When my child attends a daycare center, it is common for the center staff and parents to exchange “contact sheets. This is a tool for communicating with each other about what is happening at home and at the daycare.
Recently, these contact sheets have been converted into an application that can be entered and viewed from a smartphone. The daycare center my son Takeh attended when he was 0 years old used to handwrite on carbon paper, which was tedious, but the daycare center he attends now has an app-based contact book that makes things much easier. This is DX. Good, do it more.
From time to time, a caregiver will take pictures of your child at the daycare center and upload them to a cloud service. If you want to print or download the photos, you have to pay a fee, but it is a service that parents appreciate because they can see what their children are doing that they might not otherwise be able to see.
The photos show children in the same two-year-old class playing in a sandbox in the park. To my surprise, the children in the picture had made a huge pile of sand and had even dug a tunnel in the middle of the pile. I wondered if there were children who could do this even though they were in the same grade as my son, Takeshi! I thought.
My son Takeh was born in March, so he is the last child in his class in Japan. There are kids in the same grade who were born in April and are already three years old, so it is natural that there is a difference. I know that, but I was surprised to see “a huge pile of sand and a tunnel. I wonder if my child will be able to make something like that in six months or so.
It was just before he turned two that Takeh became interested in playing in the sandbox. He had never shown any interest in it before, so I assumed he was a personality with such tastes and preferences. Since then, however, he has quickly developed a love for touching the sand, which he continues to do to this day.
I am willing to buy various sandbox toys according to his curiosity; simple ones can be found at 100-yen stores, while full-fledged sandbox toys can be found at toy stores.
However, even though I think so, I have not bought him any new sandbox toys. Playing in the sandbox is a very creative thing for children, and as a parent, I want to support my child. Maybe I avoid it because I think, “If Takeh plays in the sandbox a lot, his clothes will get dirty and the front door will be covered with sand.
He can hardly play by himself yet. Every time he enters the sandbox, he invites me to play with him! I smile and motion for him to come play with me. I play with him with a smile on my face, but to tell the truth, I find it difficult because it is not easy for a nearly 50-year-old to do the “squatting and bending” required to play in the sandbox.
It is easier for me to follow him around the park on the playgrounds and slides.
That is why I did not buy him a big shovel or a bulldozer, which he would probably love. But that would have dampened his curiosity, so I’ll at least give him a used plastic bottle or empty can to fill with water. The sand in the sandbox will only harden if it gets wet. But if I do that, his clothes will get dirtier and dirtier. So I keep worrying.
(2023.05.12)
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