How To Sap Your Brain and Reduce Your Computational Abilities

Simply take a subject like math that is ingrained in everyday life, something you can't help but do if you live, something the simplest humans have been doing for millennia: counting their bushels of wheat, subtracting the number of goats they sold to their neighbor, calculating the footing of a gigantic stone pyramid; take that subject and make it so abstract and abstruse that it's barely comprehensible, then test people on their timed, immediate recall of those abstracted facts and figures and voila! You have created a monster. It's name: math anxiety.

A new study has shown that "Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain's limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems." Apparently math anxiety (a completely school-generated construct) actually occupies space in a person's working memory, space that could be put to better uses such as, well, actually thinking and calculating and remembering things.

Fortunately, there's a simple and effective solution out there: don't abstract math out of its very real and immediate usefulness in everyday life. Don't make it a "subject" to be dissected, timed, tested, and ultimately feared at such a young age. Let math be joyous and freewheeling. Let it be measuring cups of flour if you double the recipe and calculating how much time it will take to save up for that treasured toy, figuring how high to make a treehouse and how many boards it will take to build it. Let it be how soon we'll get to grandma's house if it's one hundred miles and we're going sixty miles and hour, or how many more days it is until Christmas, how to divide three pumpkin pies among fifteen guests, or the octaves it takes to sing Oh Holy Night.

There will be plenty of time for abstracted math, for math in its purest forms for those who wish to pursue it (or for those whose chosen paths in life require a greater amount of mathematical knowledge). There will be time for piR2 and 3x+14y=z, for vectors and functions and geometries. When that time comes, it can be met joyously in the knowledge that math is something that intertwines among the fabric of life, in music and art and buildings and food; something elemental and of a precise beauty, not something abstract to be feared and detested.

In the meantime, I'm off to bake some cookies. A double recipe.

How They Learn

One of the concerns people always voice about unschooling is how kids will learn if they don't have someone hovering over them making sure they do so. I thought I'd write about just one (of the many, many, many) things I see my kids doing that illustrates how they learn. My daughter loves music and the violin is her main instrument, but she often sits down at the piano to pick things out or to play around. She's never had formal piano lessons, but the other day a friend taught her how to play part of a song that takes both hands. After her friend left, she sat down and tried to remember it. I noticed that she kept playing one part over and over, pausing each time. When I came into the living room, I saw that she was using her little magnadoodle pad to write down the note names (you can see my handy dandy note stickers on all the keys - anathema to most "real" piano teachers I'm sure, but my kids asked for them and use them frequently.) After that, she played it over and over until she had it down.

This morning, she noticed that the song on her Barbie toy cell phone is one by Beethoven that she has on a LeapPad game. She sat down at the piano to sound it out, and was still engaged in that when it was time to leave for Karate. Now that we're home, she's at it again and I can hear the stanzas of the Ode to Joy emerging from her fingertips.

When a child wants to learn something (or an adult for that matter), the most useful thing we can do is to support and nurture that desire. Provide the materials and encouragement, step back and watch the magic happen.

Ticket to Egypt

When I was a kid, the King Tut exhibit was all the rage. Steve Martin had a hit single about the boy king, women wore shirts with Tuts over each tit, and the lines for the traveling exhibit went around the block. I was lucky enough that my folks to us to see it in San Francisco. I remember the lines, the anticipation and the awe of standing next to an item that once graced the tomb of a Pharoah, thousands of years ago.

Now the Portland Art Museum has the largest exhibit of Egyptian artifacts ever to leave the country. The tickets are selling out quickly, and I'm hoping to get some for next weekend. I'll be hitting the library tomorrow to get some books on Egypt. We've read plenty over the years, but none in the last few months. I can't wait to see the same look of excitement on the kids' faces that I remember feeling all those years ago. If all goes well, we'll meet my sister there and not only get to see all of these amazing exhibits but also get to celebrate her birthday. Fun!

Biology is Destiny?

When I was a mother-to-be, I had all kinds of high hopes for raising my kids free from gender stereotypes that are so endemic in our culture. My husband is the only one in our family who sews, and he cooks a mean lasagna or crock pot chicken; I own two motorcycles, my pilot's license, and can turn a wrench when I need to, it seems that it would be pretty straightforward to raise children who had no preconceived notions of what men and women would do.

That was before I gave birth to a boy, then a girl. In the early years, we didn't even have a television. They probably watched fewer commercials (you know, the ones with girls playing with dolls and boys zooming trucks around) than any American children on the planet. They had us as role models. They both had access to dolls, Thomas the Tank Engine trains, stuffed animals and superheroes. They would not be trained into any roles by us, that's for sure.

My first inkling that something was dramatically different between the two of them came one day when they were both playing with some plastic Spiderman action figures. M, our son (then six years old), had them flying around involved in some epic battle, complete with sound effects. Whenever he would hand one to our daughter A., then three, she would take them over to the doll house, tuck them into bed, and sing them a lullabye.

Later, I noticed that when M. played with Thomas the Tank Engine, he built elaborate layouts and drove the trains around for hours on end. The same train tracks and trains were passed down to A. but she invented little stories and interactions between the trains and rarely touched the tracks. Frustrations sometimes arose when they tried to play together. M. wanted someone to drive trains with, while A. wanted complex interpersonal character interactions.

As the years have passed, they've found places where their interests intersect. They've come to understand that compromise might be necessary when they play together. Sometimes I will overhear an interaction like this:
M: Do you want to play an imaginary game?
A: Sure. I'm a princess!
M: No, no princesses please!
A: Okay, how about a cute fluffy doggy?
M: Aaaaaarrggh (eye rolling here) Okay, but sometimes you're fierce
A: Okay

Yesterday they each had a friend over to play and my final reservations about biology and destiny flew out the window. The boys immediately dragged the Lincoln Logs and toy soldiers down to the living room and set about building forts. The girls took turns borrowing each others' clothes and dressing up as dancers. The gender differences couldn't be more obvious.

Now that's not to say that they will grow up stereotyped into some roles. Both of the kids know how to cook, and A. is the one who says she wants to ride my motorcycles some day. They are both sensitive and kind, and neither is afraid to show their emotions or give us hugs. But I have learned to honor that in their basic approaches to life, they come from different directions, and that's okay.

Child's Play

We've been really into games lately. Sometimes the kids play things on their own, sometimes with each other or with friends, sometimes with us on a family game night.

It occured to me that if you did nothing but just play games all day, you could probably learn just about everything you needed to know. There are games for logic and deductive reasoning (Mastermind, Rush Hour, and Clue are big hits here, and little Miss A. doesn't go anywhere without her Sudoku Addict book of puzzles), games that emphasize math skills (one family game of Monopoly gives you addition through multiplication plus percentages and fractions), most video games require reading and puzzle solving, there are trivia games full of history and Pit for market trading, puzzles and Operation for small-muscle dexterity, and there are physical games like Simon Says, Mother May I, and dodgeball that work reflexes and mind-body connections.

The game I love to hear the most is when the kids, either with each other or with a group of friends, start playing what they call "The Imaginary Game", an ongoing storyline set in some place and time of fantasy. Sometimes they play it in the car or sitting on the couch, sometimes its a big group of kids roaming through the woods or fields or at a playground. It's always changing and ever-fascinating.

The value of play is highly underestimated in our society. The phrase "Child's Play" connotes something easy or trivial, yet it is anything but. Children learn by playing, but more importantly play brings their lives meaning and joy. Now excuse me, I think I hear Sudoku puzzle calling my name...

Indentured Servants

I took the kids down to our local gaming store this week and they each found a game that they really liked. A. saw some hamster game for the DS that's like Nintendogs, but with hamsters (how much more perfect could that be!) and M. got Rocket Slime which is pretty cool. I actually bought Brain Gym for myself, and got hooked on Sudoku for the first time!

Unfortunately, they had forgotten they made a date with some other friends to go to the store they just refer to as the "individual card store", which is a local gaming place that sells used Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, Magic, etc. cards invidually. Although they both got rid of their Pokemon decks awhile ago, they've since discovered that some of their friends that are back into it, and decided to buy new decks. Only after blowing all of their money on the video games there was a slight problem of funding.... that's where The Bank of Mom comes in.

I have a huge leaf pile standing on the spot where I want my summer garden to be. Now this enormous pile is courtesy of my dear hubby, who decided that if getting a couple of loads of leaves dumped there each year (from our city's leaf pickup program) was good, then getting ten dumptruck loads would be Even Better. I'm sorry to be sexist, but is this typical man thinking or what??. Yes, ten dumptruck loads of leaves are currently residing on top of my garden spot. I'm thinking that your average rototiller is not going to cut through this 20x 15 x 7 foot tall pile! Plus, we have 1/3 acre of ivy and blackberries that I want to rake the leaves over to hopefully make them easier to pull out of there.

I've been plugging away at the pile with shovel, rake and wheelbarrow, and can use all the help I can get. So I offered the kids $5 an hour and they jumped at the chance to be able to get their Pokemon cards. They were jumping a little less enthusiastically when they started raking and shoveling, but they worked for an hour as troopers and only have half their debt left.

Wired

Sometimes when I look at one of the kids, I get a preview of things to come, a glimpse of what they'll look like when they're older. Miss Diva often shocks me by looking scarily just like me. It could be a look, a laugh, something she says, a gesture, but the mini-me is there. Today, she's playing the DS and talking on the Bluetooth to my husband: seven going on seventeen and wired to the hilt, an eerie echo of me with my PDA and phone.

More Overheard

M (10 year old son, to 7 year old daughter): Why are you so concerned with fashion anyways? We're just going to the store
A: Because I'm a fashion kind of gal
M: I just have 4 pairs of pants and some t-shirts, that's all you need
A: Not if you really want to express yourself!

And man, is she ever good at expressing herself! See for yourself....

Overheard

My son to his friend, talking about robotics:

"And my mom said she would coach the team. Isn't that cool!"

Wow, if that doesn't warm a mom's heart. I love how close we are to our kids. I love that they get really enthusiastic to do things with us. I love how my 10 year old son is not shy about expressing that enthusiasm about doing something with his mom to his friend. And when his friend said "Yeah! Then I might be interested in joining!" Well, that's icing on the cake friends.

The Hidden Milestones

When I was a new mother, a wise mom once told me to pay attention to the Invisible Milestones. Of course, we all wait excitedly for the regular milestones - baby's first words and first steps, the first book they read, the first time they take the car keys. But the Invisible Milestones are not the "firsts" but the "lasts". The last time they crawl, nurse, sit on your lap without squashing you flat.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because my daughter still uses those cute turns of phrase that only a child's creative mind will come up with. She was telling a friend about horseback riding the other day, and mentioned that Annie, the first horse she rode, was her "starter horse". The pancake at the bottom of the stack is the "under pancake", and when she turned her ankle for the umpteenth time recently, she wailed "I have flimsy feet!".

I guess as children grow, their brains naturally mimic the speech patterns around them instead of inventing them from scratch. But a seven year old is still in the zone of the fresh observation, a seven year old doesn't know a cliche. Just a few short years older, my son at ten rarely does this anymore, and when he does, I treasure it. So I saved a message from him on my cell phone where he called and told me there was a "jumpy surprise" waiting at home (he and my husband had put up our trampoline while A. and I were out) and I remember with fondness how he used to ask me to "unpeel" a banana, and the opposite of "upside down" was of course "upside up".

Just knowing that the hidden milestones, the "lasts" exist is enough to pay conscious attention to the children that I have here, today. They won't be here tomorrow, tomorrow they will be slightly older, different. Tomorrow they might peel a banana, instead of unpeeling it.

There's No Place Like Home

Once upon a time, I had a lovely little house on a cul-de-sac. It had flowers out front, and I lived there peacefully. I could decorate my home in any kind of way I wanted, and change the decor as often as I liked. The bottom floor of my house was a garden room, with plants, indoor tiki torches, and a hammock to sleep in. The upstairs was a more oriental theme with dark wooden screens and plush carpets. The basement, well that was a bit of a mess, but we won't talk about that.

Then something terrible happened. I lost my home. I was destitute and depressed. I had to move in with my son, in a tiny place with hardly any room for me. I could no longer decorate as I pleased, and I was dependent on him for charity. I didn't think this kind of thing would happen until I was in my 80's, maybe 90's, but here I am at 40 asking for a mere bed to sleep in.

What's that? Oh, this isn't my real home. It was on Animal Crossing, a Gamecube game that I used to play with my kids a lot. Then the new Animal Crossing for the DS came out, and don't get me wrong, it's got some really great features. But one thing stands in the way of perfection: you have to share one house. And since the DS belongs to my son, that means we all have to live in his house. Yes, a house outfitted by a 10 year old boy. Let's just say that we don't exactly share the same tastes in home decor. Some days it's full of UFOs, and on others there are strange bobbing dolls around. It's very disconcerting.

But, all that could change. I could, in fact, not only have my own home on Animal Crossing once more, it could exist on a lovely pink DS, courtesy of Crazy Hip Blog Mama's contest.. And I can tell you that nothing would make me more hip than having my own DS so that I wouldn't have to live in charity with my son. At least until I'm 90 or so.

The World is Shrinking

So I had a computer problem today, needed a BIOS update that wasn't the right one on the Dell disk, and ended up on the phone to a support person. In India, it was 5:00 am, while it is afternoon here. It was warm and humid there, snowing here. My daughter stood by my shoulder while I chatted with the support person, and when he took control of the computer remotely like they can do these days, she was overcome with amazement as my pointer moved like a spirit was controlling it, clicking on menu items with ghostly typing in the boxes appearing like magic on the screen. When I told her that the man who was controlling it was halfway around the world, she was even more astounded.

Later, we found India on the globe, looked at how far away it is, talked about how the technology we have today can connect us in incredible ways, letting people we've never seen and will never meet help us. We talked about the earth's rotation, how it is light here, but the sun isn't shining there yet. And about lattitude and longitude, climate differences, how the man I was speaking with never sees snow, while it is 26 degrees outside here.

I love how learning springs from seemingly inconsequential events, how children are still capable of so much wonder, surprise, amazement. When I was a kid, the other side of the world was something remote and academic. When I got my ham radio license and actually spoke to someone in Japan once, it was an incredible thing, almost unimaginable. To today's kids, they might be chatting with someone in Delhi soon when they have a computer issue of their own. Or they might meet French teenager or a women from Japan in a chatroom or on a list. Our own family has stayed with two wonderful families, one in England and one in Spain that I met online. The world has become smaller, and our ability to meet and interact with people of very different cultures has increased dramatically.

The Phrase Every Mom Loves To Say

This phrase is best uttered from an open doorway, as the dusk gathers around you and the lights of the town start twinkling on. In the spring and summer, it can be accompanied by the sound of crickets or frogs.

"Kids, it's getting dark. Time to come in!"

I think I'm going to love this trampoline thing. Despite a few House Rules that need to be ironed out (how many can be on at one time, that sort of thing), and a couple of bumps and bruises, the kids were out there with their friends all afternoon until it was literally so dark I almost couldn't see them.

A Backyard Full of Trampoline

Our backyard is not very large and it has a heck of a slope, but we still managed to squeeze in this wonderful device! Already the kids are loving it, even in the middle of winter they're out there playing. Some friends came over who had a whole arsenal of trampoline games to play, including "popcorn" and the one in the picture which included trying to leap over the kids who are rolling around (I'm not sure what that one is called).

We've been wanting to get a trampoline for awhile now, but a local sporting goods store that went out of business provided the final impetus by marking everything down by 50%. We got the last 14 foot trampoline in the store, and I couldn't be happier! Now if I didn't get so dizzy when I jumped (notoriously sensitive inner ears), I'd be out there more myself. As it is, I try to get out with the kids, but I can't do it for very long.

Living the Life We Have Imagined

January is often a time of reflection in our culture, and looking back on the past year I can see how much our kids have grown and changed, kept old interests and found new ones, explored new avenues in areas of their passions, and branched out in exciting ways. We've had many incredibly busy days (who can forget the two dance performances, midnight drive to another city, and 8:00 am robotics competition?), but also many days of quiet reflection, fun family times of board games or snuggling up and watching a movie, family bike rides and swimming nights, and tons of time in the outdoors camping and in the forests, mountains, and beaches of our lovely state.

This year was a year of dreaming big, and seeing those dreams almost magically spring to life. My husband reached a goal that he has held since his teenage years: becoming a certified captain of a jet aircraft (he studied for, tested, and received his type rating this year in a corporate jet). The kids followed their passions to new and exciting places: M. to robotics tournaments and chess matches, karate practice and lengthy Dungeons & Dragons games with friends; A. to performances on the stage in theatre, music, and dance, evening jam sessions with other Celtic-playing musicians, and new activities like volleyball and robotics. And this was the year I achieved my dream of 15 years, completing the Ironman triathlon. We worked hard on our dreams, but we loved every step of the way, as people do when they are living the lives that they have hoped, dreamed, and imagined. There's not a day goes by that I am not grateful for all the opportunities we have had to live the full and joyful lives that we do, and through unschooling to allow our children to do the same.

For Christmas, I bought my husband a silver bookmark (he has this dreadful habit of turning down pages in books as a substitute). On it is a quote that also graced the cover of my Ironman journal, a quote that sums up our year, our lives:

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
--Henry David Thoreau

So as we go forward into 2007, here's hoping it's another year of living the lives we are imagining, every day.

History, Poetry and BlackAdder

History as I remember it in school was a dull parade of facts, dates and names to be memorized and regurgitated onto a piece of test paper at the appropriate moment. Anyone remember the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too?", "What was the signifigance of the Teapot Dome scandal and when did it occur?", or "Who fought whom at the Battle of Hastings?"

Not so in our house. We apparently learn history through much more entertaining sources. Like, say, Blackadder.

For those of you Philistines who don't know what Blackadder is, you can start with the Wikipedia entry and proceed directly to your Netflix queue, where you should bump it immediately to the top. One of the funniest TV shows of all time, it tells the story of Edmund Blackadder and all of his descendents through various stages in English history. The characters encounter medieval battles, Richard III, Queen Elizabeth I (played by the incomparable Miranda Richardson), the French Revolution and the Scarlet Pimpernel, and WWI, including Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, the battle of the Somme, and the famous poppies of Flanders field. Along the way, we've had lots of great discussions about the topics at hand, the historical figures, and related subjects. After we watched the final episode of the WWI series, I read them In Flanders Field and a short bio of its author, Lieutenant Colonel John McRae.

Over Christmas, we also watched The Reduced Shakespeare Company's DVD in which they manage to squeeze all 37 of Shakespeare's plays into 90 minutes of sheer lunacy and comedy (including the "60 second Hamlet", Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, Othello as a rap song, and Monarch football in which all of Shakespeare's Historical kings pass the ball around the field - and King Lear gets flagged on a penalty for being a fictional character). The kids thought it was a hoot, and on the way back from our snowy cabin Christmas, we discussed a lot of the plays.

We also watched The General and some more of Buster Keaton's silent movies last week. It's amazing how well truly good theatre (in particular, comedy) can stand the test of time and entertain kids who have all the latest in special effects and video games at their fingertips. The cover of the DVD almost put them off, but I told them I thought they would love it and they did, begging to watch all of it in one sitting. Since The General was filmed near here, and one scene occurs at a place that we go to frequently, it was fun to watch from that angle as well. We talked about the Civil War and why the South would not let the movie be filmed there, even forty years after the end of the war.

The cool thing for me is that just through basically entertaining ourselves - having a good laugh and a bowl of popcorn, the kids have learned more about history than I remember in many a dull and dreary schoolroom hour.

Quote of the Day

On a recent walk to the store: "It's hard to scratch an itch when you're holding an umbrella and nursing a seal."

Yeah, I guess it is! By the way, for Christmas the kids each got an adopted animal from World Wildlife Federation from their aunt and uncle. It's a great present - they got a cute stuffed animal, an adoption certificate and photo that explains how the gift is protecting wildlife and habitat. They are both really concerned about animals and this was a wonderful way to get a gift that also helps the earth. M. got a hippo (his favorite animal) and A. got this seal.

Skies Not So Blue

Becoming a mother was a watershed moment in my life. I know people who are born to be mothers, women who have envisioned themselves with babies and children since they were little girls playing with dolls. Not me. For one thing, I named all of my dolls the same thing when I was young. Clearly I was not cut out for a mothering career (though I was not quite as bad as my sister, who carried her favorite doll around by the hair until it looked like some demented pixie.) Even my husband once said that he feared I would be a terrible mother. Let's see, self-centered, severely lacking in patience, driven mad by the slightest noises or touches - yep, not really a checklist for the cover of Mothering magazine there.

But something happened when I first became pregnant. My life became infused with a joy that I had not known before. Oh, I was always a pretty happy-go-lucky kind of person, but motherhood brought a day-to-day happiness that, even on days when my children are taking me to the teetering brink of insanity, swirls around and through every encounter, bringing a kind of blessedness that I suppose the truly religious must feel. In short, as Viggo Mortensen says in one of his fabulous books of poetry and photography: "Kids are God; Pay attention"

But then there are days in every parent's life when the skies are not so blue. Pain, to an adult, is a terrible thing. But pain to one's children, whether physical or emotional, is almost unendurable. It's the kind of thing that keeps one up at midnight, staring at the ceiling, a pit of dread in your stomach. Yesterday was one of those days.

One of those days when your kid has gotten a remote controlled airplane for Christmas from Grandma, something they've wanted for a very long time. And you read the instructions carefully, and test the controls, and take it to a huge big field on a calm day, and do the ground tests that the instructions recommend, and it launches perfectly, but then as it goes up, you realize that the sky is not just overcast, but actually foggy. And the airplane starts disappearing into the foggy clouds, at which point it loses contact with the radio controller and it's going farther and farther away, so you take the controls from your distraught child to try to get it back, and it crashes into an area of houses. So you go over to the houses and spend a considerable amount of time peering into trees and over fences into backyards and knocking on doors, but you never find the plane. One of those kind of days.

All in all, he took it very well. He didn't scream or cry or throw a fit as he might have done even a year ago. He was heartbreakingly stoic. And, because a large measure of the fault of this inaugural flight lays with me, I have promised to find him another one. And next time we won't be so blinded by sheer enthusiasm, and we'll wait until our neighbor can come along, who flies RC planes and can help us get it squared away.

And of course, we'll wait until the skies are truly blue.

Christmas in the High Desert

We decided to do something different for Christmas this year - camp in a cabin! Although it was a bit overwhelming to pack all of Christmas, not to mention our camping gear, five people, and a dog, into our minivan, we really had a great time. After opening presents on Christmas morning, we decided to head even further east to Fort Rock. A stunning volcanic remain that towers out of the desert floor, Fort Rock is a great place to explore around. It used to be situated on the edge of a gigantic lake, and in caves nearby, the distinctive Fort Rock sagebrush sandals (world's oldest shoes) have been discovered, many pairs carbon dating 9,000 to 10,000 years old. Part of the rock on one side has been worn away by the ancient water, leaving a horshoe-shaped ring of rock that you can explore around.


There are so many different, and beautiful rock layers that make up Fort Rock, everywhere you turn it looks like a completely different rock landscape. It's one of my favorite places to visit, and the kids (and adults) had a wonderful time exploring around.

Here's some more photos:

Of Grandparents and Guinea Pigs

When I was a kid, we lived near both of my grandparents. At one point, we lived in my grandma's old farmhouse, and then we moved a few miles away but only a couple of blocks from my other grandparents. We also saw my great-grandparents in California as often as we could. I feel really lucky that my kids have their grandparents in their lives, and for at least a few years knew their great-grandparents as well. There's something special about knowing people from other generations, with other experiences, whose history and stories then becomes part of your own history and your family stories. My great-grandmother was born in a sod house on the prairie in 1892, and I knew her through most of my life until she died in 1992. My grandma once ran out of gas in her VW bug while dressed in a bunny rabbit costume (don't ask, my family's so crazy I never had a shot at normality). My grandpa was on a Navy ship in WWII. My kids grandparents have their own stories to tell, and I think our kids are blessed to be able to hear them.

My dad and step-mom came to visit last week and the kids brought their guinea pigs out to hold. It was just one of those sweet little moments that swirls by, but I know that as our kids get older they will appreciate all these little times. And now I have to sign off, because my mom will soon be here and there's cookie dough to get ready. There's nothing better than baking cookies with grandma to start the holidays off right.