Give Me Six Minutes

You may be asking yourself, "why six minutes?" My reasoning it that this would be about the attention span of my six year old. Honest truth and I bet you would find the same thing with your child. They seem to be able to really put their whole heart and soul into something they really are not too interested in for about the length of time they are old.

This does not mean she cannot play a computer game for hours on end, which she can. It also does not mean she cannot take a shower for about an hour, which she does. It just means that she cannot really put forth
hard, concentrated effort for more than about six minutes.

For some reason I tend to forget this with subsequent children, but it really never changes. I see the same with my 16 yr. old. She can do her math pretty seriously for about 16 minutes. At around that time she has to get up and get a drink, make her some matte, or go to the bathroom. She will chat online for hours, but remember that is not concentrated, focused work.

It used to drive me crazy when my kids did this break thing. But I have been paying attention to it in myself. You know what? About 48 minutes is all I'm good for, if that!

As a side note, the cell phone that my teen gave a great chase for last week is now history. Yup got it ripped off at her "friends" house last night. I, not being the supportive oh I'm sorry mom that I am, reminded her that she was not supposed to be at that friends house anyway. She did not get any sympathy from us, which made her really mad. As she put it, madder than getting her cell phone ripped off.

She enlisted the help of our neighbor and had him drive her to the police station. They drove her to the guy's house, that she thought took the phone. He swore up and down that he did not have her cell phone, that it was two other guys. He even told the cops that these other two guys had taken his computer key as well as something else from him. I told her it was gone. She still went to meet a couple of friends today to try and beg them to give her phone back.

Her statement which I believe expressed the sentiments of all us living in Costa Rica were, "just because I live in Costa Rica does not mean I want to get ripped off". The people laugh at her and say "you are in Costa Rica, get used to it".