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Posts Tagged ‘parenting’

Quirks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 20, 2009| 3 Comments »

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One thing I love about having four children is being able to compare and contrast their personalities. It was an enormous relief to me when my second baby was born being completely different than her older brother. He had been such a difficult, attention-needing, intense baby that I had seriously begun to wonder whether he was that way because of something I was doing wrong. Then along came Miss L, the complete antithesis to the screaming, colicky, unpredictable baby her brother had been. She was a sunny, easily pleased, predictable and mellow little personality who occupied herself very happily wherever we were, which was lucky, because I was still having to spend all my waking attention on demanding Number One.

By the time Miss L hit her toddler years, things changed. We went through a rocky patch when her Very Intense Need to Declare Herself as an Individual was acted out with or without external provocation. Like the time we were leaving the house and she insisted that she wanted those particular pocketless pants to have pockets. Or she wanted her favorite hat to be a different color. Or any variation on this theme:
Her: I THIRSTY!!
Me: Okay, would you like some juice or some milk?
Her: NO JUICE!
Me: Okay, milk then?
Her: NO MILK!
Me: All we have is milk or juice. Or water. Would you like some water?
Her: NO WATER!! NO JUICE!! NO MILK!!!!
Me: er….
Her: I THIRSTY!! I NO WANNA DRINK!!
Me: er…okay, well….here’s a cup; tell me when you want something to drink.
Her: I THIRSTY!! I THIRSTY!
Me: So, milk, water, or juice?
Her: Flinging the cup, beginning of flailing tantrum.

Me: Walking away.
Her: Following me.

Luckily, by that time, older brother had transformed into a lovely, reasonable and calm preschooler, baby #3 only needed to be fed and changed to be happy, and I was a seasoned enough parent to realize that none of any of it had much to do with me. Which is why by the time baby #4 was born needing to be held 24-hours a day, I did so without once worrying that I was going to create an over-dependency.

Now I have two daughters very similar in personality and interests, and two sons very similar in interests but quite different in terms of personality.

I still find it endlessly fascinating to watch them make their way in the world, to see how they react to things. Fascinating and sometimes, a bit boggling.Who, at 13.5, would choose to walk on her hands on the way home from having hot chocolate at the coffee shop? The older sister of the girl who totally gets why someone would want to do that, I guess.

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On Censorship

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 25, 2009| 9 Comments »

A friend just told me that her eleven-year old daughter was chastised for reading Twilight twilightminicoverin her grade 4/5/6 classroom, on the grounds that it is “inappropriate” reading material for someone of her age. Too much about relationships or something like that. I don’t know the whole story, but even hearing that little bit of it brought up some issues for me.

First off, I don’t think that it’s the teacher’s right or responsibility to decide for a child what he/she should be reading. I’ll get back to whose responsibility I believe it to be later, but for now, let’s just say that I don’t think it’s the teacher’s. I get that the teacher needs to control what enters her classroom, and that the teacher needs to be able to make and enforce rules for that classroom, but in my opinion, this teacher was overstepping her bounds by passing judgement in the way that she did. If the teacher didn’t want that book in the classroom, she could have asked the girl to leave the book at home or keep it in her backpack, and left it at that. No need for the heavy duty moralizing.

Secondly, what is with our culture’s deathly fear of sex and sexuality? (which is what I am assuming prompted this teacher’s hyperbolic reaction to the book). Why would we feel the need to “protect” teenagers from information on this topic? So what if they find out about what happens in a sexual relationship? What is there to fear in this? The more knowledge the better. The more they know, the more they are able to make informed decisions.

Thirdly, who is this woman to decide what this girl should or should not be interested in reading (or thinking about)? What right does she have to start passing judgements on that? If this young girl is reading this book, we should assume that she has an interest in it, and if she has an interest in it, who, other than she, has any right to have any say on that at all? I remember avidly reading all sorts of “series” types of books when I was a grade schooler, books that my teachers thought were insipid, badly written and lacking in literary value. One of my teachers once wrote on my report card that I read too many of these books and that I should branch out. This was the same teacher who expressed concern about me being “too close” to my best friend and who suggested I branch out in that regard too. Thankfully my mother ignored those comments, and I kept right on reading (and re-reading) books about girls in boarding schools and families with five children who had adventures, but her critical comments left me feeling a bit uncertain and even a bit ashamed. Which was a shame. And completely unnecessary. I don’t read books like that now, and reading them then didn’t mean that I was “wasting my brain” or destined to live an adulthood surrounded by trashy novels.

Going back to who should be responsible for what a child reads? My opinion? The child.

It has been my own experience as a parent of very early readers that children read what they are ready for. My nearly eight-year old could manage the Twilight book, but my guess is that she wouldn’t get very far into it before she lost interest. She’s just not developmentally ready to think about girls and boys and relationships, and so she would get bored and pick up a book about unicorns or magical cats. I remember reading adult books as a preteen and skipping over any bits that I couldn’t relate to, which in retrospect were probably sex scenes. I also remember a time when big boy R was eight or so, and delving into the adult science fiction/fantasy section of the library. He only read a part of one book before he decided on his own that he “didn’t feel ready” for those kinds of books. I don’t think that he was permanently scarred.

I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I am interested in what other opinions might be out there. I’m totally open to hearing dissenting points of view. Maybe I’ve missed something, or someone has a memory of reading something that totally freaked them out that they wished they hadn’t seen.

What do you think about an eleven-year old girl reading Twilight?

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Score!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 19, 2009| 2 Comments »

My fifteen-year old son wants to go thrift storing with me tomorrow!

Update: Purchases: one (working!) projection alarm clock with am/fm radio
three matching dinner plates
one camping thermos
one stainless steel rack for purposes unknown
Total cost: $3.82

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An Explosion of Hearts

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 14, 2009| 5 Comments »

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This is the first time any of the kids has managed to take me completely by surprise. Usually I catch wind of whatever they have up their sleeve long before it happens, or I orchestrate the surprise myself, giving one of them the seed of an idea, and then “forgetting” when the time comes.

I stumbled into the kitchen this morning to the sight of the construction paper hearts, and my eyes actually filled with tears.

Such exuberant love.

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As the Mood Turns

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on December 20, 2008| 3 Comments »

It’s amazing what a difference 24 hours can make.

Yesterday I was happy, calm, the picture of beatific motherhood.

Today, not so much.

After 3 hours at the hot and noisy swimming pool, and a crawling drive through traffic on streets that had been scraped down to an icy varnish by the overnight street cleaning crew, passing car wreck after car wreck, semi-listening to the kids in the car, but mostly trying to see through the whirling snow, being blasted by the heater which now only has two settings; off or inferno, and more than a little hypoglycemic from the lack of breakfast, I finally made it in the door, only to be faced with the kitchen we left from the night before. Cookie crumbs, 5 different containers of sparkley decorations, every cookie sheet we own. Mixing bowls, spoons, non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Breakfast dishes. Bread bag open, bread still sticking out of the toaster. Jammy knives. The newspaper, torn apart and left in sheets all over the table. Sink full of dirty plates, floor covered in the jam spots and plasticine lumps that I didn’t scrape up last cleaning day. Smeary windows, spotty counters, sticky floor.

Coats on the stairs, wet towel in the mitten basket, backpacks open and lying in my way. Lunch still to make. No room on the counter.

I went to check on the boys, and saw the state of the living room. Same as the kitchen. Papers, books, pens, board game bits, uncleaned rabbit cage, blankets, socks. One teenaged boy lying in the same spot I left him in three hours before, hair all sticking up still from his pillow.

I knew it was situational. I knew it was all perspective. I knew that the house looked pretty much like this yesterday. I told myself to get a grip, look at the big picture, but I could feel that anger bubbling up. I felt it coming on. The foulest mood ever.

So I did the only thing I could.

I sat all four of them on the couch and told them that I was in a horrible mood. That after lunch we would all clean the house, that I did not want to hear even one tiny peep of complaint, that I would be in the kitchen, but that if they didn’t want to be yelled at, they shouldn’t go in there.

Every time they came in, I glared at them.

They thought it was the funniest thing ever.

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Boiling it Down

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 11, 2008| 3 Comments »

My main goal as a parent is to be able to provide an environment for the kids in which they have as much freedom as possible to develop into the people they were born to be. I want them to feel safe, and supported and free to experience their internal worlds. I want them to grow up secure in the knowledge of who they are. I want them to know from the very depths of their beings that they are okay just as they are, that their true feelings are always acceptable, and that they don’t have to do anything or be anything to have value. I want them to be able to trust themselves.

I sat my older two down the other day and told them that it was very important that they understand that I do not care what they do with their lives as long as it is something that they want to do. I don’t care if they marry young or never marry or if they live in a basement apartment and collect cats or become investment bankers, or move to another country or have loads of money or have none, or develop an obsessive interest in Star Wars figurines or hoard things or live in a commune, as long as they are actively making those choices. I don’t want them hurting other people, but otherwise, it’s their own life to live. One of the worst things I can imagine is one of them unable to live happily because of their worry of What Mother Would Think.

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Photo courtesy of L, from one of her diving trips.

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Being Whole

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 3, 2008| 2 Comments »

Another negative aspect of rigid gender stereotyping is that some women, in their efforts to distance themselves from some of the more limiting expectations, end up denying a part of themselves.

I speak from personal experience. I was a real tomboy as a child, and I revelled in being a tough, wiry little kid. When adolescence approached, I was reluctant to give up that part of myself, and, because I saw adult women as being meek, I wanted nothing to do with being feminine. I saw it as an either/or choice. For a long time, I refused to wear dresses, shuddered at the thought of wearing makeup, and tried to remain a part of the boys’ club. I saw boys as having power, probably in huge part because of the very rigid gender roles in my family, and I wanted to align myself with them.

Eventually, I did sign up as a woman, mostly because I wanted a boyfriend, and that was the start of my losing voice.

I don’t think it was necessary for me to make the choices I did, and nobody forced me. I made those decisions quite unconsciously, and it’s only in retrospect that I realize what I did. It’s taken me the good part of two decades to embrace my whole self, the “good”, the “bad”, the “feminine”, the “masculine”, and to reconcile my desire to be pretty with my desire to be seen as an independently minded person.

Now that I’m a parent, I’ve been extra conscious of that struggle with respect to my own children.

L, age 12, has always been a tough cookie, and I’ve encouraged her to believe in herself, to make her own choices, and to think of herself as capable. She was a tree-climbing, pen-knife carrying tomboy too, who at age 3 wrestled some 6-year old boys to the ground when she mistakenly thought they were hurting her older brother.

She really identified with this tough image, and when she was ten or so, she told me that she would never wear a dress.

Which is when I started encouraging her to consider the idea.

I encouraged her when she started caring about how her hair looked, and we made a mother-daughter trip to the hairdressers. I began consciously expressing my satisfaction with “feeling pretty”, and began mentioning how much I enjoy being a woman.

I want her to enjoy, explore, and accept her femininity, and not feel as if her feminine qualities are weaknesses. I want to spare her from cutting off a part of herself.

I want her to be a whole person.

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An Ode To My Mother

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 17, 2008| 6 Comments »

My mama and I have as complicated a relationship as any other pair of different yet similar kinfolk do, and it’s been further complicated by choices both of us have made. I fled home as quickly as I could in my teen years, trying to put distance between me and the overwhelming murkiness of our family’s unspoken tensions, but, not surprisingly, much of what I did as a young adult was in reaction to the kind of person I perceived my mother to be.

That rather cryptic admission aside, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I live my life, what sorts of values I want to pass on to my children, that sort of thing, and it’s with growing appreciation that I’m realizing how many of those values, most of which I’ve arrogantly given myself full credit for coming up with, were things I learned from my mother.

Tolerance is a good example. Two of my mom’s favorite sayings were “Isn’t it wonderful that we’re all so different?” and “Wouldn’t it be boring if we were all the same?” I used to  look at her in annoyance, thinking that no, it would be a much better world if people were more like me, which just goes to show that it was me that  must have been more than a little difficult to tolerate at times. Patience is a virtue that I wasn’t born with, but it is something my mother has buckets of. She’s also the least judgemental person I’ve ever met. I have to work hard at non-judgementalness, because of my tendency to believe so strongly in what I do. She’s able to have a good time, my mother, and has always been able to put things into their proper perspective. “Like water off a duck’s back” is the way she put it when I wondered aloud why she didn’t Do Something Already about an irksome comment or an annoying event. Gak, I would think, she’s so…..so….so…..PASSIVE! There was no way I was ever going to be like that. It’s only taken me 25 years to admit that big chunks of my life would have gone much more smoothly if I could have let at least some things go. My mom never fought for her place, never demanded what was rightfully hers, and as a young girl, it angered me. I now have a greater understanding of what she faced, and I admire her for her resilience.

‘There are two sides to every coin”, my mother would say, and it’s with that in mind that I’m gaining an appreciation for the things that I never understood about her life.

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On My Own

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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Well, they’re off to the lake for two weeks with their dad. Which makes this less of a team effort and more of a solo project. That being said, this blog started out as a way for the kids to publish their own work, but like all of the ideas I come up with and try to foist on to them, they lost interest almost immediately, so it’s been mostly my thoughts all along.

I’ve used the blog as a way to document the journey that I’m taking with the kids, and as place to work through my own evolving thoughts about homeschooling, which then led to my thoughts on other things, often parenting related, but sometimes not, and I’m considering the idea of changing the title to reflect the fact that it’s just me, but then again, homeschooling really has been a team effort, so I’m not sure.

I miss the kids when they’re gone, but I have to admit that sleeping in is pretty marvy.

photo credit: all taken by the kids with L’s camera

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A Confession

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on August 3, 2008| 3 Comments »

A beautiful Sunday morning sleep in. I was poked in the ribs at 7am by the littlest princess, who said she was hungry and could I make breakfast, but I only half awoke, just enough to tell her to make her own toast, and then fell right back asleep.

When I finally stumbled down the stairs at 9, I came across the whole gang, sleepover guests and all, huddled in front of our ancient 17 inch Dell computer monitor, watching an episode of The Simpsons.

Which reminded my of my sanctimonious little post about our TV-free household. When the kids were small, and I was the dictator of this queendom, the only things they watched were carefully screened, non-offensive movies, usually of the educational variety. Now, ages 7, 9, 12 and 14, they watch downloaded copies of Futurama, The Simpsons, and Doctor Who.

I’ve kept the evil forces of pop culture at bay for as long as I could, but some of it is starting to seep in, thanks to having kids that just keep getting older. I realized that it was more important for my oldest son to to have friends than it was for this house to be completely off limits to commercial programming, It’s too bad that the younger ones are being exposed to it at their age, but at least I sheltered their toddler brains.

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Who Knows?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on August 2, 2008| Leave a Comment »

00016When school let out in June, Big Girl L was adamant that she wanted to homeschool for grades 7 and 8. She was tired of the other kids, tired of managing school on top of a demanding diving practice schedule, and eager to have time of her own again. She dragged a desk home from a yard sale, made lists of the supplies she’d need, and enthusiastically described the myriads of activities she imagined she’d be doing while all the other kids were sitting in a classroom.

Now, just a month later, she’s changed her mind. She’s all rested up, and eager for new experiences. Her friends have been talking about which schools they’ll be attending, and all of the teachers they’ll have, and how excited and nervous they are about meeting new kids, which has left her wondering whether she’ll be missing out on something if she stays home.

When she came to me to tell me how she was feeling, I told her that I thought she’d be just fine no matter which option she chose, that it really wasn’t a big deal, that there were advantages and disadvantages to both, and that she was really the best person to decide. I told her that if she was really concerned about missing out that she’d probably better give school a try.

I truly don’t think that I know what the best option is for her.

I just know that I love her, and that I’ll support her in whatever decisions she makes on her journey in life.

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Girl Power

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 1, 2008| 7 Comments »

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In lieu of any of the zillions of other things that she could have done with her afternoon, Junior Miss Twelve got into character. She took great pleasure in swooping around in her cape, vanquishing forces of doom and swiping drinks from her sister’s lemonade stand. I took special delight in her masked mania because I had just read Blue Milk’s post on Disney princesses, and by following her links and some of the discussions, had gone on a whirlwind tour of the princessification of the young girl nation that has many thinking parents concerned. I reflected on my budding teen daughter’s early years, trying to remember if she’d gone through a pink, frilly stage, but I have to say that I don’t think she did. The younger sister certainly had a love of all things pink that is just now starting to fade, but it never extended to a love of princesses.

I do remember being concerned about the girls being exposed to the objectification of women, and I did have an issue with the way women were portrayed in Disney cartoons. I also felt strongly that the majority of shows on television presented gender roles and relationships between the sexes in a highly simplified, rigid way. Commercials in particular bothered me, and I was concerned that if my children were exposed to this sort of stuff regularly that they would absorb it all as fact. It was one of the reasons that I ultimately made the decision to get rid of the TV. One less thing to worry about, one more way to help create a space in which those unique young imaginations could flourish with as few external images as possible. It made me sad when I saw three and four-year old children role-playing characters from TV shows when they could have been inventing their own characters, and I was pleased when my own TV-free kids did exactly that. It also saved me from having children begging for the latest toy, or the newest fashions. I had kids who, when asked what they wanted for Christmas, were unable to think of anything other than crayons.

Ditching the TV was one decision that I’ve never regretted. It probably isn’t the only reason that I have a superhero for a daughter, but I’m betting that it’s one of them.

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The Encroaching Cloud of Doom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 29, 2008| 2 Comments »

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The kids are back from their two weeks at the lake. I’m back from my two weeks of camping, canoeing, and cottaging. Which all added up to one huge mountain of laundry. I spent the bulk of today scrabbling to put a dent in the neglected household chores, all the while fighting down the rising sense of panic that periodically threatens to swamp me. Sometimes I look at the four kids, at the house, the yard, the rust spots on the van, and the never-ending list of unfinished jobs and I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. Going to another room doesn’t help. Everywhere I go in this house I see something that I should have done, or should have gotten one of the kids to do, and I think If I just tackle one extra job each day, like say, cleaning out the muddy planting pots that have been sitting on the downstairs laundry shelf for the last 3 months, then I should be alright. Never mind the bigger, more important tasks, like dealing with the rotting wood under the eaves, or weather proofing the windows and doors before winter. My Do One Extra Thing Each Day plan certainly sounds reasonable, except that even in a pretty ordinary day, so many unexpected things happen that I never seem to find the time. If I happen to have a spare few minutes between the making of meals and hanging of laundry, I’m being asked to drive to a spur of the moment play date, or I’m dealing with moody crisis #27, or I’m searching in vain for insect repellant, or tennis balls, or trying to figure out what that darn smell in the basement is, or being recruited to help with whichever project is ongoing. Then it’s back to scrubbing pots and paying bills and answering the phone and squelching the fear that I’m not getting enough done.

Some days I can overlook the mess and the chaos and see what I’m accomplishing. Other days I feel as if I’m barely managing to keep ahead of the encroaching cloud of doom. Same situation, different mood.

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Growing Independence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 18, 2008| 3 Comments »

Parenting doesn’t come with a set of rules, which was something that bothered me a bit when the kids were younger. If I just knew for sure that this would turn out alright. Am I doing this properly? All of my decisions around the kids seemed fraught with enormous potential long term implications, and there was no way of knowing how it would all turn out. I am my daughter’s mother, and like her, I’ve never been all that comfortable without a clear set of rules to follow.

So I read a lot of books, scrutinized the methods of parents that I admired, but to what seemed to me a scary degree, had to follow my gut. As the kids got older, and as they started seeming like they were doing alright, it got easier. I had set up a bit of a system, I had expectations for behaviour in place, and I was comfortable with where I fit on the laissez-faire to authoritative spectrum. We were coasting.

Now, as the older two enter adolescence, I’m once again faced with decisions, mostly related to how far to let the safety rope extend from home base. How much “freedom” to allow the kids as they begin to explore worlds increasingly outside of their parents’ jurisdiction. There’s that push/pull between wanting to keep them safe, and wanting to give them as much room as possible in which to make their own choices. And like in toddlerhood, there’s no concrete way of knowing where to draw the line.

The Folk Festival was a good example.

I allowed Tee to run free all day, which he loved, and seemed ready for, but each time I bumped into a family I know with kids Tee’s age, I noticed that the kids were with their parents and I felt a twinge of concern. Was I possibly being a bit lax? Was I being irresponsible? What if something happened to him and I wasn’t right there? Those thought bubbles kept popping up and making me uneasy, even though my gut was telling me that I was doing the right thing. He was at a large music festival, surrounded by crowds of strangers in wide open spaces, so there was a potential for him to get lost, or maybe to have an unsettling encounter and my reflexive Stranger Danger radar was beeping madly, but I fought down the impulse to keep him by my side, because I think that I would have been doing it more for my peace of mind than for his safety. There’s always the risk to reward ratio to consider, the learning potential to weigh against the possibility for harm, and in this situation, if I looked at the situation logically, it was actually a pretty darn safe place for a nine-year old boy to test himself. It was hard to go for more than a few minutes without bumping into a familiar face, I had a “home base” set up for us all to return to, and he and I crossed paths often enough for me to have a fair idea of where he was almost all of the time. Besides the great music and all of the junk food, it was the thrilling sense of being on his own that Tee loved about being at the festival this year. He’s a capable boy, and I was giving him the message that I trust his decison making ability. He was the happiest kid in the world. If he’d been with me the whole day, we’d have been at the same festival, seen the same things, and eaten the same food, but he’d not have been as happy. He was ready for this step,

Just like R was ready to volunteer at the festival this year. He worked a four hour shift each day, and the festival site is about 20 minutes out of town, so we agreed that he should take the shuttle bus there and back. The first day, got a ride there with a friend, and returned home with a different friend’s family, but he left around 5pm and didn’t walk back through the door till after 1am. He had a cell phone, I knew I could contact him, and I know he’s a smart kid, but it was still a bit unsettling to know that he was such a long way from home at all hours of the night. I guess it comes down to knowing your particular child, and trusting that they have the resources necessary to make decisions that keep them safe.

When the kids were small, I let them take physical risks on the play structure. I now let 7 and 9 go to the playground (together) without me. They’re allowed to ride their bikes to friend’s houses down the street, as long as they phone me when they get there. L, at 12, is allowed to roam our neighborhood as long as she’s with a friend, and as long as I know where she’s heading and how long she’s expecting to be gone. Some parents I know allow none of these things.

I think that I may be on the More Freedom Sooner end of the spectrum than many parents in my circle, but it feels right for who I think my kids are. It’s that gut thing again.

I don’t have any pictures of Tee to go with this post, so here’s a shot of the flags that some of the festival kids made in the craft tent. I think that one of Tee’s is flapping on that line.

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14A

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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Last weekend L and Jay and I watched Juno, the movie that stars Ellen Page as a 16-year old girl who gets pregnant and gives her baby up for adoption. R watched a bit of it, but soon excused himself, and T was at a birthday party.

I watched it once before I rented it with the girls, and when I saw it without them, all I remembered, other than the plot, was the cute soundtrack and the snappy dialogue. Then when I watched it with the girls, I suddenly saw the sex scene (which showed two pairs of bare legs and a pair of underpants around one pair of ankles) in an exruciatingly new way. Same with the one or two references to the act. I kept looking over at L, hoping that it wasn’t going to be embarassing for her to be watching this movie with her mother. I wasn’t too worried about Jay, because she and I have had quite a few talks about sex recently, and for her, talking about it is just like talking about anything else.Take today for example. We’re in the pet store, and she’s standing in front of a tank filled with turtles. squealing They’re mating! They’re mating!

I’m glad that she’s so comfortable with the whole concept, but Miss L never did ask questions about sex, and I wish I’d been a bit more intentional about bringing it up myself when she was younger, because now we’re past the point where it can be absorbed as just another bit of information, and yet it’s clearly something she and I need to feel comfortable discussing. I’m still not sure how she felt about it watching the movie with me, but she did say that she liked the movie, and I’m hoping that she and I can begin to talk about the issues presented in it.

I really don’t want her thinking of me as some kind of dinosaur that needs protecting from the kinds of topics that she and her friends are likely discussing, nor do I think it healthy for us to be like Rory and Lorelei on The Gilmore Girls. A happy place in the middle of those two extremes would be just fine.

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Danger Moves

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 8, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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The week before she left for her diving trip L didn’t seem interested in playing with friends. She hung around the house, reading, packing, and making up crazy games for the little kids. Her parting gift to Jay was a trip to the playground, and a lesson on back flips off the swing set. She swung really, really high, and then vaulted off the seat and did a back flip in the air before landing, sometimes adding a twist. By the time we left for home, a cadre of smaller children had gathered to ooh and aah, which initially had Jay glowing in vicarious pride, but soon resulted in her retreating to the monkey bars in a sulk. She sobbed all the way home about how nobody noticed HER, nobody cared about HER, and how much she hated being the youngest.

Fast forward two days and Jay is at that playground every chance she gets, trying to get up the courage to do what L did. I went with her this morning, and she tried to get me to rate her “flips” on a scale of one to ten. Then she asked me to be the announcer of the Monkey Bar Olympics, giving me my script, which went something like It’s the world-famous Jay, winner of eight gold medals, attempting the dangerous one-handed manouver, and we would ask the audience to not use flash photography as it might distract the athlete, and here she goes, look at her go, it’s Jay ladies and gentlemen, doing a double bar skip, please hold your applause, and she’s done, she’s finished, it’s Jay, winner of yet another gold medal for Canada.

Clearly a fourth child in a family of over-achievers.

Luckily for number three, he’s oblivious to the relentless race for success. He eschewed the trip to the playground in favor of more fulfilling activities, like making full body costumes out of paper and electrical tape. Stop! Do not enter the realm of the vile and evil masked knight…..

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Planned Obsolescence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on July 8, 2008| 1 Comment »

We’re at a funny stage in our family homeschooling journey. I still have lots of ideas for projects, and still add items to the ongoing list of topics that I think the kids would enjoy learning about, but we almost never seem to get around to any of them because the kids are invariably busy with their own projects.

I’m wanting to make a sundial, dye cloth with berry juice, make paper, build a bat house, and go exploring with compasses. The kids want to do those things too, they say, but not right now Mom, I’m right in the middle of making this really cool map and then I wanted to have S over to play so that we could work on our clubhouse and then the doorbell rings and it’s a swarm of kids from the neighborhood and off they go.

In part, it’s a by-product of the season, what with all the school kids roaming free because of summer holidays, but it’s also really indicative of their growing independence and self-directedness.

I’ve said more than a few times that it’s the job of a good parent to make their job obsolete (or some such pithy thing, although I’m positive that it sounded pithier when I said it, because in writing it’s a bit clunky) and now that I see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, I find it fascinating, inspiring, thrilling, and yet heart wrenching to watch the process in progress.

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Blob Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on July 7, 2008| 2 Comments »

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We still don’t have a name that quite fits. Anything Goes Day, Lazy Day, Greedy Day, Crazy Day, Slob Day, Blob Day. None of them capture the essence of our no rules, no manners, no meals, no nagging day, but the kids don’t care. They were in unanimous agreement that we should make it a yearly tradition, no matter what we call it. I like the idea of having it the day before L goes to the Nationals, in recognition of the superhuman feats of perseverance required in such a competitive sport. It’s been one of my main parental messages to the kids…it’s all about the effort….and I’m happy that I stumbled upon a way to show L how proud I am of her courage and persistence.

I took the four kids to the store yesterday to stock up on the junk food of their dreams, but true to my personality, I stopped short of filling the cart. On the way there I told them that they could each choose ONE family sized treat of their choice, so once in the store, they got into a huddle and agreed on a strategy for covering most of the snack food groups. J got to pick candy, L got the icecream, R had chocolate, T opted for pizza pops, and I was suckered into buying a lemon meringue pie. There was tremendous hemming and hawing, and we spent eons in the cookie aisle until cookies were ruled out in favor of something else. but it was fun. I don’t often go to the store with all of them anymore, so it was kind of a blast from the past.

As for the actual day, well, as far as I’m concerned, it was kind of an understatement. All of them were up before 7am, I guess to protect their share of the goodies, and from what I hear, had icecream for breakfast, but other than the sweets and the unlimited computer time, things weren’t very different around here. I had said that they could be as rude as they wanted, but there was none of the sassiness that I had expected. When I asked Jay if she wanted some of the oatmeal I was having for breakfast, she shouted “NO!……thanks” and giggled uncontrollably, but that was the extent of it. If anything, they were kinder to each other than usual, and terribly appreciative towards me.

I’d say they’re growing up.

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On the Road Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on July 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Julia, Theo, tomato,laundry 007

Off on another diving trip tomorrow. The third meet in 2 months. This time it’s for the Nationals, the competition that they work towards all year. Some other parents are going, and I seriously considered it too, but in the end I decided to stay in town with the other three so that I could take them to our town’s folk music festival. Ach. So many kids, so many conflicting opportunities. It was simpler when they were younger.

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The Art of the Deal

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on July 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

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Little boy in garden observing wildflowers and making careful pencil sketches in his nature journal?

Hardly.

More like little boy writing five sentences in trade for thirty minutes of computer time. I’m so concerned about limiting his screen time, he’s so single-minded in his resolve to obtain more time and the two of us have been through so many negotiations on the issue that he’s become an expert on the art of the deal. Every couple of weeks he hatches another sure-fire plan to trade desired behaviour for extra computer time, and is now so smooth that he comes to me with charts already made. I usually agree, because his deals involve a LOT of good behaviour on his part for comparatively little return, because I know how badly he wants what he wants, because I’m proud of him for being able to work out these compromises, and because I see how empowering this deal-making is for him. He used to cry and rail in utter despair when he came up against a rule that he didn’t agree with. Now he’s realized the potential benefits of coming up with win-win solutions, and more importantly, believes that his ideas matter.

Plus, he gets to play computer.

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