and you can do all sorts of things with the pictures! It's free to join for anyone who wants to.
www.shutterfly.com
You don't have to join to view my pics though.