Again, this summer’s list of things to do for my grandson included learning to tie his shoes.
His mom wanted him to tie his shoes before he went to kindergarten. She tried to teach him. He tried, and found it extremely impossible. But then, that is nothing new. At three, his mom said, “All of a sudden, I realized, he should be putting on his own socks.” She knew he could handle the loose, stretchy, straight socks he wore, but until then he had happily let her put them on his feet for him.
“I will never forget how hard it was to get him to put on his own socks.”
On a Sunday morning she told him, “I want you to try.”
The very idea of an adult expecting little ol’ him to put on his own socks shocked the lad. “He was screaming and falling all over the place. I had to walk out,” my daughter said. Her husband went in and sat down with their son, but the scene continued.
“He was trying to put his socks on and making a scene. It was such a big ordeal. We had a week of that. I thought, ‘it is socks. It is just socks, Buddy. It is no big deal.’ But it was to him. Of course, he finally got it, as he did pulling on his underwear” accompanied by a similar scene.
Pulling on socks and underwear is one thing. Tying shoes is quite another.
“He figured out about half of the twists, turns and loops to make a tie, but there was so much screaming and gnashing of teeth, it just was not even worth it,” she concluded, and sent him to kindergarten wearing Velcro closing shoes.
At the beginning of this summer she pulled out a large poster board and wrote down a list of tasks, projects and activities she expected to do this summer – including having her 6-year-old and 4-year-old learn to tie their shoes. As the summer waned, she realized they had not even begun to tackle the shoe laces.
“He just needed to conquer the final loops.”
So with school looming, she sat down with her son and said, “Okay, we have this almost done. We are going to focus on tying shoes this week. We will only work on it for 10 minutes. I will set the timer for 10 minutes. If you scream I will add a minute. If I scream, I will subtract a minute.”
“I showed it to him, and in five minutes he had it. He practiced it five or six times and went downstairs to tell his father, ‘Oh, Dad, it is so easy. Tying your shoes is so easy,’ he said, waving his hand dismissively.
Now that he knows how to tie his shoes, he insists that his four-year-old sister has to learn.
“She can almost do it, just not quite,” his mom said.
After her son insisted several times, she finally took him aside to say, “She does not have to do it right now. You did not know how to do it when you were four.”
He also thinks that because he is going to school and is in first grade, his sister should also be going to school. His mom had to also remind him that he was not in school when he was four.
However, going to school with this first-grader is a whole new class of kindergartners. Many are like he was last year – they still do not know how to tie their shoes.
One of the little kids came up to him during a recess, “Do you know how to tie shoes?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tie mine?”
“Yes,” so he knelt down tied the child’s shoes for him.
After school one day, as he walked around with his own shoes untied, his mother said, “You know how. Tie your shoes. If they keep coming loose, double knot it.”
He bent down, saying, “I had to double knot it for that kid today.”
“Who?”
“That kid at recess. He asked if I knew how to tie shoes. I said ‘yes.’ I tied it, and I had to double knot it for him.” He said it so matter-of-factly, like it was no big deal he was tying another kid’s shoes when he had himself just learned.
Tying shoes is so easy. Anyone can learn … you just have to take 10 minutes with a timer ready to adjust the minutes for those screams of frustration.