Let's start with a question. How many parents does it take to tune a guitar?
If you answered, "two, but it'll take them a really long-ass time to do it," you'd be right.
Now, if you're wondering to yourself, "Why the HELL is this completely non-musical woman whose toddler tells her to 'stop' when she sings to him tuning a guitar?" I wouldn't blame you. The fact that I'm "helping" tune a guitar is baffling to me as well. (Quick fun fact - did you know that you have to tune guitar strings to each other? Apparently, if you tune each string separately using the sound that comes from a tuner, you're going to get a very discordant (look at my fancy music word!) result. Also, frets are apparently numbered differently than one might think).
So why is there an ugly, black-with-red-lion-filled-swirls, kid-sized guitar in my living room torturing me right now? Because my counselor thinks music will be a good outlet for W's stress.
Hear me out.
Today's topic of discussion was coping with W, who is driving me bat shit crazy lately. Among other things, we discussed his sensitive personality. The conclusion my counselor (who doesn't work with kids but used to until she got fed up with dealing with the parents) reached is that W uses me to soothe himself. I'm like his living, breathing lovey. Which is all well and good for him, but not so much for me. We came up with some strategies to help break him of that habit, one of which was giving W some outlets for his stress. As a sensitive kid, my counselor surmises that W feels a lot of stress because he's not very good at self-soothing, and he need some sort of outlet for that. She suggested music. I'm desperate to make life with this kid more consistently tolerable, so I figured we'd try it.
Side note - my counselor also keeps throwing around the word "gifted" in relation to W, but I'm not sure I buy into that. I mean, this is the kid who would sit and splash in the toilet after he peed in it if we let him and enjoys drinking his own bath water. That doesn't scream "advanced intellect" to me at all.
I stopped at the store on my way home, and my only real options for toddler-sized musical instruments were a harmonica and a guitar. I figured B would punch me in the face if I gave W a harmonica (he has a very low tolerance for noise...makes life with two small children difficult sometimes), so guitar it was.
Which brings us to now. B and I have spent the last two hours trying to tune this damn thing, and it still sounds like ass. We both realize that a tuned guitar doesn't matter at this point, but if we have to listen to W playing on it, we want the noise he produces to be as aurally pleasing as possible.
Unfortunately, even after all our effort, strumming it still makes our ears bleed (as B put it, "I hear three sharp notes and four flat notes...and it only has six strings!"), so we're calling it for the night. No good is going to come of spending another hour working to perfect its pitch, and our new family member just might get smashed into the wall if we invest much more time in this. I think I'll give it another shot tomorrow.
For now, I'm just going to hope W isn't in the mood for stress relief tomorrow. And if he is, I hope I can locate some ear plugs.
If you answered, "two, but it'll take them a really long-ass time to do it," you'd be right.
Now, if you're wondering to yourself, "Why the HELL is this completely non-musical woman whose toddler tells her to 'stop' when she sings to him tuning a guitar?" I wouldn't blame you. The fact that I'm "helping" tune a guitar is baffling to me as well. (Quick fun fact - did you know that you have to tune guitar strings to each other? Apparently, if you tune each string separately using the sound that comes from a tuner, you're going to get a very discordant (look at my fancy music word!) result. Also, frets are apparently numbered differently than one might think).
So why is there an ugly, black-with-red-lion-filled-swirls, kid-sized guitar in my living room torturing me right now? Because my counselor thinks music will be a good outlet for W's stress.
Hear me out.
Today's topic of discussion was coping with W, who is driving me bat shit crazy lately. Among other things, we discussed his sensitive personality. The conclusion my counselor (who doesn't work with kids but used to until she got fed up with dealing with the parents) reached is that W uses me to soothe himself. I'm like his living, breathing lovey. Which is all well and good for him, but not so much for me. We came up with some strategies to help break him of that habit, one of which was giving W some outlets for his stress. As a sensitive kid, my counselor surmises that W feels a lot of stress because he's not very good at self-soothing, and he need some sort of outlet for that. She suggested music. I'm desperate to make life with this kid more consistently tolerable, so I figured we'd try it.
Side note - my counselor also keeps throwing around the word "gifted" in relation to W, but I'm not sure I buy into that. I mean, this is the kid who would sit and splash in the toilet after he peed in it if we let him and enjoys drinking his own bath water. That doesn't scream "advanced intellect" to me at all.
I stopped at the store on my way home, and my only real options for toddler-sized musical instruments were a harmonica and a guitar. I figured B would punch me in the face if I gave W a harmonica (he has a very low tolerance for noise...makes life with two small children difficult sometimes), so guitar it was.
Which brings us to now. B and I have spent the last two hours trying to tune this damn thing, and it still sounds like ass. We both realize that a tuned guitar doesn't matter at this point, but if we have to listen to W playing on it, we want the noise he produces to be as aurally pleasing as possible.
Unfortunately, even after all our effort, strumming it still makes our ears bleed (as B put it, "I hear three sharp notes and four flat notes...and it only has six strings!"), so we're calling it for the night. No good is going to come of spending another hour working to perfect its pitch, and our new family member just might get smashed into the wall if we invest much more time in this. I think I'll give it another shot tomorrow.
For now, I'm just going to hope W isn't in the mood for stress relief tomorrow. And if he is, I hope I can locate some ear plugs.
1 comment:
Joe could help you tune the guitar, but I'd probably keep my eyes open for a keyboard instead. Guitars get out of tune quite easily and their strings break. We have a keyboard I'd love to make disappear ;-)
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