Thursday, November 04, 2010

The car game

When my children were tiny, I used to play a game with myself when the day came to a close. I would carry them around the living room and sing to them or we would dance to fast mucic while counting cars. SURELY Daddy would be home within 100 cars! If he wasn't home within 100 cars, he'd SURELY be home within the next 100 cars! As soon as he came in, I'd either hand the babies off to him and go paint or draw, or I would talk his ear off. How we had nine kids, I do not know.

Now we have teenagers. When he is late, I have no baby to swing and dance with, but I have teens fighting with each other and evading chores and nothing getting done without threats to take things away.

I still play the car game.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have never played this car game, but it is a smart idea to keep little kids busy.

I have a Maths lover friend (I like it too but she is fanatic) and when I want to have a pause I give her a maths equation or something like this to think about. You may know the story of Lil' Gauss. When he was a little kid he was quite hyper so he was told to add up numbers from one to 100, because everyone thought it would take him hours, but he finished in a minute, because he realised if we add up like 1+100, 2+99 etc the sum of them is always 101 and he multiplied it with 50. So you should find something which drives their attention away for hours.

Anonymous said...

There was a contest in a Hungarian radio and the prize was a trip to Alaska and when I heard it I was thinking to you.

Tea N. Crumpet said...

No way! When will the winner come up? Did you enter?

Anonymous said...

It is already over. I don't think there was a great public fuss like "oh my, the Hungarians are coming", it is not the 10th cenutry. :)