Parenting or Cultural Differences?

Go Go go. I have been moving at hyper speed this morning. I feel jittery and shaky with all the go go go. But, Ah, the afternoon calm has arrived. I get at least an hour of down time.

This morning I witnessed something that I found interesting. I have been taking my kids to Strong Start, this great parent supervised, preschool like program at the elementary school. And through this program have had a chance to witness other parenting techniques. This morning I witnessed one that made me wonder.

I had suggested to one of the twins to get a puzzle out for us to put together because the toys we were playing with had attracted so many other kids that I decided the enforcement of turn taking was now some other parents job. As we got the puzzle ready, I smelled a poop and took twin1 to the bathroom to clean him up. While we were in the washroom, another mother came along and started working on the puzzle herself. Her 2ish son was with her, but she very obviously wanted to complete this puzzle herself and kept telling her child to wait, or would take the pieces out of his hands and try them herself. I observed this and since it was a puzzle that we had initiated, I grabbed some pieces that would fit together and gave them to the twins to put together. They very quickly put them together and were ready to move on to other sections. As they picked up a piece and attempted to put it in place, the other mother tried to grab the piece from them and put it in herself. Meanwhile her own son was still hanging around attempting to help with the puzzle. The other mother quickly got frustrated with the puzzle after watching the success the boys were having and backed off. The twins now had full access to the puzzle. They began to put the rest of the puzzle together with a little guidance from me saying things like, "There is yellow. Do you see some other pieces with yellow?"' The other mother over heard this, realized that this was another way to complete the puzzle and rushed over to grab up all the yellow pieces and start putting this in to place. As the twins put the final pieces into place because I had swiped them and was now handing them to the twins, the other mother's son picked up one of the already together pieces and put it back in looking for some encouragement from me. Which I gladly gave. Now I well tell you that this other mother was of a different ethnicity and seemed to be new to Hope, or perhaps Canada. So I was wondering, did I just witness another way of parenting that I was not used to seeing, or was this a mother who was trying to learn somethings herself, or a culturally different way of spending time with your children?

I had a great morning with the twins: playing hockey, reading books, doing puzzles....It was really nice to be there interacting with them. My mom very kindly watched the baby while he napped.