{"id":638,"date":"2009-10-03T13:54:50","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T20:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=638"},"modified":"2025-11-07T10:09:37","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T17:09:37","slug":"spill-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"Spill Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today we had Spill Class.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t know why I didn\u2019t start this one earlier.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about the skills my kids need to know to be successful as adults.\u00a0 <\/span>Things that somehow I picked up and yet don\u2019t remember my parents actually \u201cteaching\u201d it to me.\u00a0 <\/span>Another side shock from Parenting that no one tells you about.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

So I put something on the calendar once a week for the next four weeks.\u00a0 <\/span>Today was Spill Class.\u00a0 <\/span>Next week is Phone Class, then Optimism Class and then Face Class.\u00a0 <\/span>These classes are more like tests than classes.\u00a0 “<\/span>I need to know you know what to do,” is what I tell them.\u00a0 <\/span>Because they\u2019re old enough now that they spend a lot of their free time alone, so if they spill something I know they\u2019re cleaning it up.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

And none of them really know the basics of phone etiquette and how to dial and how to answer.\u00a0 <\/span>(Although they won\u2019t get a lot of practice until they\u2019re teens and have their own phones because I hate it when kids answer the home phone and I have to ask, \u201cIs your Mommy there?\u201d)\u00a0 <\/span>So that\u2019s why there\u2019s a Phone Class.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

And Face Class will be reading expressions\u2026 something my Asperger\u2019s kids may need a bit of extra lessons on.\u00a0 <\/span>Optimism Class is where I introduce them to the concept of faking the fun in hopes fun will happen.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

But today was Spill Class and it went off brilliantly.\u00a0 <\/span>First off, I wasn\u2019t Mom while I did it.\u00a0 <\/span>I was Fun Heather.\u00a0 <\/span>I lined them up in a row and quizzed them on who knew what to do if something spilled.\u00a0 <\/span>A wrong answer got a buzzer sound.\u00a0 Which cracked them up!\u00a0 <\/span>Conor eagerly and correctly answered the questions.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I spontaneously took Luke\u2019s water bottle and poured some of it onto the kitchen floor.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cConor,\u201d I said, \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>He quickly grabbed a rag and cleaned it up.\u00a0 <\/span>With Evan I poured it on the little area rug in the kitchen and taught all of them how to blot.\u00a0 <\/span>With Luke I squirted Conor and Luke blotted him.\u00a0 <\/span>A fun time was had by all, I\u2019m reassured they know how to clean up a water spill and it was over in 5 minutes.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

Next month I\u2019ll spill jelly.<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we had Spill Class.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why I didn\u2019t start this one earlier.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about the skills my kids need to know to be successful as adults.\u00a0 Things that somehow I picked up and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}