Blogs That Make Me Think

A couple of weeks back, while I was on vacation, my writer-friend Dorcas, whose blog is here, tagged me as one of the blogs that make her think. Besides feeling very honored, since Dorcas is one of those people who can write about Ordinary Days in a way that makes each moment extraordinarily beautiful, now I actually have to think about which blogs make me think (though I have been assured that my toaster will not explode if I do not tag anyone else, which is good since I've been taking my sweet time thinking about this!)

Pondering this, I've realized I don't really go out of my way to read blogs that make me think. I don't read a lot of political blogs, activist blogs, historical or geographical blogs. Mostly I like reading people's personal journeys with the topics that inspire them the most. So on that front, I've been most inspired to thought by blogs from two triathletes:

J. at Ironman Life, who can write about Ben Gay and being stuck on hold with Verizon's customer service and make it all so hysterically interesting you just have to keep reading.

and TriJack, who often intersperses his journey of training for the Ironman with writings about his life as an ER doc and single father to four young kids. I will sometimes find myself days later pondering something he said.

On the Unschooling front, Sandra Dodd has made me think for years and years, and re-examine assumptions and question old realities. She's not afraid of putting her strong opinions out there, and while I don't always agree, they always make me think.

There's also Doc's Sunrise Rants. Not confining herself to just matters of homeschooling, Doc touches on diversity, events in her life, her farm, and all kinds of matters of interest. She also puts together a blog carnival called The Country Fair that's always inspiring.

And a blog that has nothing to do with unschooling, triathlons, or any of that, but always makes me think is Allison's An Unsealed Room: A Window on Life in Israel. I "met" Allison on a due-date email list. The only thing all of the women on the list had in common is that we were all due with a child in September of 1996. It's one of the things I am most grateful to the internet for: the ability to see and hear about lives that are very different from our own. Allison is a great writer who always has something interesting to say, from a perspective I might not have considered.

All in all, the internet brings such a great variety of people, ideas, and viewpoints to our doorstep. It's an everyday miracle that we typically take for granted. Just thinking about this post has made me realize how much I would miss these faraway voices if I didn't get to hear them again. So here's a moment of gratefulness for the internet, and for the people who choose to put their thoughts out here for the rest of us to ponder.

Catching Up

It's been a busy couple of weeks since getting back from our Disneyland trip. Immediately on our return, we were thrown into a pretty hectic week with dress rehearsals for the play Little Women that A. was in, then two performances on the weekend and her violin recital that same weekend as well! I also played a duet with her at her recital, which means I had to really knuckle down and practice so as not to embarass her (I am much more likely to mess up on stage than she is!). I was also training pretty hard for a triathlon I did this weekend. Of course, there was also Mother's Day which I meant to blog about (and may still do so), but suffice it to say that we had a wonderful day together - the kids and my hubby brought me breakfast in bed, we went on a family bike ride, enjoyed the sunshine and, as with every day, I was grateful for this amazing opportunity of motherhood that has come my way.

But despite the overall activity, many small and wonderful things have also happened. M., who has had long hair for a very long time now, decided to cut it all off and donate it to Locks of Love. He had been mulling it over for some time, but the decision came very rapidly one morning and we took him up on it and took him to the hairdresser's. Wow, he looks so much older (and of course just as wonderfully cute and handsome) but very very different. I'm still getting used to it! We've also had the tadpole project going (they have front legs now!), the usual activities (another Karate belt test coming up in two weeks and we are all practicing hard for that, A.'s end-of-year dance recitals will be the same weekend, planning summer camping trips, too!), and on our way to my triathlon this weekend we took a side-trip to see a B-17 that landed at our local airport.

This was perfect timing since we've been watching a fair number of WWII movies lately. We saw Memphis Belle again, one of M's favorite movies, and we also watched Tuskegee Airmen and had some great discussions about racial discrimination stemming from that. So when I was out hanging up laundry and I heard the unmistakable rumble of four radial engines overhead, I called the kids to come quick and we saw this beauty flying above. She's been out at the airport all weekend and we got to take a tour and crawl through all of the spaces inside. When you see a movie like Memphis Belle and then you're actually in there looking at the real plane, it has such a huge effect. Looking at that ball turret hanging below the plane and imagining being squashed in there and completely exposed to enemy fire, well it's pretty chilling. We found, as usual, that the people who fly around with such a museum piece are always willing to talk about it and talk history. They've immersed themselves in the history of the era and love to share. The last time we were looking at an old warbird like this, the gentleman talking to us about it started telling us about when he had been on a ship at Pearl Harbor and had to jump overboard into the harbor and watched all the boats going down. It is amazing to be able to hear history from a first-hand perspective, and as the people who experienced this amazing era are starting to become few and far between, it's great to have the opportunity to talk to them while they are still here to tell their own stories.

Elephants Don't Play Video Games

It seems that in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings (and other random acts of publicized mayhem), every internet group is discussing violence and its causes and implications in our society. This is no less true on parenting groups, where it seems to tend to settle on culprits such as violence in movies, TV, and that devil incarnate, video games. These are what I tend to think of as external influences, perhaps even tangential ones. Much is made of them, but sometimes I wonder if they act as does the purposeful wave of the magician's hand as he diverts your eye from the truly important action. Now I'm no defender of Mortal Mayhem V6.0 or whatever the latest blood-n-gore action on the screens and movie theaters is, but I think to be mistaking such things as causal factors is to either deliberately or inadvertantly ignore the greater societal truths.

When we were on vacation last week, we had the benefit of getting Animal Planet on our hotel TV (a channel we don't have in our cable lineup at home). So we were watching a special on Rogue elephants. In the past, rogues were rare - often a newly-matured male on a testosterone-fueled rampage. But these days they are becoming increasingly common, purposeful, vindictive, and downright violent. Elephants are killing rhinos (a previously unheard-of act) at astonishing rates. In one game reserve, officials shot three bull elephants responsible for the deaths of 63 rhinos. And they turn on each other as well: in Addo Elephant National Parkin South Africa, up to 90 percent of male elephant deaths are now attributable to other male elephants, compared with a rate of 6 percent in other, more stable elephant communities (does that sound similar to differences among human communities?) A biologist studying these elephants on the television show we were watching offered up this bit of wisdom (I paraphrase from memory here): Young elephants are experiencing traumatic incidents as youngsters, and are being taken away from their elders and family structure and left in scenarios where their only social encounters come from equally immature peers. In these scenarios, they resort to bullying other elephants and to killing elephants, rhinos, and humans. Funny, though, they don't have access to violent video games.

I was instantly struck by the parallels between the elephants' behavior and our current society's issues with violence, particularly among adolescent males. Breakdown in social structure, kids who do not grow up with the influence of stable family elders, or kids who are removed too early from family relationships and intimate bonds (elephant studies have shown that young elephants stay within 15 feet of their mothers for nearly all of their first eight years of life, an age by which the average American child has spent a huge percentage of their hours in daycare, preschool, schools, and before and after-school care) are all factors we share with elephants. In elephant herds without the older matriachal females who have typically presided, calves are now being born to and raised by ever younger and more inexperienced mothers, in a downward cycle that mimics one being played out by younger and younger teenaged mothers in our own culture.

Not that there are any easy answers to this dilemma, either for the elephants or for ourselves. The New York Times has a fascinating and informative ten-page article from last fall called An Elephant Crackup? that I found while searching for more information online about these issues with Rogue elephants. One take-away that I got both from watching this TV program and from reading the article is that no act of human connection, either with each other or with animals is unimportant. I know when I was a new mother, I was very passionate about Attachment Parenting, breastfeeding, maternal bonding, mom-care over non-necessary daycare, and parental attachment over larger school institutions for "socialization". But that passion felt unanchored by much more than my own intuitions that such things were of huge and overwhelming importance. Too often they are seen as personal choices, and any discussion thereof must be tempered with a necessity to validate all other choices as somehow equal. When looked at from this ground-level viewpoint, a mother's choice to breastfeed or to put her child in daycare is a very small and personal choice. But when we look at overall patterns of attachment and social fabric, the choices we make on a daily basis combine with everyone else's choices to weave a pattern that either draws us closer to a society of cooperation and harmony, or one of destruction and violence. These small personal choices are of the utmost importance, and anything we do to help parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and community members draw together and form strong bonds benefits our entire society.

As for those pesky video games, I see them as symptom, not disease. They're the snot that sprays out when a rhinovirus has invaded a sinus passage. But they're not the virus. What possible lure would choking a virtual victim hold over someone who is intimately connected to their family, friends, and community? Such acts are like the rhino-murdering elephants: sad aberrations that point to a disintegrated social fabric.

Dispatches From the Frog Kingdom

They have legs! And we seem to have at least six survivors out of seven so far, though there may be seven. They've got a nice big habitat and like to lurk around in the plants and the mud, so we might still have all seven with us, it's hard to tell. They're getting rather fat and turning greenish and growing these cute little legs!

We did have an issue with stinky tank syndrome and I had to start changing the water out more frequently and scrub off some algae, but they seem to be eating well and obviously growing so I think we're doing okay. Of course, my husband asked "so tell me again why our dining room table is pushed all the way against the window and being taken over by a giant tank?" Why darling, it's because the little froggies need some sunlight every day, and, well, because this is a household of adventures where magic and excitement trump having a perfectly set dining room table. Same reason there's a tent in our front yard today, and a Lego "movie backlot" that M. built on our livingroom floor. We clean up well, but at any given time there are adventures going on here.

Speaking of adventures, it's cool to see how something fun from vacation (visiting Universal Studios as well as the "Hollywood Backlot" area of California Adventure park and taking a drawing lesson from a real Disney animator) has spawned a whole lot of creative playing here. M. has built a movie lot for his Lego guys and is urging me to finish up downloading photos from the camera so that he can use it to make another animated film of his little Lego guys.

Back From Vacation

I'm having one of those "I can't believe it's Monday" moments right now, which tends to happen every week but this week will be more of a shock than most. It's always hard to re-adjust to the hustle and bustle when you come back from vacation. Although, since this vacation was extremely busy, maybe it will be easier this time. We took yesterday and didn't do much of anything (including unpacking suitcases) just to relax and unwind. We were only gone for a week, but managed to hit Universal Studios, the La Brea Tar Pits, Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, and three days of Disneyland. Phew! More photos and observances to come, for sure.

This is my third trip to Disney with the kids, and this time my mom met us there to kick off her newly-retired journey around the country. Luckily, the kids are early risers and very hardy sorts because we were at the park at opening time, came back to swim in the hotel pool in the afternoon, then were back until the park closed each day. They probably walked five or six miles a day, maybe more. Homeschooling definitely gave us an advantage for this vacation, because we managed to go right after Spring Break but before the summer rush. Disney wasn't open the longer hours that it is in spring break, but we found that 12 hours a day was plenty, and the lines were very short, the park uncrowded, and the weather lovely but not too hot. We were able to do things like go on the new Buzz Lightyear ride about ten times (trying to better our score) and walk right up to get on Pirates of the Caribbean and Space Mountain. With three days at Disney, we were able to see pretty much everything we wanted to, and many things twice or more.

Adventures With Tadpoles

This week we went out to a local marshy area and the kids got some tadpoles. It was just gorgeous out there with camas bulbs blooming everywhere and red wing blackbirds calling to each other. A friend of mine who is a local field biologist (and homeschooling mom) suggested the outing. I love going places like this with her because she comes armed with spotting scope and more knowledge on local flora and fauna than anyone I know. The kids loved romping around in the fields, watching pond turtles through her scope, and finding the cute little tadpoles in tiny ponds. On the way home, we picked up a used fish tank at Goodwill and have filled it with water from our creek. We're going to try to raise these little guys into frogs so keep your fingers crossed for us.

The internet is such a wonderful resource for this kind of thing. I wouldn't have even thought twice about filling the tank with tap water, but fortunately I Googled "Raising Tadpoles" first, so we went for the creek water. It was a little murky at first, but it has settled out and all seven of the little guys (Taddie, Taddles, Tad Tad, Tadmina, Teddie, Link, and Zelda) seem to be quite happy in their new home.

The Mischief Team

When the kids were about five and two, M. said to me one day "I'm the leader of the Mischief Team!" with a proud smile on his face. And was he ever! He could get his adventurous little sis to do just about anything. Still can, as a matter of fact. This is what they got up to the other day: emptied out the craft closet and he made her this "Inside-out suit" also known as "the alien costume", including wrapping her up in crepe paper and making the helmet out of bags. I love how in this photo he's trying to look like he didn't have much to do with it. Of course, the house looked like a craft bomb had exploded, all of my tape is now gone, and we need to get more streamers before the next party occurs, but hearing their giggles and fun makes it all worth it.

Learn (Many) Something(s) New Every Day

Every now and then I jot down all the things that the kids and I have talked about and learned about in that one particular day, just for fun. I always come away from the experience amazed and awed at the things we talk and think about, the learning that happens without us even noticing it. On any given day, if I thought about it briefly, it would seem like we "didn't do much". The kids and I like to hang out together, or they're at their friends, we might read a book or go for a walk, we might have an activity (of course, activities like a violin lesson look a lot more like the "learning" that people are used to - formalized, taught, timed, structured), or we might bounce on the trampoline or play Yahtzee.

Unschooled learning doesn't look like a parent sitting down and teaching their kids, or the kids working their way through some set of materials aimed at learning some certain thing. It's a lot more fragmented than that, a lot more integrated into daily life, and a lot more interactive on the part of the parent. I have to stay on my toes, as I never know when I'll be called on to pull an answer to some esoteric question out of my hat. "Mom, what's the crush depth of the average submarine?" Hmmmmmm, I'll have to think about that one for a minute.... The other thing that amazes me is how good kids are at putting together the puzzle pieces of learning in their head. They make connections between disparate pieces of information, or things we have talked or read about days, months, or years apart. This is as true of numerical facts and figures as it is of history or literature, or scientific ideas. You don't need "Well Trained Mind" timelines glued to your walls or fancy curriculae for the kids to get how it all hangs together.

So all of this was illustrated in the day's little snapshot of unschooled, interactive learning, which looked like this:

The kids made Eggmen with leftover Easter eggs, glue, tape, boxes, crepe paper, twistie ties, crayons, and anything else they could find in the craft drawer. This is Commander Eggman next to his spaceship. They came up with some funny, punny names too: a baseball-playing "Eggo Martinez", the ever-artistic "Egginardo DaVinci" and the thespian "Eggo Mortensen".

Diva Girl and I practiced violins. She's playing in a recital next Saturday, so she was polishing up a Bach Minuet. I was trying to explain how to get more out of her dynamics when I decided just to stop in the middle and pull out some CDs. We listened to Mozart's Requiem (Confutatis Maledictis), Dire Straits' Telegraph Road, and Andrea Bocceli's Con Te Partiro. The latter piece sparked a discussion about the Italian Language. We've been watching Rick Steve's guide to Italy's Countryside on DVD lately and are hoping someday to take a bicycling trip there. We discussed how I could read some of the Italian lyrics in Bocceli's songs and understand some (because I can read French and some Spanish) and how the Romance Languages are tied together at a common root (and since the kids both studied Latin for some time, they could also find the roots to some of the words.)

Returning to dynamics, we listened to the music and the ways that dynamics influence the presentation of many different styles of music. I later did a little bit more research on dynamics and found out some interesting facts to share with the kids that I didn't know previously (like the fact that some composers have used more than three fff's or ppp's: Tchaikovsky marked a bassoon solo pppppp in his Pathétique symphony and ffff in passages of his 1812 Overture, for instance!) When Diva returned to her violin piece over an hour later (a bit of a long diversion), the difference in dynamics and presentation were really incredible. It wasn't any planned "lesson" but a divergence from what we were doing that interested all of us.

We took a walk to the store, talked about what to have for dinner. Since Italy was on the brain (and since Rick Steves shows off a lot of wonderful Italian cooking in his series), we decided on pasta and picked out fresh ingredients at our corner market. On the way home, we talked about how going to market and cooking were similar and different between our lives and the small Italian towns we'd been watching on the video (in the segment on the Cinque Terra, they talk about how a traveling marketplace comes to each of the small hill towns on the coast once a week.)

On the way home, we saw a smashed soda can. That's what got us talking about the crush depth of a submarine. That conversation led to discussing where the deepest spot in the ocean was (I said I was pretty sure it was in the Mariana Trench, but looked it up when we got home just to be sure - there's always finding new places or new measurements.) Along the way to finding that fact online, we found some other cool ocean facts, like where the tallest underwater waterfall is (who knew there was such a thing!) or the 50+ foot differential in the tides at the Bay of Fundy.

A wonderful family pasta dinner later and we were watching another Rick Steve's Italy episode, and then a Nova special on cuttlefish (truly amazing creatures). In between all of that we did plenty of different things. The kids played, we went outdoors, we took care of all of our animals, I gardened, they trampolined, M. told me all about his newest adventures in the DS game RocketSlime, Divagirl picked out some tunes on the piano and sang to the chickens (to help settle them into their new enclosure.) We talked with shopkeepers and friends in the neighborhood, rescued worms stranded by the rains, discussed worms, went home and looked up info about whether or not the giant earthworms still live in Oregon (did you know that some giant earthworms here grow up to three feet in length, but that they may have gone extinct in the last decade or so?), discovered that Charles Darwin played the piano for earthworms to confirm that they were deaf, and that there are over a hundred species in our region alone, and many many other things.

Those are just a few things I jotted down. None of them seemed outstanding or spectacular in their moment, just a few threads here and there. It's only when you step back and look at the whole rich tapestry by writing it out like this that you can see how beautiful it is to live and learn as an unschooler.

The Path to Unschooling Goals

Every now and then I like to write about examples that show up in my kids' lives that address those nagging unschooling questions and doubts. Things like "What if all they do is play video games all day?" or "How will they ever learn anything?", or, a biggie: "How will kids ever work toward a goal if you don't make them?". None of these things are serious concerns of mine after seeing the way our kids go after the things in life that interest them, but this week is a really shining example of how they work towards their own goals.

Miss A. (seven and a half years old now she tells me since this last week) loves animals. Perhaps loves is not a strong enough term. She adores them, pets them, cares for them, tames them, she could probably meet a wild rhinoceros and have it follow her home for tea. She is also a really caring kind of person, and one of the things she loves to do is give massages. Even with her tiny hands, she's pretty darned strong and can do a good job of it (which I have really appreciated at times!) When our dog Sabre was alive, she would massage his back and legs and you could tell that he really appreciated it, and it helped him be less stiff and relieved some of the joint pain as he got older.

So our neighbor is an acupuncturist, chiropactor, and specializes in sports medicine, among other things. He also has a very cute dog named Rocky. Although Rocky is a very vocal dog, which might be intimidating to some, Miss A. isn't fazed by that at all and is always loving on him if he's around. So our neighbor mentioned off-hand one day that he could show Miss A. how to do acupressure on animals, and A. got very excited about that. So excited that she waited patiently the next morning until the polite hour of 9:00 am to run across the street and talk to him about it. He was busy that day, but they ended up setting a time of 4:30 on Monday to meet up.

All weekend she would say things like "Only two days and 3 1/2 hours."
"Until what?" I'd ask.
"Until my meeting with Nathan."

It was obviously a very big deal for her, and she was not going to miss it. When Monday finally arrived, she set an alarm, then the timer on the stove. She was going to be there right at 4:30 (as a former businessperson, I would only wish that all adults were so conscientious and prompt!). As the appointed hour arrived, she donned her shoes and marched across the street to knock on his door. She came home totally excited about all she had learned (he demonstrated the pressure points on Rocky) and the happy effect it had on Rocky ("he just melted to the floor, mom!").

As always, I am grateful for the wonderful adults that our kids manage to encounter. Certainly our luck in having such a giving neighbor is great. It's awesome when adults who have special skills or talents are willing to take the time to share them, especially with such a young kid. And as always, our kids amaze me with their tenacity, their drive to learn, their desire to follow their passions and interests until they are satisfied that they have all the information that they need. Our neighbor's business card is now one of Miss A.'s prized possessions. A business card! I did have to stop her from calling his office number to enquire about the next time they could meet up (enthusiasm does have its boundaries), and suggested she wait until he was not busy with clients and such. I'm sure she will return for more information and practice, and maybe someday she will make her career in the same field (I wouldn't be surprised), or maybe it will just be information she files away and uses on her own pet some day (or her entire farm full of animals, more likely). Either way, it's wonderful to see her following her dreams.

Words to Make a Mother Wig Out

"Mom, I'm growing a mustache."

Especially when this is said in that husky, cracking, boy-turning-to-man kind of voice. Oy.

Easier Bake Oven

The kids have been wanting to do more cooking on their own, and I found these cool silicone flexible muffin pans, just small enough to fit in our toaster oven. So they can bake tiny muffins all on their own. M. treated us to a batch of chocolate chip muffins. He saved out some batter for me, since I'm not a fan of chocolate chips in anything but cookies. I made mine with cranberries and walnuts. Yummmm!

I had originally bought the toaster oven instead of a regular toaster because I knew it would do double-duty as a miniature oven for the kids. Why get an "easy bake" oven when you can cook for real in the kitchen with one of these? Maybe we'll do mini-pizzas tonight.

Remembering

The kids wanted me to put together a slide show for our dog Sabre who died a couple of weeks ago. We had a small memorial service with friends who have known him for years (and even had him over to stay when we were gone). We planted a cherry tree, and buried his collar and sprinkled his ashes there, and I know every year when it flowers it will remind us of his sweet soul. If you want to see what he meant to us, you can check out his video:

Unschooling Voices: Screen Time

Unschooling Voices, a blog carnival hosted at A Day in Our Lives asks this question for the April edition:

A topic that comes up on the unschooling e-mail groups a lot is TV/computer/video games and how hard it is for parents to let go of control in those areas. What has been your experience?

I think the biggest challenge when thinking about screen time (my all-encompassing word for TV/Computer/Gameboys/Video Games) as an unschooling family is the cultural notion of the television as "the boob tube" and video games as "mind rotting". Dating back to at least my own childhood, the media has been decrying the screen as some kind of intellect-sucking device that somehow evilly inserts itself into one's home without one's knowledge and seduces our children away from us. And you know, I can see some truth to these things. I think that there is much on television that really isn't appropriate for kids to be viewing. Heck, I think there's much on TV that really isn't appropriate for adults to be viewing! And the video games like Grand Theft Auto or the other first-person-shooter games, well I find them fairly horrifying (and they get worse, in the new Wii games, you can use the cool new Wii remote to actually choke your victim on the screen, instead of just blasting them to pieces).

So the challenge comes when you take the concept of unschooling, that kids can make their own decisions, and you apply it to something with such a wide variety of content and moral lattitude and try to make a sensible decision. At first, we were wary about screen usage and in fact had not had cable TV even for ourselves before having kids. I grew up with very limited television and didn't find that experience to be detrimental, so I didn't see any reason to start introducing it when our first child was still in his younger years. Of course, he had other ideas, especially once he discovered the Thomas the Tank Engine video section at our local library! What we discovered was that anything we watched with him became a shared experience like anything else, and that the shows that we watched together always provided fodder for discussion and further inquiry. I remember once when our railroad-obsessed toddler and I were standing by some old rusting locomotives on a siding and he pointed out to me that the engine nearest us was a "Mallet". I had no idea what he was talking about, but he patiently informed me in his little two year old voice that this locomotive had two sets of driving wheels, and thus was classified as a Mallet (something he'd learned from one of his train videos). I was amazed by how much knowledge and interest he was deriving from these beloved videos, even at his very young age.

As he grew and his interests branched out, every age brought new challenges to our comfort level with the screen. From Thomas videos to wanting to see Lord of the Rings at age six, and from Gameboys to more complex systems and games, we've had to revisit our feelings about the content and maturity of games and movies. What we found though was that our kids were very adept at self-regulating. They knew what bothered them and what didn't, and would even stop in the middle of a movie or game if they found themselves in over their head. My son really enjoyed Lord of the Rings, for instance, but couldn't bring himself to watch 101 Dalmations, because the theme involved killing puppies and he found that abhorrent. Yet 101 Dalmations carries a G rating, while Lord of the Rings is PG-13. We've never found that the ratings systems were very meaningful when kids know their own tolerances.

A good example of our child-led approach is Lord of the Rings, which came out when our kids were 3 and 6 years old. They saw it in stages over the course of several years. At first neither of them felt comfortable seeing it in a theatre, after asking my husband and I to view it first and report back to them on the scariness factor (high, it gave my husband nightmares.) So we first viewed it on DVD and they told me when to pause the movie and either fast-forward or let them leave the room. We had read the books though as bedtime stories, and they were as entranced as I was with the screen adaptation, and willing to sacrifice bits and pieces of the movie in order to see the story brought to life on the screen. We also watched and discussed the DVD extras, seeing how the special effects were created, how the orcs were stunt men in heavy makeup and costumes, and how the computer graphics were integrated into the whole. The next year when the second film of the trilogy came out, M. (now seven) wanted to go see it in the theatre, but A. (at four years old) did not. So we waited until it came to our $1 theatre, so that if M. just wanted to leave in the middle of it, we wouldn't really be out much (this is a fabulous strategy if you have such a theatre available, because it's really no loss to just get up and walk away, whereas if you've invested $25 in seeing a movie as a family, you can feel a lot more pressured to stay.) M. enjoyed it, and again A. waiting until the DVD came out. By the time the third movie was out 18 months later, we all went to see it in the theatre together.

I saw the same ability to self-regulate apply itself time after time. When it comes to playing games, using the handheld gaming systems, or watching TV or movies, the kids are very good at knowing what feels appropriate for them, and when they've had enough. Of course, this doesn't happen in a vacuum. Like every decision in their lives, they have us right there beside them to discuss the pros and cons, and to give context and meaning for movies or storylines that they might otherwise not understand, and to provide a sounding board for their own thoughts about what they feel is appropriate, as well as our own opinions based on our life experiences as adults. Whether it is a prolonged discussion about violence in the media, providing historical or moral background for what they are viewing, or talking about the way corporations insert advertisements and product placements into shows, they are not having to come to terms with the media by themselves. Moreover, because we have a relationship based on mutual trust and respect, instead of power and control, they trust our opinions and will frequently ask us to tell them if a movie is something we think they would like, or something that might disturb them.

Recently, we went through the latest step in this Screen Time Saga when our son requested a James Bond 007 game for the Gamecube video system. This would be the first time he played a first-person-shooter game, so we had a discussion with him about our concerns (largely involving the desensitization to violence that can happen, as well as concerns about handgun safety and having the knowledge that guns are never toys.) When he got the video game, he and his sister had a blast playing it, blowing away all the bad guys, while I sat back and quietly bit my lip. I also told him that it was not a game that I myself felt comfortable playing (though I've played other Gamecube games with the kids) because handgun violence is just not something I'm personally comfortable with. Within days though, the game had lost its glamour, and within a couple of weeks he re-sold it to the gaming shop. I wondered in my head what would've happened if, instead of discussing it with him and letting him follow his own lead, we would've banned the game and forbidden him to play it. He spends plenty of time at friends' houses these days, and undoubtably would've come across the game, or a similar one, at some point. When that happened, the game would've been doubly attractive as "forbidden fruit", and knowing that we had forbidden such play, he might've chosen to lie to us or omit telling us that he had played it. A wedge of distrust would've grown between us, instead of the closer bond of discussion and mutual respect.

In the end, that's really the biggest benefit to approaching screen time as we do any other aspect of life. When we provide context, meaningful discussion, voice our own concerns, and listen to our children's input, we give them the power to make good decisions for themselves (or perhaps even bad decisions, which might be a learning experience on its own.) If instead, we forbid such devices and programs, there's no guarantees that our children won't eventually find them anyways. When they do, it may be in a secretive and guilty way, instead of a joy-filled sharing way. Personally, I'd rather share in my children's joy and have interesting discussions with them about what we're watching.

Just this week, my son and I watched the fabulous movie The Prestige together. And there's no one I would've rather watched that movie with than my Sherlock Holmes-like son! We enjoyed dissecting the plot as we went, and reveled in the fact that we guessed the plot's twists before they were revealed. Since this movie is PG-13, most parents I know would've forbidden their kids from seeing it based on the rating alone, yet I know that the effects of watching it together were all positive. And my daughter? It wasn't her cup of tea, so she watched a Disney movie upstairs.

Rites of Spring

As the seasons change and the years go by, adventures that we have taken once, or perhaps a few times sometimes begin to take on the nature of a ritual. Our annual spring pilgrimage to the sheep barn is just such an occurrance. A local university has an extension service that just so happens to birth hundreds of lambs a year, and their barn is open to the public for a few weeks every spring. At any point during this time, you can waltz in and watch real live sheep giving birth. Or so it would seem. In reality, there have been years when we have waited patiently watching a mother sheep whose time to deliver seemed imminent, only to go home without having seen her deliver. Or the sheep, being sensible, will suddenly go to the farthest corner of the enclosure and then turn their backs to the fence to have their babies. Any mother who has given birth can probably relate.

But this year was extraordinary. We walked into the barn to find a mother sheep with one tiny brand new lamb on the ground, and she was walking around restlessly and getting ready to deliver the twin. She obligingly turned her rear toward us only a few feet away and within moments of our arrival gave us front row seats to the miracle of birth. A tiny hoof appeared and disappeared, she lay down and whooooosh came the entire slimy bundle of baby sheep.

Then the drama began. The ewe ardently cleaned off lamb #1, encouraged her as she got to her feet and began searching around for some breakfast. But she ignored lamb #2. He was tinier than the first and very thin. She didn't even lick him clean as she had the first lamb, and he started to shiver in the cold barn. Now my kids have an extremely strong sense of justice, coupled with an absolute passion for animals, and this was just too much for them to witness. Although both myself and a volunteer explained that this was normal and that bummer lambs are not unheard of. We were sure that the people in charge of the barn would come over and help it out, but minutes ticked by, the lamb shivered harder, and no one came to the poor lamb's rescue. So Miss A. set off to find someone to rectify the situation. She found one of the barn workers and he came over and fenced the mother and two babies together, then wandered off again. That didn't seem to make any appreciable difference in the situation, so ten minutes later my daughter set off with even greater determination to help the poor little thing. After barn employee #1 didn't seem to be willing to disrupt his conversation to come help, the kids beseeched the volunteer to go and find someone. Eventually a man came over who looked like he knew what he was doing. He picked up the non-slimy lamb and smeared the slimy lamb's goo all over him. The ewe began licking lamb #1 off again. When she was done, she turned to lamb #2, who now smelled like lamb #1, and licked him off as well. He began to get to his feet and as we finally left, and hour after the saga began, he was searching around for a teat as well.

We spent the next hour or so in the sunshine at a local park with a real locomotive that you can still climb on (where are the lawyers and why they haven't closed down this potential childhood injury waiting to happen I don't know, but I'm grateful there's still one place left that a child can really climb around on something thrillingly high and dangerous). After that we headed for home, feeling that spring, like the lambs, had finally arrived.

It's A Rhetorical Answer

Here's a couple of my favorite quotes from the kids this week:

#1: We were riding in the car when my daughter made a statement about something we saw. As I often do, I asked her why she thought that. Her reply was "Mom, that was a rhetorical statement."

"What's a rhetorical statement?" I asked

"Wellll, a rhetorical question is a question that does not require an answer, right?"

"Yes."

"Sooooooo, a rhetorical statement is a statement that you don't need to question!"

Oh. Okay.

#2: It's been a rough couple of weeks on the kids since our beloved dog died, and we had a small memorial service for him this weekend with our friends. My son was seeming quiet and contemplative this evening and I asked him what was wrong. He said he was still thinking about our dog. He put it this way: "When an asteroid hits the surface of the moon, it's not the end of the moon. But it still makes a very big dent." I thought that was a great metaphor, since I've been feeling kind of dented this week as well.

That Time Again

We had an incredibly hectic weekend that included karate belt tests for the kids and I, my mom visiting, my husband and I going out for our anniversary and spending our first night ever away from the kids, and then on Sunday a memorial service for our dog. I feel pretty wiped out right now and ready to sleep but we've launched into Monday and will be going full-tilt for the next few days.

My husband has decided to join the karate class, which will be fun for the kids because they will outrank him for awhile. I just got my blue belt, so I'll probably be moving into a different class, and the kids will be testing for their gold belts in three months. I couldn't believe how many students were at the test. There was a gymnasium full of gold belts and blue belts for my test, and then another gym full of white belts with various color stripes for the kids' test. And that didn't include all the rest of the colors! As always, I am blown away by the kids' focus, determination, and abilities. And not just my kids, it's really cool just to watch all of the kids out there trying their hardest at some techniques that are really quite difficult to master.
They had to remember three kata (series of movements) for this test, along with the associated bunkai (application of the kata to self-defense), sparring techniques, other self-defense techniques and the basics (kicks, punches, blocks). It's a lot of stuff to remember! As for me, I had to remember this kata, which we had just finished learning all of the moves to in the last month, and I was pretty nervous that I'd get lost somewhere in the middle and have to just stop. But muscle memory kicked in and I just got through the whole thing without any major hitches.

Finding the Gifts in Challenges

One of my favorite all-time books, Illusions by Richard Bach, has so many inspirational quotes that come back to me at various times in my life. One that occurred to me this week is:

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

One of the challenges in our weekly routine lately has been getting to our karate class in a timely manner, all dressed in our karate gis (white uniforms with belts). Since we carpool with friends, getting out the door in time is important, not just for us but for them as well. Transitions can be challenging for my kids. My oldest finds moving from one activity to another to be a big challenge at times, while my youngest can get distracted from something like getting dressed by a bead on the floor or the sudden notion to get out her puppet collection or an idea for a new hairstyle she wants to try out this moment. Getting everyone in the right gi and moving toward the door by 9:30 was shaping up to be an exercise in major frustration.

In our culture, frustrations with kids and timelines often results in rules, star charts, or simply pulling one's hair out and yelling louder. In a house where positive interactions and creative problem-solving are stressed over top-down rule, those answers are simply not an option. So our ongoing getting-out-the-door issue continued, involving frustration for all of us.

But one day, a fun and simple solution presented itself to me. I threw all of our karate gis in the dryer for a few minutes until they were nice and toasty warm. Then I called out "Gis for sale, get your nice warm Gis here!" and the kids came running and put on those nice, warm, fresh-smelling gis and I have to admit they felt really good getting dressed all warm like that. It change the whole tone of trying to get ready to go from a struggle to a really pleasant experience that we all share. We ooooh and aaaah over how nice and warm they are. So now I've started doing that with pajamas in the evening too when the kids want me to.

I'm always amazed at how if you take a problem and really look creatively at it, you can almost always find something that makes it better. Sometimes I get too heads-down and don't use that creativity, get stuck and don't see a good solution. This was a great reminder about how easily an experience can be transformed by something simple. When we're presented with challenges, we can always be looking for their gifts.

Life Goes On

I really haven't felt much like writing in the last week or so. It's like all the words were drained out of me for awhile. But we've still been busy and life goes on. We did make it to the Egyptian exhibit, Quest for Immortality, which was well worth the drive up to Portland. The self-guided audio tours they have these days in museums are terrific, and give you a wealth of information at your own pace, which is great when you are going through with kids. We had carpooled up with some friends, so we took a little side-adventure on Portland's trolleys down to my favorite end of town and got some dinner, discovered a new gelato place, and the kids played and ran halfway back to where we started from before tiring out and finding a trolley stop.

Other projects and fun we have going include taking the World Widlife Fund Earthday challenge to raise $50 apiece in spare change before Earth Day. The kids and I are planning some fundraising ideas to raise our money since they are very into wildlife conservation these days. There's almost no piece of mail they look forward to more than the WWF newsletter (except maybe M's Nintendo Power magazine subscription or the Lego catalogs). I also just took Miss Diva to auditions for the play Little Women, and both of the kids have been writing music for Sabre's memorial service, slated for next Sunday.

A Lifelong Friend

I've been looking through old photos and came across this wonderful trio from when my son was a baby, and then this last one from an autumn trip to the beach. Sabre has truly been a lifelong friend to my kids. Things are getting easier, a day at a time, but we will be missing him for a long time. The weather has gotten sunnier this week, a big improvement from the sleet, hail, and freezing rain of the last ten days. We can be outside more and everything looks brighter, even emotionally, when the sun is shining.

Last night, I had a dream that left me strangely reassured. I was walking by a park with the kids, someplace we had never been before. Steve Irwin was standing on the corner of the sidewalk and the kids recognized him and ran over to him saying "You're not dead! You're alive!" over and over. He shook his head and said that he really was dead, and at that point the kids started crying. He said "No worries, I just came here to tell you that I'm with all the animals and they're just fine."
He gave me a hug and everything was so vividly real - touch and smell and sight seemed just like real life. I woke up feeling very peaceful and well-rested, for the first time in over a week, and the sense of peace has stayed with me all day. If there really is an animal heaven, I would love to believe that Steve Irwin is up there looking over them all and keeping them company. They would be in good hands with such a wonderful soul as his.

Coming Face to Face With Grief

We had to say goodbye to our wonderful dog Sabre this week. He was our friend, companion, protector, and he loved the kids immensely. They've both known him their whole lives, and my husband and I have had him since before we were married. For all of us, it is the closest experience with grief that we've had in a long time.

Sabre was more than just a dog. He went everywhere with us. Every homeschool park day, every camping trip, every beach day, every evening we played games or read books in the living room, he was there. He is in the background of most of our family photos, right there by our sides. He went to work with my husband and charmed everyone he met. His kind face and loving soul were evident to all, and his faithful shepherd nature gave him a sense of duty to watch over us all. I think it was hard for him to let go of life, just because he felt so strongly that he was here to protect us.

As with so many of life's most joyous and saddest occasions, I'm grateful to have had the sheer amount of time to spend together. I'm grateful for all of the time we had with Sabre, a dog who didn't like to be alone (as a puppy, if we left him he would dig out from the yard and go spend the day with any neighbor who was around) and thankfully was always surrounded by family and friends. And I'm grateful now to have the time to spend with my kids as we all grieve his loss. Homeschooling has given us this gift of time, which I know I've talked about here before, but it can't be emphasized enough: life is short. The hours we have together are all that we have, when all is said and done. If the kids had been gone all day, I probably also would've been gone all day. Sabre's life would've been very different, that of a dog waiting by himself. Instead, he was part of an exciting maelstrom of kids, activities, and fun places to go. Mountains, snow, beaches, parks, we shared it all with him.

We're lucky to have had him, such a beautiful and sweet soul, in our lives. We're lucky to have had all the time and the wonderful experiences to share with him. Now we're just trying to adjust to the emptiness that's left behind. The beach sure won't feel the same without him.