Bella Herself

For my final blog post I thought it would only be right if I interviewed the main character herself, Bella. At first I wasn’t really sure what I was going to ask her considering she’s only 5 years old and can’t really understand questions that well, much less what an “interview” is. So I designed this interview as a very simple one; one that a five year old could easily relate to and answer with no hesitation. Basically it’s a “get to know” Bella interview just so that you all can get to know her better and what she likes. Here are some of the questions with things that she likes as well as what I thought were some of the better questions & answers: (for this portion of the post some there may be incomplete sentences or some grammar mistakes but that's simply because it's her direct quote)

What’s your favorite TV show?

-Spongebob

What’s your favorite movie?

-Marley & Me

What’s your favorite day of the week and why?

            -Friday. Because at school they call it “Fun Friday” and you can sit by whoever you want

What’s your favorite thing to do with the family?

-Go out to dinner, go bowling, and go to parties

What’s your favorite thing to do?

-Eat cake on my birthday. Cake yummy

What’s your favorite holiday?

            -Christmas & Thanksgiving because we eat turkey

What’s your favorite thing about winter?

            -Throw snow at people. I’m gonna throw snow at your eyeballs. If it snows I can say “Juan remember that day where you said you’d help me make a snowball? And then you can!

If the whole school was reading this and you wanted them to laugh, what would you say?

                A knock knock joke. The joke itself: “Knock knock. Who’s there? Apple. Apple who? Apple I take a bite out of you, you taste disgusting!” (she struggles with jokes)

And just for the fun of it I asked her if she had any last things to say and she responded with these childlike answers:

             - "I like to poo poo". "I put glue on your face". "I stamp your body"

Bella actually did a pretty great job at the interview process and doing her best to answer the questions; especially given that she’s only five. After about 20 minutes however I lost her attention because she started to run around the ping pong table laughing for absolutely no reason. I never thought a day would come where I would interview my sister about herself, especially at such a young age. Throughout the interview she was just giggling and smiling and seemed to find it pretty amusing. A lot of times she would try to mess with me and ask me the question in reverse. For example I’d ask “What’s your favorite movie?” She would respond with “What’s YOUR favorite movie?” But I have to admit that she surprised me in how well and how much she had to say to some questions.  When we got to the end of the interview she actually wanted to continue and said it was “fun”. I guess she likes other people knowing a lot about her. 

Looking back on the entire process of having Bella as my special topic I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been something that’s been easy for me to write about but more importantly something I’ve enjoyed. I guess writing is just easier when you’re writing about someone/something that you really care about. Everybody seemed to enjoy my posts as I had a lot of people come up to me even outside of class and tell me about how much they enjoyed my blog. I appreciate everybody who gave me feedback and hopefully helped me make my posts progressively better.  Bella is truly special to my family and I’d say we wouldn’t be complete without her. I would love to use her again in the future as one of my topics for writing as she made it a fun and an en-joyful process for me!

Every Kid Is Different

When first hearing that I had to interview somebody about our topics, I knew almost immediately that I would most likely have to interview a parent. Most teenagers siblings are either too close to their age (and therefore they don't remember what their siblings were like when they were little) or I didn't know of anybody that I felt comfortable enough and thought I would get enough information from. That being said I actually did a joint interview of my best friend’s parents about what their experience was raising a child. Chip is a guy though and having had Bella as a little sister and the topic of these posts, I wanted to have a female subject; so I interviewed them about Chip's older sister Sarahgrace. I felt really comfortable and open about this interview because they are all like second family and really anything can be said with no offense being taken. I decided that the main goal of the interview would be to get a real idea from a parent’s perspective, on what it's like to raise a child up until the age of 5. (Since that's currently Bella's age and all I've been able to witness day to day) This would include the negatives of Sarahgrace, her positives, what they struggled with most, what they learned most, what their overall experience was and other minor details. 

The interview started out with the negatives that Mr. And Mrs. Hightower faced while raising Saragrace. They said your typical issues such as tattle tailing, being bossy, talking all the time and normal things that little kids do. Throughout the interview I was surprised and really struggled to get anything out of them that challenged them when raising her. They had much more positives than negatives to say about Sarahgrace; this wasn't because they were defending their daughter, but they simply told me that she was the easiest of their three children to raise. (They also have another daughter Lizzy) So I continued to ask them about her behaviors or what she did for fun, to see if that would maybe spark some memories. However I was once again surprised with the simple answers they gave me such as "playing outside, watching tv, coloring and painting". The only weird story they shared was when one day Sarahgrace released a balloon outside and it floated off into the sky and she thought it would enter the atmosphere pop and then explode the earth.

I was coming to the end of my questions and thought that my interview was a complete failure. I asked questions in a manner that I know I could have related to because of Bella, but it seemed to be a completely different story for them. My whole interview changed dramatically though when I concluded in asking them about their personal experience. I started with Mrs. Hightower and asked if she thought parenting was easier than she expected or harder. She responded with, "Being a parent was easier than expected because she was easy to raise. I thought other parents were doing it wrong when I saw them struggling, until Chip and Lizzy were born and that's when I realized that I really didn't know what I was doing." She also included in saying that she "grew as an individual and learned how to handle multiple children". My reflection of her personal experience was that she had some struggles, she did a lot, but she ultimately learned. I then asked the question to Mr. Hightower to see if his experience was any different. He tried to tell me that it was really easy being a parent but Mrs. Hightower would always interrupt with "well thats because you never did anything". Mrs. Hightower actually ended up leaving the room because all he was really doing was sharing tips and tricks with me as to how to get out of things with my wife when it comes to our kids, when that day comes.

What I learned from this interview and the research that I did in my previous post is that the behavior of five year olds is going to be different for every kid. Bella may have similar attributes and interests as many other kids but as far as how she acts is going to be different from everyone else. For the Hightowers, Sarahgrace was a really easy child while her other two siblings were very difficult. In my family I’m really not sure who was the hardest or who was the easiest but I bet my parents will say the same thing; every kid is going to react and grow at different rates. So the real challenge whether you have a younger sibling now or one day when you have your own kids is how you are going to react and grow from their behavior? The experience will be in your hands

Behavior of 5 year olds

Research for my topic was definitely more of a challenge for me personally then picking my topic. I knew that writing about my little sister would be an easy task but when this next assignment came of finding research about my topic, I was stuck. Searching the internet about information on five year olds isn’t exactly something your normal teenager does, especially being a guy. To say the least, when I typed “five year olds” into the Google search bar, I came across headlines that I was not expecting to read. Some topics and stories included titles such as “Raising your five year old”, “Sitter charged after 5-year old fatally shoots self while sleeping”, or even “How many five year olds could take you in a fight?”  Of course only one of those titles sounds like something I could actually use, but it was way too feminine. I continued to search and came across many parental articles (many of which were all for moms) until I finally came across an article titled “Child development: 5-6 years” on the website "Women's & Children's Health Network". This article really just broke down how five year olds behave and the ways that they may be changing as they reach this age; this was something I could work with. I read the article and found many behaviors that were true about Bella but also some topics which she behaves the exact opposite. For example, the article said “There will be fewer arguments and fewer tantrums”, which at least for Bella is not true at all. However the article had one main agreement and disagreement that related to Bella which stood out to me more than the others. 

The article claimed to say that this statement was true, “Your child will be mostly independent in dressing and eating but may still have some difficulty cutting with a knife”. I would have to strongly disagree with this in relation to Bella, but it may be true for other five year olds. It is almost a daily struggle in which Bella takes over an hour to eat her food. She seems to struggle with this mostly at breakfast even when it comes to just eating some cereal. Many times I believe it’s just because she’s lazy in the morning and likes to joke around with my brother and I instead. Bella will just sit at the table and tell me “Hurry up and eat your food!” when in reality I’m almost done and she’s still eating.  

The article did have a statement though that I thought was very true about Bella. It said, “They still have difficulty explaining complicated events or ideas and may leave out important bits”. There is at least always once a week where Bella comes home and tells me about a story at school. It’s always funny though because sometimes she’ll be struggling to get it all out and about halfway through she’ll pause and say “I forgot the rest”, and then laugh by herself for a few seconds. Ill then continue to try to ask her what else happened but she just continues to laugh and most of the time says, “I don’t remember I really really forgot” while moving her hands up and down with a priceless expression on her face and her eyes opened wide.

More or less the article had many facts that I was able to relate to in my relationship with Bella, but also some that weren’t true for me. This doesn’t mean that the author isn’t correct, it just didn’t apply or relate to what I’ve experience as Bella’s brother. The article did however open my eyes to new behaviors such as “your child will become very good at sorting things by color, shape and size.” This is something that Bella has not done at all or even something that I would expect her to do. I agreed with the author, disagreed and was also opened to new ideas and behaviors that I will be watching to see in Bella’s behavior.

My Special Topic

The special topic that I decided to choose for this period of time is my relationship with my little sister Bella.  I picked her as my special topic because she is very close to me and seems to create a story every day, which would be something easy to journal about over a span of a month.

My little sister is five years old and just like most other five year olds, she is pretty crazy and just loves living life since she has no worries. Just like when every teenager was a younger kid that was one of the greatest qualities of being a little kid, having no worries. You can clearly see that in Bella as she just enjoys living life, playing with our family, and going to school and being able to hang out with all of her friends.

The main reason I picked Bella as my special topic though is because I feel like I am very close with her. I would honestly call her my best friend since she's only a little kid and doesn't cause much drama or stress in my life. She's someone I always come home to and know that she's going to put a smile on my face with whatever childish thing it is she's doing. She loves watching movies with my other two brothers and myself, no matter what the movie is. Every now and then she gets this "tough" mindset about herself and believes that she can truly beat me in a wrestling match but it ends up with her just losing because she is too ticklish. She loves going outside with me every Sunday and helping me wash my car. During the summer that was one of her favorite things to do and I would enjoy her company while I was out there. Bella alleviates every serious situation that ever arises in my house whether its an argument that breaks out about college, or my brother and I getting in trouble; there will be yelling going on and out of nowhere Bella will say something innocent and funny that can't keep anyone from laughing and automatically calms everybody down. Bella is my ultimate cheerleader as she's always at most of my basketball games and is always excited to come and watch me. Most of the time the morning of she'll come up to me during breakfast and tell me how excited she is about my game. Bella is probably more popular among my friends than I am as I always get comments about how "cute" or "adorable" she is and how everybody wishes it was their younger sister. Whenever I have to go run an errand for my parents to any store there is not one time where I don't get a comment from somebody about how beautiful she is. Bella truly has been a blessing to my family and myself and has something about her that can't keep you from smiling.

Its for these reasons and many more that I picked Bella as my special topic. Everyday she always seems to create a story or does something that I can talk about which is why I picked her. She's a topic that will be easy to write about every day and also one that I'll enjoy because she is so close to me.