Information

I mentioned the other day about the book I borrowed, and the empathy I found myself expressing over the frustration of wrongly-coloured dinnerware. Another part of the same book describes the idea that giving children information and letting them make a decision is a better approach to getting cooperation than the usual suspects: lecturing them, shouting at them, telling them to pick up their coat RIGHT NOW, saying no to their unwise scheme, etc etc. I've tried it, with some success: "Annika, if toys go to nursery they sometimes get lost!" --"Oh," she says, "... um... maybe Olivia can stay in your bag". "If coats are on the stairs, we might fall" ... pause ... 
     Tonight I'm going to take Nina to the Hampstead Observatory. They have a few telescopes and Saturn is visible tonight (if it doesn't get cloudy in the next 90 minutes). Amps took Nina a few months ago and they saw the Galilean moons of Jupiter, and its bands: pretty cool. Nina was absolutely thrilled. She knows all the planets, which ones are gas giants, which is the hottest/coldest/farthest, the fact that Pluto used to be considered a planet and isn't any more. She likes reading her astronomy books and even watching astronomy documentaries on youtube (a little). I was home with Annika; these things tend to happen after bedtime. For tonight, we've booked a car club car, which I'll go and collect while Amps wakes Nina up from a deep, deep sleep. They're going to start focusing on Saturn at 10:30. Apparently it won't be visible here again for a decade; Nina will be nearly 16 by then. She's been reminding us that it will be visible in May for months now, and saying how she can't wait for May. It's May now, and amazingly, the sky is clear.
      All this reminded me of Mother's day in 2012. Nina was nearly 4. They had a little celebration at her nursery (at my work), and her key worker was reading out things the children had said that they loved about their mummies. The previous week, Nina had given me an invitation to this little party, which I had liked, and put up in the kitchen. That morning I had said I was happy to get the invitation and I was looking forward to coming. Anyway, little Sophie loved her mummy's stories, little Shiv loved his mummy taking him to the park, etc etc. Nina had said "I love my mummy because she gives me information!". Her keyworker read this out, much to the amusement of colleagues, acquaintances, and friends. Yep: it's all leaflets at our house.
     It turned out she meant the invitation, not information. We do, of course, provide plenty of information. 
     I won't be able to take pictures through the telescopes. But if all goes well, maybe we'll see (well, ok, it won't be this detailed, I'm sure - but it'll be cool):

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