School has started and we have all settled into the routine of fall. Margie Ruth in the sixth grade is one of the "big girls" in the school now – she and her classmates are the biggest ones there are and they are not very big. We have only four beginners and a second grader and our two sixth grade grade girls this year. Not a very large group – but how they love their school and their teacher! And our parent teacher association is looking forward to another happy year of companionship.
Wilbert is learning his "see my kitty" and all the other words appropriate to the occasion. He learns by the phonetic system, which I imagine most of your schools are using and I must say it seems to be a marvelous system. Ruth could read before she started to school, but Wilbert, while he had acquired a remarkable a lot of miscellaneous information, could not read. Now after a scant two weeks, he can read 20 or 30 words. Seems to me to be a very simple, sound and logical system.
Loses Companions
Sonny is without a companion now which puzzles him sometimes, but in the main he manages to get a lot of fun out of life even yet. The weather has been intensely hot and dry ever since school began, and Daddy sent Sonny into the house one morning because the sun was so strong, telling him he looked like a boiled beet. A day or two later Sonny came to the house voluntarily and throwing off his straw hat he said "My, I'm all sweat. Do I look like a boiled turnip?""
Speaking of Sonny he's a very surprising child. He is of a disposition that doesn't need much discipline, and what he does need is very hard to supply. He is so droll that anyone who attempts to correct him is likely to burst into a fit of laughing before he gets through. The other day, while Paula Jean was still with us, the children broke down the tire swing. The rope simply wore through and the child in the swing got a little bump. But everybody had a hilarious time after the incident, and then the boys and Peejee began to rope rump with the tire and the rope. With three children and two dogs in the melee, it was not long before friction arose, and I was obliged to settle the fracas. (I used to be humiliated when my children got into such affairs. I felt it was a disgrace. I've come to accept the more philosophically now. Instead of a disgrace, I consider bickerings as a natural phenomenon of childhood. Better families than mine have quarreled).
Didn't Touch It
Anyway, I laid the tire beside the tree, took off the rope, and said with considerable sternness, "This is not to play with. We will leave it here until Daddy can put it up. Don't touch it."
Later in the day, when the children had all forgotten about the tire, Fido began to play with it and when he got weary, he left it lying flat in the middle of the lawn. I happened to be working near a window, and before long Sonny came into sight, playing gun with a stick. I noticed a great light came over his countenance when he saw the tire, similar to that which radiates from the face of a scientist when he has solved a tremendous problem. Sonny carefully stooped over the tire, and inserted his stick. Then he scampered away and came back with a second stick, the same length. When satisfied that both fit across the tire, he stepped gingerly between them, and lifting the two sticks, pulled the tire up about him like a life preserver. Then, with a great chuckling, he romped and gambled all over the yard, cutting great circles and figure eights, and wound up in front of my window with his fat little face beaming an infectious smile, crying excitedly "I haven't touched it yet Mother!"
Kept Within the Law
I suppose he had disobeyed me, and yet he had not disobeyed the letter of the law either for I said "Don't touch it." It is just such little incidences as this which prevent the art of child raising from ever becoming an exact science. No doubt a wiser parent would have devised some sort of discipline, but as for me, I did the only thing I was capable of doing in the face of such a convulsing performance. I simply laughed until I was weak. Fortunately for my reputation, the other children were not present. If they had been there, something would've had to been done about the problem. As it was, Sonny was satisfied and soon scampered off to other play. There been nothing malicious or willful about his action. He simply had a funny thought and acted upon it.
I'm sure I don't know what would've been the scientific way to handle the situation. If you do, let me know. I only know I'm thankful there's only one Sonny instead of an orphan asylum full of him. – Hope