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Curiosity
Even as an infant Ashton was extremely curious about how things
worked. He would quickly become over stimulated in public areas and fall
asleep for hours. After he learned to crawl, we no longer had any
moments of peace and quiet. He immediately got into everything. The VCR
re-winder, the cabinets, the VCR door, etc. No matter how often we
removed him from the temptations, he still went back. We tried every
form of discipline we could think of to stop him, but nothing worked. We
attempted to do everything that Dr. Dobson suggests in his The
Strong-Willed Child. Ashton never even seemed to notice. We knew he
could hear us, because his hearing tested fine. |
No
form of discipline would keep Ashton from playing with the VCR, TV,
Re-winder, cabinets, etc. |
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While
Ashton could barely communicate with us at age two, he knew all of the
songs on Barney and Blue's Clues by memory |
We began to worry about Learning Disabilities
(LD). Ashton was slow at speaking and had many difficulties with
coordination. We also began to worry that his difficulties in birth may
have caused some brain damage. We were uncertain about having him
checked for LD since he also seemed very bright. He knew his shapes,
numbers and ABCs well before most children. And even before he could
carry on a simple 3 or 4 word conversation with us, Ashton could sing
all of the Barney songs by memory on pitch. We began to get very
discouraged and questioned whether or not we were doing a very good job
as parents. |
| It didn't help that people at our church in a
small West Texas town were very critical of Ashton. When Ashton was just
over 3-years old, the preschool department director told Wendy on
several occasions that she needed to get him potty trained or the
4-year-old Sunday School Class would not want him in their class
(because they wouldn't be able to change diapers).
At fellowships, several of the elderly ladies
commented loudly near us that, "Children behaved much better when
parents used to spank their children." Their assumptions were not
only wrong, but their methods were also wrong for Ashton. Spanking only
caused him to become more uncontrollable and gave him night terrors. And
the
hyper-critical attitude of our church members gave us nightmares. Since
Steve was the music minister there, all we could do was "grin-and-
bear" all of the criticism. The memories of their cruelty and the
stress caused by their demeaning looks toward Ashton are something we
still have difficulty letting go of.
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Ashton
loved to empty his toy box and use it as a car, boat or train |
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