~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ favorite college professor

Posted on March 10, 2021 by marybethrew

~June 23 to July 23, 2020~

Dinosaur Discoveries virtual camp

Since camp was during the day, we moved our noon video call to 6 pm for camp week. He was animated! I wasn’t sure if it was the time of day or due to camp, but he was ON FIRE in his nerdy mind. I got on the call on the first night to him frantically spinning his cube into an alternating colors pattern and he held up the blue-and-green side to the camera and said, “this is like a nerve check for me because I have to do the opposite of what I’ve trained myself to do,” and then babbled for the whole hour about phylogenies and homologies.

That day they made a tik tok, a google slideshow, did an interactive (video game) learning module, read and discussed a scientific publication. They talked about how paleontology, biology and geology relate to each other. They used starburst candy to illustrate the rock cycle (melted by microwave onto cardboard: igneous.) Two of his buddies from camp last year were in attendance, and he added seven new teens and two new instructors to his paleontology community.

The theme for day two was “geologic context of the Mesozoic,” because isn’t that what we all think of in our summer camp memories? They did a Pangaea puzzle, read about and discussed some contemporary dino fossil discoveries, met with a real paleontologist, sifted a bag of sand to find a whole bunch of fossils (24 sea snails, 17 amber pieces, no trilobites, 3 squids, gastropods, ray teeth, shark teeth – some of them not yet counted).

Day 3: biologic context of the Mesozoic. Mass extinctions, why birds are the only living dinosaurs, why Triassic animals were just the weirdest, a handy paleontology database. This was a dress-up day and Quinn chose to wear his “brambleproof” long-sleeved shirt, his Indiana Jones hat, and a rock pick. He worked on his dino diorama, which they made in the box that the camp supplies were shipped in.

Day 4: Reading the fossil record! Quinn finished up counting his sifted fossils and had 32 pieces of amber, 25 Sahara gastropods and 3 fragments (so at least 28 individuals), and he mentioned both Devonian squid and a Devonian fish called Dunkleosteus, but I’m not sure if they were included among his fossils. His knowledge on this subject has far exceeded mine and I can no longer keep up! He discovered he did have half of a Trilobite. On this day he was set the task of writing a scientific report of one of his fossil finds, and he came up with this:

“A new genus named a Trilobita was discovered to have lived about 520 million years ago and though not all measurements are available the specimen is certainly unique. The front half of this almost crab-like creature has been preserved in its 3-D structure representing a very small creature living in the Upper Cambrian Lodore formation.”

“I made up the part about the formation that it was found in, and I approximated on the million of years ago. Also I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing Trilobita correctly. Trilobita?” (Think: kilometer/kilometer.)

Quinn has a theory on Trilobites; that they were the first sentient organisms, and that they traveled in groups. I let him talk that night and recorded some audio after he introduced his Trilobite theory. These are just some segments I gleaned from a twenty minute treatise:

“To me it looked like in our fossil record, all of the things in that time period look practically the same almost, like really really similar, so it makes me think there was one kind of first species that evolved and then that evolved into a whole myriad of other things that evolved into a multitude of different things. Each species branching as it goes. To me the length of a species is determined by when it branched off the thing behind it to when it branched into multiple different things itself. That’s how I think of how long a species lived… when did it come into being from the thing that branched to BE it? That’s the start of it. and then the end is when it branched into multiple things itself. And everything kind of looks really similar that we have from back then. So it kind of looks like everything is one thing. And then that thing splits into several similar things. I mean a bird doesn’t look anything like a whale. But if you trace the two back far enough, then like a chickadee and a humpback whale, were once the same species. It might be somewhere back in the Mesozoic or before the Mesozoic, it might have been different things already when the dinosaurs were alive but if you trace them back far enough, everything has a common ancestor with everything else. So my thing is I’m thinking of like the ultimate common ancestor. I think of a trilobite.”

“Like someone looks at a rock on Beverly beach and is like, “there’s a clam shell imprint here,” but you can only see this little imprint for a bacteria if you’re looking at it micro microscopic. Attach several microscopes to your eye and walk around Beverly beach.”

“Soft parts still fossilize is my thing. If you think about it, it’s not the meteor strike that wiped everything out. It incinerates everything in one small area. Back then we happen to know that there was pretty much one continent with several large islands around it, maybe? And even when that was the case, that all the water that had life in it, was all one thing. You can swim from any point in it to any other point that has life in it. and so the biodiversity wouldn’t have been the greatest…”

“A meteor hits. let’s just say at the time trilobites are alive a meteor hits and we don’t know about it- it doesn’t deposit what it usually does or whatever. Let’s say that’s what wiped out the species then except for what evolved into what we have today… If there were bacteria I think they would have fossilized, because in the water, their soft forms would slip between molecules… If you’re willing to actually be really careful and chip them out of the rock, I think that you would have ended up with (and this is all under a microscope that’s under a microscope that under possibly another microscope.)”

“Even so I think that then that would have been like I don’t know like thinking… I think that that would have been like … I think that that would have fossilized” (I’m including this verbatim to illustrate his words trying to keep up with his brain.)

“If a meteor had struck, pretty much the whole earth is covered in possibly a mile thick cloud of ash just hovering above the earth or like encasing the earth. If you think about the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, the story goes: meteor hits earth. Ash cloud for several million years, meaning all the plants couldn’t get sun because of the ash cloud so all the plants died meaning all the herbivores died meaning all the carnivores died. Mammals survived because back then we were scavengers right? We were able to eat survive in pretty much any climate. So we were able to just eat dead stuff which there would be plenty of, so we survived.”

“The producers are subsisting off of sun, like just subsisting off of some non-living thing, like eating rocks, or filtering sand through itself, photosynthesis, like it’s always there. And if you use it, it’s not like you use it and some of it goes away. You’re done using it, and you get the energy from it, but it still has just as much energy on itself to give as when you picked it up and used it to give yourself energy. So what the meteors do when they hit is they take away that thing in some way or another. So meteors take away the producers source of energy.”

Day 5: Dinosaurs in pop culture and media! They met with another real life paleontologist, this time one who works on prehistoric penguins, and specifically the plumage – the colors of fossil feathers! Fossils can tell us about the evolution of the shape and color of penguin feathers! And other dinosaur plumage – they learned about a Jurassic bird that had iridescent feathers. The camp kit included (modern) feathers that they had looked at in preparation for this segment. Maybe not all the mamas have gathered piles of feathers for their kids.

This day’s topic on pop culture and media and dinosaurs (and misconceptions about them) was fascinating for Quinn. There were lots of links and resources provided, which were fun things like Jurassic Park and Disney’s Dinosaur.

Here is our conversation about the 1914 animation of Gertie the dinosaur:

“A sauropod eats a boulder and the top of the tree, sees a sea serpent in the lake next to them, starts dancing, eats the other half of the tree, tosses a mammoth into said lake, the mammoth swims back over and blasts the sauropod with water, and then swims away, a mammoth can swim, then the sauropod picks up a boulder and hits the mammoth, and then the sauropod takes a drink and drains the whole lake…”

“When were mammoths and when were sauropods?” His scientist/writer mom replied, modeling her grasp of both science and grammar.

“Sauropods were in the Jurassic period. Mammoths weren’t around until after the Cretaceous.”

“Are you saying it would be anachronistic for a sauropod to toss a mammoth in a lake then? And throw boulders at it?”

“I’m saying that a sauropod wouldn’t have lived at the same time as a mammoth. I’m saying that sauropods can’t toss mammoths by the tail…”

“Even if they didn’t have to time travel in order to do it?”

“If they didn’t have to time travel in order to do it, and they were capable of doing that time travel, and they could actually get a mammoth, they still physically could not pick up a mammoth by the tail and throw it five miles into a lake, and then accurately hit it at that range with a boulder.

“Are you sure? Aren’t you being kind of a party pooper?”

The two camp instructors and both guest visitors were women. I love that this camp group makes a strong effort towards inclusion and is working hard for fair representation for all in a science that has historically been exclusive to white men. I like that my white man-to-be is surrounded by all other types of people in these camps.

Q and I watched an episode of PBS prehistoric road trip together that night.

Day 6 was the final day of Dino camp, and they presented their Dioramas and played games.

On his diorama presentation, Quinn was complimented that he must have done a lot of research because of how his time period aligned with the species of dinosaurs and plant life represented. Here is his spiel:

“This is my museum diorama of the K-Pg extinction which is extremely late cretaceous. So the meteor is still in the sky yet it has already struck, so all of the grass has been burned off, and the rocks are bleached because of the immense heat. there is a river running through here, and there is a velociraptor pack here attacking this herd of triceratops, and all that’s left of these trees are small shrubs, which the triceratops herd is taking cover in trying to save themselves, however the raptor pack has expertly sent in an ambusher from behind. there are also a pair of tyrannosaurs attacking these two ankylosaurs, because big predators like tyrannosaurs assuming they were predators and not scavengers, would probably hunt in pairs or trios rather than full packs. there’s a quetzalcoatlus up in the sky looking for food, and there’s a volcano that’s erupting.”

He told me that night:

“For our final meeting they gave us like traditional class clown, most likely to become a rock star awards. Except they were specific to us regardless of the traditional ones. Frizzie got most likely to lead a paleontology expedition while wearing fancy clothing. Lead got most likely to draw the most scientifically accurate drawing of a T. rex. I got most likely to become everybody’s favorite college professor which I think is extremely accurate.”

Extremely!

(slightly modified by mama)

In which I realize why this post incubated a while…

I revisited my educational priorities for Quinn during this month. This was motivated by looking ahead to the 2020-2021 school year and grappling with which path to choose: hybrid online/in person public school, fully online Edmentum public school, or fully homeschool. Because I am writing this as we approach the end of 8^th grade, I know what was chosen and how the story turned out to not be about what I would choose at all. It’s weird to have been thinking about things like scaffolding removal and then realize – oh we’re done with scaffolding. Now he’s taking charge of his own path. He chose Edmentum, and has handled his schooling. It turns out the scaffolding was even more temporary than I realized, and I was slow to take out the final pieces despite my awareness that removal was the goal.

Since I’m writing this later, I have control over leaving out the awkward and tense discussions of pros and cons, of offers on my part to advocate, which he kept gently but firmly turning down. I can see now that he was telling me he’s got this. If we had homeschooled, it would have been something he was doing to please me. (I cannot ensure that he did not choose his path out of wanting to please his father but that is out of my control. )Yes, I know it would have been odd to homeschool remotely – him at his dad’s but with me facilitating learning. But that would have worked, in fact I’m confident we would have slam dunked it, if it had been what he wanted and needed. It’s just that it wasn’t. It’s just that it was hard for me to hear that at first.

When I wrote the priorities, consent took up more of the bandwidth than it had in the past, though I could see it was there all along when I wrote the original mamafesto when he was six. It just wasn’t named quite as directly – it was emergent curriculum, choice, opting in. Looking through a 2020 teen parenting lens, consent rose to the surface. As I rewrote, I was thinking about how he needed to have autonomy in body and mind in the learning context. Keep those outside influences at bay and let him decide for himself, follow his own compass. But I was still a little bit holding onto some need for control over his learning in that way we have as parents of operating from a blind spot. The cliché about practicing what we preach. The cliché about 2020 and hindsight. Again.

So I’m leaving the awkward, tense conversations in my private journal, with this mile marker placed here from my somewhat expanded perspective of months. A reminder, an honest reckoning with yet another thing that was tough about the past year.

Quotable Quotes of Q:

“Flight was not why things evolved feathers… feathers were why things evolved flight.”

“When overwhelmed thinking about covid, I distract myself. Like, I think about how to write pi in binary.”

“An Illithids mindflayer is like a dementor possessing Davy Jones, but purple.”

Literature

We spent time in Rohan this month, and by the time we ended the month were reading the Appendices.

Q read the Monkey Wrench Gang this month.

We discussed the pronunciation of pronunciation.

One evening I just sat for a while, listening to the sound of popcorn popping upstairs, and the pages of Calvin and Hobbes turning on the other end of the video call.

Math

“Volume of a warbler” and “how many warblers on earth?” Oh, the things you google. These were inquiries during Quinn’s quest to remix Vi Hart’s binary tree of birds – her turducken-en-ducken-en…. but with 13 birds nested inside each other bird, in a long list of types of birds.

Which brought him to the question, “How many birds in the world?” So he could compare to how many in this thirteen-to the eighteen factorial power bird stuffing scheme. The 200 billion birds in the world seems like a big number, however, >121 quintillion is way bigger!

He took this ridiculously high numbers of birds even higher and google calculator eventually returned the result, “Infinity,” and he was laughing so hard at breaking google again.

Honorable mention to, “how many square feet is New York City?” and an ensuing discussion of area codes.

Nature

He was visited by a grouse in the pile of firewood he has been using a splitting maul to help create. He also used the hatchet to strip small branches off limbs, and off one cedar sapling they used to make a railing. He helped replace deck boards and build a deck addition. The seeds from Sam’s garden box were beginning to sprout – he described the sunflowers “busting out” of their seeds, and the pea “vines” that were starting to lengthen and reach out curling tendrils. He saw the comet on a few different nights, explaining to me the best time to see it at sunset and how the remaining light on one side of the sky made it shine brighter against its darker corner of the sky.

More dinos

This is Q’s giddy anticipation the night he unveiled his plans for what we would do after we finished reading the appendices.

He recreated the dinosaur game he made up on graph paper where I had to build my own Jurassic park role-play style, in a google sheets version for us to play together remotely!

Another memorable quote for the month came a few days later, “oh my god, oh my god, I’m so excited about this dinosaur game.” And we did start in before the end of this month, by the end of which I had collected three different ceratopsians and some stegosauruses.

Oh, the dinos you’ll know!

educational priorities ~ a mamafesto ~ 2020 remix

Posted on August 16, 2020 by marybethrew

Quinn recently attended a six-day online Dinosaur Discoveries camp and at the end earned the “Most Likely to Become Everyone’s Favorite College Professor” award. It launched a great conversation between Quinn and I about how online learning does not necessarily have to mean pushing a bunch of “submit” buttons to enable the instructors to assess his learning accomplishments. The instructors provided materials for him to immerse himself in, trusted that he was absorbing them, and then detected his absorption of said materials through conversations, group discussions, and other contributions (voluntarily written and presented). No grading or testing occurred. And yet, both Quinn and I felt the instructors had somehow managed to glean a lot about who he is as a learner and an individual simply through six days of connecting with him over meaningful curriculum, meaningful because it was chosen intentionally by Quinn. As for the assessment of Quinn’s likelihood of becoming everyone’s favorite college professor, Quinn said, “I think it’s extremely accurate.”

In 2012, I sat down and wrote out my priorities for Quinn’s education, a valuable and worthwhile exercise that received a lot of positive feedback at that time, and that I have returned to at times when I’ve felt a need to check the calibration of my compass concerning Quinn’s education. Each time I’ve returned, I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well that list concerning my going-into-kindergarten five-year-old still fit, say, when he was transitioning from second grade at our living school to third grade in the public school, or when he was moving from there up into the middle school. These transition points pushed me to revisit my priorities for Quinn’s education more than the years in between, but when I did so, I found that what I valued for him at the beginning of his school years are the things I still value, and each time, it has helped me orient my efforts in advocating for his learning needs in each context in ways that aligned with those values.

2020 is a different year in every way, and it is exceptionally different in terms of how education is being and will be carried out. Quinn finished seventh grade pushing buttons on a computer screen, disconnected from his teachers and peers, isolating himself at his dad’s house in the woods. However, for the month it took for the school to transition into distance learning mode, he had a fresh chance to direct his own learning, and it was an oasis between the overscheduled school year to that point, and the button-pushing specter of school on a laptop that limped across the finish line. As we envision what his eighth grade year will be like, his last year before high school, it has been on my mind to revisit the priority list yet again. (Click here to read the original post.) With years of additional insights into how Quinn learns, I decided it would be a good time to do a fresh rewrite, although once again my revisit reconfirmed that everything on the list still resonates for me. The first priority, however, is the one that stopped me in my tracks this time: “Safety- A learning environment where physical safety is a no-brainer.” This cannot possibly be assured this coming school year with any physical presence in the school building. Though the language of that priority once centered around booster seats and sunscreen, the language of school safety has grotesquely mutated into how we can carry out active-shooter drills during a pandemic. Safety will always remain priority number one, and hence, this year will look very different from other recent years while Quinn has attended public school.

Still, I wanted to write this 2020 version from a place of naming what we want to move towards, vs. what we want to move away from. This is how I approached it in 2012 when I was feeling a visceral aversion to Quinn attending public school while he still needed quite a lot of social emotional support a good portion of the time. At that time, I tried to hone in on articulating the goals I have for his learning environment rather than just describing the outcomes I wanted to avoid; instead of focusing on how likely a differently-wired kindergartener is to be misunderstood in public school, I focused on working towards an organic learning environment where choice is central, the whole child is nourished. In 2020 I want to focus less on COVID-19 risk and more on crafting the best learning options for him given the circumstances. Still striving for an organic learning environment where choice is central, the whole person is nourished. The long-term goal is still and always a thriving lifelong learner.

Many things have changed in eight years, but so much has stayed the same. Most of what changed in this list is an organization of the original 12 separate items into 3 categories they seemed to gather into naturally: safety, connection, and self-direction. A disclaimer I would attach to this and all posts of mine: this is a description of my own values and is intended only as a means of articulating them for myself; if they resonate for you, that is a pleasant outcome we can enjoy, and if they do not, feel free not to let them slow you down as you scroll on by.

~Educational Priorities~

As Quinn’s mama my priorities for his educational experience are to surround him with nurturing environments and people and to protect and feed his love of learning. While I do not distinguish between learning and the rest of life, as I believe the two are inextricably linked, I will do my best to list my priorities for how I believe Quinn can best be supported so that he may thrive as a lifelong learner. I believe this will be achieved by prioritizing:

1. Safety

A learning environment where physical safety is a no-brainer. As drastically different as the content of this paragraph may be in 2020 than it was in 2012, the first sentence is the same first sentence. Physical needs must be met before learning needs can be fully realized. At Our Living School, we repeated a mantra concerning safety, “Our bodies are safe, our thoughts are safe, our feelings are safe, our work is safe,” and this is still a useful list.

Physical safety: Quinn’s physical safety is secured in his learning environment to enable him to focus on learning. The physical safety of educators must also be paramount. The presence of my learner in a school is possible only when teacher health and safety, and the health and safety of the families of those teachers, and the health and safety of other students and their families, can be ensured.

Mental safety: Quinn is in an environment where he can express his thoughts freely and knows his learning needs will be respected and supported.

Emotional safety: Quinn is able to feel, express, and care for his feelings.

Work safety: Whether it is what he was building out of blocks at five, or a research project he is getting ready to present at thirteen, the integrity of Quinn’s work will be honored.

2.Connection

I believe that a positive learning environment for Quinn will flourish when it grows from strong roots of connection and belonging. Several of the 2012 priorities focused on specific connections; between student and teacher, parent and teacher, student and peers, student and others of all ages. In 2020 I can see that these one-to-one connections are impossible to extricate from the web of community surrounding a learner, and while these individual bonds may stand out from the web when highlighting learning priorities, they all perform their roles in the best ways when the whole web is strong and stable. Strong connections will help Quinn develop empathy and compassion, and a realistic understanding of others’ realities. They will also help him self-reflect through relationship with others, and to continue to build healthy relationship skills.

Student-teacher connection: A bond between student and teacher ensures priority #1 through open communication and positive regard of one another. From connection flows the sense of nurturing, unconditional positive regard, and feeling of equal dignity that all humans deserve and require in order to do their best learning. I believe safety and equity for all other students is necessary for Quinn to experience the benefits of a connection to any teacher. If he can see that his peers of all identities and abilities are all being treated with that positive regard, then he will be able to trust that lighthouse when its beam is directed towards him.

Student-teacher-parent connection: Open channels of communication among those involved in Quinn’s learning endeavors allow for his strengths and areas needing extra support to be known so that all involved are attuned to his unique learning style. Parental involvement in learning is ongoing and meaningful.

Student-peer connection: The stronger the connections between Quinn and his learning community, the greater sense of belonging he will experience. Quinn feels ownership of his school as a place that is Home to him, with a positive sense of caring for his fellow students, who in turn care for him as part of their community. Values are instilled by the teachers towards this end, and extend outward to include his greater community, in which his school is an active participant. These values of community care are best realized by distance learning in 2020, protecting all learners and teachers, and finding creative ways to still foster belonging. Peer connections may take the form of online paleontology discussions and online D&D gaming sessions this year.

Connection to others of all ages: Quinn is connected with older teens and young adults who have skills he has yet to acquire to look up to, admire, and imitate, and kids who are younger, to keep things infused with imagination and wonder. He has involvement with people of all ages from the surrounding community, because the real world is a place where people of all ages interact, to everyone’s great good fortune. In 2020 we’ll have less in person interaction to be sure, but this will be good to keep in mind as a guiding principle, that while peer interactions are very important to developing teens, interactions with others of all ages matter as well, even if they have to be emails and video calls for a time. Grammy and Grampy, Mario and Luigi, I’m looking at you!

3. Self-Direction (trust)

The rest of the 2012 priorities group themselves comfortably under this heading. In 2012 I wrote about a whole-child approach, an emergent curriculum, a Yes environment with emphasis on play, developing an internal moral compass, and nurturing an intrinsic motivation to learn. In conversation with my teen about what works and does not work about schooling for him, we keep circling back to the need for choice. I want to strive towards a learning situation that prioritizes self-direction for the learner. (The heading contains parenthetical trust, because this path requires a large amount of it on the part of a parent supporting the self-directed learning journey of their youth.)

Whole-child or whole-teen approach: In my worldview, children come into the world as fully intact beings, destined to grow into their innate competence, as well as prosocial beings whose default desire is to cooperate, belong, and get along. Other worldviews exist in which children are born deficient or damaged, needing to be filled with knowledge and morals through a hierarchical top-down approach. My worldview encourages deep trust in the child’s inevitable trajectory towards competence, while the opposing one often requires proof through standardized testing or other means that they have reached competence.

I like a phrase coined by Marji Zintz that says, “attribute to children the best possible motive consistent with the facts.” Giving kids the benefit of the doubt in their intentions and abilities empowers them to grow into their competence.

Whole-child or whole-teen approaches to learning must acknowledge the following: Academics, while held at high priority, do not eclipse other important lessons. Some of the lessons/skills I value most, in no particular order, are:

social/emotional skills
healthy bodies
mindfulness practices
self-confidence
compassion
writing
relationship skills
empathy
communication
movement
sustainability
fine art
creative writing
world culture
cooking
sports
drama
reading
conflict resolution
scientific reasoning
practical life skills (everything from gardening to making things to voting)
being a citizen in a democracy
critical thinking
math
social justice
music
community-mindedness

Many of Quinn’s skills will be honed at home, e.g. woodworking with dada or sewing with mama, and at private (dance/music/art/sports/karate) lessons or through outside-of-school classes, so I apply this concept to Life in General as well as educational goals.)

binary hand-counting in the wilderness

Self-directed learning: I referred to this as emergent curriculum in 2012, while in 2020 the term self-direction feels more resonant for the same set of ideals around choice, maybe because it emphasizes his agency in bringing about what emerges. Quinn is able to learn what he is drawn to, and the purpose of teacher guidance is to help him create meaning for himself about what he learns. He is able to approach each component of academics as he is ready for it, in a way that he can absorb it efficiently because it’s meaningful to him. He has the freedom to opt in or out of lessons he feels compelled or uncompelled by, and there is plenty of enriching material for him to engage with and be challenged. Further, the lessons offered are set at a level that is most likely to compel him, given that they are based on his/the student body’s emerging interests/intrigues/questions/thoughts/votes. He sets his own balance of autonomous learning time to cooperative group learning. Quinn’s preparations for his life/career goals (college, trades, conservatory, world travel or whatever they may be) are in his own hands and he is confident in his ability to craft his own educational curriculum, one that will land him squarely where he desires to be, wearing a set of wings to take him far beyond.

Consent: As mama of a young man, I see it as one of my most important roles in his learning to make sure he is aware and competent around the concept of consent. By honoring Quinn’s integrity, boundaries, and self-direction in his learning, I am modeling consent. If Quinn’s stance on a given subject or learning objective is no, it means no. Often choice is seen as something a teacher “allows” a learner, but that still creates a top-down dynamic which, instead of preserving choices, in fact limits them; if one of the available options is not “no”, the choice is not freely chosen. There is an illusion of choice that is created when someone says, “I will let you choose” but then the power rests with the person “letting,” not with the person doing the choosing. Forcing someone to learn, to press the “submit” button, is one way that consent is overridden in young people routinely, and I strongly suspect it contributes to a culture where consent is undervalued. Where students experience teaching as something to be done to them, they learn not to honor their own signals, but instead become resigned to others’ demands on them. Instead, by being clear on his boundaries, Quinn is learning where he ends and other people begin, and not just knowing about it in theory, but practicing and embodying consent.

Yes Environment: Yes means yes! A Yes Environment means that opportunities, space and materials are available to him whenever he takes initiative to express and explore. When he reveals an interest, the tools and materials he needs to follow that line of inquiry appear in a timely manner so he can continue and take it as far as he wants, until he is satiated. If he is engrossed in dinosaurs today (/this week/this decade), books and activities (games, videos, camps, virtual museum tours, ecology simulations…) show up in following days based on that theme and are strewn in his path for him to gobble up. His teacher’s role is to observe what is sparking his interest and tend the flame, requiring an individualized approach and attentive observation. This is best achieved in small class sizes where curriculum can flex and adapt. Instead of “no” stance on deviations, a “how can we…?” approach is the default. A Yes environment also provides structured and unstructured time and space to play. Play is of extreme importance to learning, and not separate from learning. Play is learning. Beyond K-12, Quinn is encouraged and supported in his life goals and help is always available to guide him in the right direction to meet them.

Internal Moral Compass: Quinn gets to grapple with right and wrong based on his own inner knowing, as he practices and calibrates his internal compass. He receives lots of guidance, information, and suggestions to help him navigate territory that is new for him, but never force, coercion or bribery, rewards or punishments. In areas including but not limited to consent, it is increasingly important for him to make morally right choices when nobody is around to police him or direct him in the right decision. He will do that if he has been exercising this muscle all along and his moral compass is well-calibrated and strong.

Intrinsic Motivation to Learn: His desire to learn comes from within, and that is honored in a way that maintains its integrity within rather than pulling it outside of him and replacing it with an external stimulus. Rewards and punishments are avoided in order to protect this intrinsic motivation to learn. Self-reflection around daily experiences, triumphs and disappointments will hold more meaning than grades, test scores, diagnoses, labels.

It is my belief that by prioritizing these values in Quinn’s education, Quinn will be set up to lead a fulfilling life. He will know himself well, always having been aligned with his own internal motivators, conscience, and self-knowledge. He will have confidence that he can achieve whatever he sets out to do, and will have obtained skills and knowledge that are required for that journey. He will know what it is like to be surrounded by supportive, encouraging people, and will recognize them in society. He will be attracted to workplaces with inclusive atmospheres and friendships featuring positive regard and nurturing. He will be unwilling to tolerate injustice because of his intimate experience of participating in a compassionate, justice-promoting community. He will know how to be respectful as well as to live in a way that inspires respect. He will know how to be flexible, how to think critically and creatively, and how to navigate real world situations because the real world is the place he will always have dwelled. He will be fully competent in making choices, as self-direction has been a key component of his entire educational experience- he will know that life is made up of choices, and he will be empowered to make them. These approaches to Quinn’s education will produce a strong, capable, caring, well-rounded, enthusiastic, empowered, joyful human being.

~thankful thursday~ don’t overthink it, bro

Posted on November 17, 2016 by marybethrew

11-4-16 day 4

i’m thankful that i am having such a hard time deciding what to write about for my gratitude post. i guess what i’m thankful for today is abundance. i just can’t decide between the yummy food we ate for dinner, the sleeping kitties purring near the crackling fire, the lanky boy soaking in the bathtub who is home at last after the long week away at his dad’s, the friday field trip with his class out in the beautiful sunny autumn weather that i got to join in on, or the million other things i take for granted on a daily basis. the basic needs are covered, we are surrounded in abundance, a solid shelter, organic food, clean warm clothing, companionship, all of our needs met. and that doesn’t even begin to mention all of the individual precious people in my life for whom i am so thankful. i am more concerned about running out of days (hahaha unless i re-write the rules!) than i am about running out of things i’m grateful for! i really am truly blessed.

11-5-16 day 5

so there’s this kid i’m pretty thankful for. i saved posting about him for the weekend since i knew i’d probably set a new verbosity record when i write about him. maybe take a potty break and grab a refill on your beverage and come back, if you want.

ok, ready?

my son cracks me up. he dropped the phrase “what the crap” in casual conversation with me the other day. sigh, public school. also, he keeps calling me “bro.” i was like, “dude, i’m not your bro, i’m your mama.” he does, however, persist in maintaining a solid vocabulary. he got over dropping f-bombs quickly at age two, after a quick trial period, when he realized how many other wonderful words there were for adding emphasis. given the choice between the right word and the almost right word, he chooses the right word every time. he told me recently he learned a way to get pain out of his body. you just firmly hold and kind of shake the body part (like say, your wrist), and, “then it sears, but then it goes away.” because, you know, searing pain is a turn of phrase all the nine year olds use a lot.

i see evidence that he has been reading things. he will say words, and i can tell what words they are, even though he has made up his own unique pronunciation. he was telling me about wanting to hit a certain poke-stop “at the epi-SCOPE-al church.” reading calvin and hobbes, he came across some mar-TEE-ans (you know, people from mars).

he’s also familiar with sleet, though he has never experienced it. we were talking about how zeus controls the weather, with a little help from poseiden, when rain is involved.

“or any precipitation,” i said.

“yeah, like snow, or hail, or… whatever sleet is…”

i like listening to him quote passages from the heroes of olympus, and make inferences about greek mythology, while he munches on blue chocolate chip cookies. we like to make funny literary references with each other, such as when i yell like buford the wonder table, “put some clothes on!” when it’s time for him to get dressed in the morning.

as parents we like to think we are so aware of what is going on… now, i am pretty attentive, but he schools me on that on a regular basis. it took me until this year to discover his synesthesia. he sees each letter in its own specific color! it’s been happening for him all along, and i never knew that, for him, m is purple, q is green, and the number 9 is red. layer upon layer of realization unfold that “this is a whole separate person” with a kid. it’s hard, because this person was floating in your belly at one point. you held them in your arms, and now they’re so big they overflow elbows and ribs and kneecaps and giant feet all out the sides of the chair when they sit on your lap, cutting off circulation to your thighs. they are becoming activists on issues you didn’t even know they were aware of, and they are developing friendships and embracing and accepting others’ differences while you’re not even in earshot anymore. they are calibrating their inner compass and you just get to watch as they start doing things like helping their grammy walk down some stairs, without being asked. you get to watch them decide that “being a friend” is something they feel they are good at, on the survey at school.

you know how some birthdays are no biggie, and others can feel deeply meaningful? i had one of those when he turned nine this year, as it hit me on a gut level that my baby is halfway to 18. i really felt that one, and while i don’t want to grasp and cling, i do want to be sure i’m savoring this fleeting time i have left with him tucked under my wing.

so while i can, i’m trying to say yes to as many games of dungeons and dragons and pokemon as i possibly can, while still attending to my household duties. i know he won’t ask me as often in a few short years. i hide dragon eggs and dragon skeleton dig sites on pieces of graph paper and we roll 20-sided dice and slay orcs and goblins together with our long swords. i keep putting food and stacks of books in front of this drumming, karate chopping, fly tying, game creating, lego building, theater camping paleontologist, and shaking my head in awe of the wonderful human being blooming before my eyes on a daily basis.

11-6-16 day 6

my gratitude post for today wrote itself at bedtime last night, when i found rich sobbing:

“not even a mention! i was a one-hit wonder!”

today i am thankful for laughter! long belly laughs that warm me up on chilly nights. running jokes about skinny legs that catch each other off guard. running narration of the kitties’ inner thoughts, keeping the daily routine light and fun. all the irreverence that is possible because of a strong, secure foundation.

a few minutes after he popped the question, and i said yes, (i never said no, even though he had been telling a story for months about how he had asked me numerous times but i had kept saying no…) we were feeding each other peanut butter brownies and having coffee, and when he claimed he had been too jittery and nervous to get coffee earlier, i didn’t skip a beat. “and were you also full of shit?” in the division of labor of our relationship, one of us does the overthinking. i’ll give you a hint: it’s not him!

last year when we lived at the vacation house, we’d repark each other’s vehicles as needed, based on who would need to leave first in the morning. whereas he could get our bumpers so close i couldn’t walk in between, i would back his truck up so close i just knew one more inch would mean a collision, only to get out and see i was still ten feet away. he’d thank me the next day for saving him some of his drive by parking him part of the way to work.

it’s been almost five years since i asked him out in a laundromat. we still like to pick each other up, though, whenever we get the chance.

“i must be from alderaan, because you blew up my world.”

i love you, you mischievous, hilariously funny man. and your skinny legs, too.

11-7-16 day 7

today i’m thankful for my best woman.

she’s the silly reason in a goldfish laugh. which is to say, there’s no logical reason why she ever became my friend in the first place, and yet, 20 years later (more than half of our lives!) she still is.

it’s not because of the existence of a blackmail video tape of us singing aerosmith’s pink into our hairbrushes. neither of us would threaten the other with releasing such an atrocity, because we’re in it together.

it’s not because we are anything alike. we’ve influenced each other’s music preferences (rich appreciated that i was excited to go see tool with him) and clothing colors (actually she still mostly wears black… i wore some black when i used to be able to borrow it out of her closet…) and our height difference is holding steady at a lot of inches. she has brooklyn roots, and we still joke about how my grandma answered the milk house phone when she called me for the first time, after receiving my “howdy, roommate” introduction letter. hello milk house? this is brooklyn. yes, we were assigned to one another freshman year, and still, against all odds, remained friends. you don’t know what a milk house is, you say? neither did she, but we fixed that.

it’s not because we actually get to spend any time together. we’ve spent much of our friendship 2972.11 miles (give or take a few hundred) apart. the last time we hung out, i was having a baby shower. that’ll be ten years ago. yup, half our long friendship ago. and for this second half, i’ve been a mama, so i neglect her like crazy and completely take for granted that she still wants to hear from me when i do pick up the phone on her 17th attempt to call me.

it’s something else. i’m still trying to put my finger on it. so i keep emailing her long babbles and she keeps wanting to read them, and she writes them to me and i marvel at her perspective on everything. my mom gave me some wisdom a while back, not to try to meet all my emotional needs in one individual, and i should value my friends. i believe rich is grateful that i dump the entire dissertation of details on lau each time i’ve got something to process/overthink, and wait to deliver the synopsis to him after i’ve gotten it pared down by 90% and mostly resolved. you guys think i’m being verbose on this blog, but she and i are looking into a private email server to hold all of our correspondence (jk! little election humor on election eve!) she’s a life saver, she keeps me honest with myself, she keeps my journal pages safe and gets all my inside jokes. she’ll hide under a rock because i am drawing attention to her, but i’m doing it anyway, because i’m a lucky duck. she’s laufashau galore!

love you as big as the sky, lauren marie!

11-8-16 day 8

today i was noticing so many little things that i feel thankful for, everything from convenient little coffee filters, to drive up ballot drop boxes, to papa murphy helping me out with dinner. the gratitude exercise is working for me in spades, when it comes to helping my mood improve, because it is seriously habit forming to focus on thankfulness! when that is the energy i am putting out, more to be thankful for keeps coming at me. but this evening as i sit down to write this, i am feeling that instead of a list of the wonderful tiny things, i want to focus on the big things in life, the ones that are bigger, even, than election drama.

quinn has a free state parks pass because he’s a fourth grader, (yep i’m thankful for that, too), and so we parked for free at the lighthouse, a beautiful spot we rarely visit, due to the parking fee. we had two hours in between school and karate, with a sunny day on our hands. we spent a full hour of it just marveling at the size of the waves crashing into the rocks right below us, trying to stay upright in the strong, steady wind.

this place… from sea to shining sea, it feels messed up to me, and i am feeling and hearing that from so many. but at the same time, this land is your land, and this land is my land, and feeling like it’s our responsibility to do something about this mess, feels so daunting, too.

but then i remember the whole country is just a small place within in a much bigger place, and if we zoom out and out and out, it quickly disappears and loses all of its significance.

today i am thankful that i am so insignificant. all of this will pass away, but the waves will still continue to crash, one after another, onto these rocks. the impermanence of it all, the smallness of myself, can be comforting on a day like this.

11-9-16 day 9

i am thankful for the gift of words.

i streamed a free conference this past weekend called education: next generation. i got to listen to some progressive thinkers on topics like self-directed learning and parenting with empathy and the neuroscience of connection. dan siegel, scott noelle, peter gray, many others. i’m familiar with some of these thinkers, so it was a refresher course in some ways, but in so many ways, my mind was blown.

we become who we are in the storytelling we do. several of the speakers i listened to this week reminded me of truths i’ve learned before; my thoughts are not who i am; my thoughts are not even necessarily to be believed; integrating my storyline into an unbroken line is the best way to ensure my own well-being; focusing my energy on gratitude for this abundance begets more abundance in my life; i have the power to choose a different brain patterning; our storytelling is powerful, and can change the course of our life, depending on the words we choose.

in the context of parenting, marji zintz reminded me of one of my favorite parenting quotes, to “attribute to children the best possible motive consistent with the facts.” i also remember back to when i was articulating for myself that i wanted to step outside of a paradigm that focused on getting “it” to “work” and let go of controlling the short term issues, and instead set a goal of connection/attachment, with my sights set on longer term goals. i think this was a timely refresher for me, because these concepts aren’t restricted to kids. i can think of adults i could extend the benefit of the doubt to; and in the actual communication with people i disagree with, i can see how focusing on connecting and finding common ground is going to get us much farther than other more prevalent conversation formats.

at the end of the day, i can assign a meaning to the votes my acquaintances cast, and i can certainly assume that they meant their position as a personal affront to me. just like the old slogan about resentment, it would be like taking poison and hoping they die from it. most likely, my fellow americans were not really thinking all that much about me personally when they voted, though, and even if they were, my assumptions about what they think or how they feel are going to get us nowhere. reaching out and asking where they were coming from? not taking other people’s stuff personally? these have potential.

some of my favorite words from the conference:

consent; scott noelle connected some dots for me in a way that my mind has been hovering just outside of for a while now. one huge reason why i value self-directed learning, in its truest sense, when a student/child can actually opt out of a lesson they don’t wish to participate in, is that we are so messed up around the concept of consent, and it has so much to do with our kids lacking choice. and here’s what i mean by choice; it’s not just having three learning options, if that still rules out “no” as a valid choice. we are forgetting that allowing for “no” makes “yes” so much more profound.

connectome; dan siegel said this word, at least i think this is the word i heard him say, and if not, i like it anyway. he says that integration is the “best predictor of every facet of well-being” and calls the linkages in the brain that, having made sense of your life, are connected in an integrated way, your “connectome.” this is a pleasingly geeky word for someone who works on things like genomes and transcriptomes.

some more words i liked, from charles eisenstein: “how can i be of service to that which wants to happen.” a small snippet of his talk concerning what he sees as our transition, on a cultural scale, from the story of separation (a mythology that divides self from other) to the new story, the story of interbeing. i checked his book out of the library so i can absorb some more of his wonderful words, which i obviously have done a horrible job of paraphrasing.

this evening, the words of garrison keillor made me nod and chuckle. the way words connect us, something that you say can resonate with me, and grow that…. linkage, maybe we can call it the human family connectome, the web to which anything we do affects us all.

my favorite words from today were read during yoga class, and as i tried to unfurrow my brow, i contemplated a passage from the book of awakening about what salmon have to teach us about facing things. as they swim up a waterfall (seems impossible, but they do it), salmon know to turn towards the impact; by aiming their soft underbelly into the oncoming force, they borrow the energy of the river to propel them upward.

being able to show up for this period in time, be vulnerable, show our underbelly even though the impact is going to be direct and hard; this seems to me to be the way we can ascend from here.

11-10-16 day 10

10, 10, 10, 10 is for everything, everything, everything, everything!

i’m thankful for everything. especially music, today.

dang it, i got that far with writing my post, plus a few other notes jotted in an outline, and then found out about l. cohen’s passing. and the way i found out was my bff texting me that she had chosen music as her gratitude for the day, only to find out about his death. you remember that whole connectome thing i was talking about? there are a higher number of linkages going between that woman and me among the tangled threads of consciousness than expected by chance. too many synchronicities to count.

i had the above mentioned violent femmes song in my head the day rich and i got engaged because it was the 10th of july. lately he has been waking us up with a wonderful selection of songs, but of course i feel that way, i picked them out and burned them onto those cds for him. the mix tape is still one of my favorite ways of expressing love, even though i no longer do it in tape format. i will have to check whether we have any l. cohen songs on our stack of cds from the various anniversaries and trips to country fair for which i made him mixes, because if not, we’ll need to add a few. “dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on.”

one of my favorite wedding traditions that i’ve done for several different friends and family members, is to collect songs from the family and friends of the people getting married. love songs, “our” songs, if you will. my poppy used to sing “you do something to me” to my nana. my mom and dad had charlie rich’s “a very special love song” played at their wedding by their live band. i got serenaded just this morning when a certain someone turned up the volume for robert plant singing “sea of love.” it’s super fun to be nosy with people i don’t even necessarily know that well (asking after the other side of the family’s grandparents’ songs?) and it turns into a time capsule full of wonderful musical tidbits that the newlyweds now know about their support network.

lauren and i used to have a wake-up song system, when we were roommates. she’d program her stereo to whatever time i needed to wake up (my classes always started earlier) and then when the cranberries or the smashing pumpkins would come on in the morning, she would wake up to the clicking on of the stereo, i would sleep through the song, and she would say my name loudly so i’d actually get out of bed.

“there’s no need to argue anymore….”

and of course, music was on my mind already this morning because of the little folksinger i posted yesterday, belting out woody guthrie. sometimes you need a little folksinger to get you through your day.

part of me wants to go lay down and sob into my pillow. “dance me through the panic til i’m gathered safely in.”

but how about this instead… today if you leave a comment, pick a love song and share it! we desperately need to have more love in this world.

quinn’s twenty-seventh month ~ maybe yater, mama

Posted on May 23, 2009 by marybethrew

4-27-09

we had new friends over saturday (renee from another lab at work, and her daughter 3.5 year old ellie, who is a cute button!). we played in the yard, the kids “painted” the dog house with water, from the little cups they had been making dandelion soup in… so cute. they ran around holding hands. we walked to the playground and they held hands going down the slide. there were 2 moments of sharing… but it was not quinn, it was actually ellie who had the issue with taking turns this time, and no hitting just she didn’t know how to handle it and screamed instead. it scared quinn but he was ok and i was able to talk to him about it so he felt better. he has been talking all about ellie since, and doing xyz “with ellie” and having “friends” come and play and stuff…

dada and quinn have been working on painting the play table… it is looking really awesome. saturday night i felt like i hit a wall. quinn has been staying up late late late. saturday. it was 9:30ish and i was ready for bed when he finally was willing… last night he was up till 11. he just could not settle down, and ended up taking a bath from 10 to 11 so i could breathe and have time to myself. actually i would have let him out of the bath way sooner but he was having a great time and kept telling me “maybe yater!”

sunday morning we went to the aquarium, and then came home for nap time. dada worked on the table while i sewed, cuz i am feeling the deadline of the first farmers market approaching rapidly!!!!! and then after nap we went to a new beach, that renee told me about. it was VERY cool and remote and no one was there and it was a big wide sandy beach with lots of driftwood and so that was fun. dada took off his shoes at one point and quinn thought it was the coolest thing ever and walked right into the water (crossing the stream) after dada with his shoes still on. then he asked to have his shoes off. then he wanted his hat off too… SO cute. little hippie wanted his feet free AND his hair blowing in the breeze. so the next stream, he got to cross in bare feet and then of course they had to go back and forth across it because he was so thrilled.

i have to admit i was happy he stayed in the tub that long because it meant i could scurry around back and forth, cleaning up the kitchen and then sticking my head in to have him tell me “maybe yater” again. oh i forgot one of the best parts of last night. quinn earlier in the day, pre-beach, told us he wanted to “have a nice happy day”. i agreed ok yeah let’s go have a nice hapyp day at the beach! and he was like yeah! so then later that night he was like i want a muffin and put it on the play table and have a nice happy day! and i’m like OHHHHH. he wanted a BIRTHDAY day. so we had muffins, luckily, so i put a candle on one, brought it to the table, and sang “happy day to you” to quinn…. he LOVED it. of course i had to “do it again!” a bunch of times. and i asked if he wanted to blow out the candle: “maybe yater mama.” sigh.

5-2-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook) “my hands come out of the blanket and go on the handles and the milk goes in my mouth.”

middle of the night playdough – very creative pretending. made a sea lion that swam over to kiss the Quinn pirate…

“yots of kinds of stuff.”

5-3-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

“i want to weally (weewee?) see some buoys!”

5-4-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

“i feel pantsome, mama!”

“i want to take a break!”

5-4-09
sunday, we took quinn to the carnival (just a small tiny one that was here because of loyalty day parade on saturday) and he went on the carousel… which was interesting. he smiled and then mostly had a look of “i don’t know if i like this” for the rest of the ride… he is so cute though, he totally knew it was ok, as in, mama is here, but he just seemed like he was kind of unsure how it felt to go up and down and round and round at the same time. then we went in the funhouse and he loved the funny mirrors. he stood in front of each one and announced: “i’m tall!” or “i’m little!” and stood there smiling at his reflection.

then we went to the beach after nap time, because it was beautiful weather. and then the weather shifted while we were there but we got a nice rumpus in before the wind really got howling. today it is supposed to gust to 68 mph, later on. fun!

5-5-09

on the radical mamas forum recently there has been really good discussion about consensual living, (CL) which basically when you break it down means, everyone is their own person, children are people too, and everyone gets to decide things for themselves consenting) and everyone is happy.

(there are lots of arguments against this point of view but most of them seem misinformed to me because CL doesn’t mean kids get whatever they want. because the PARENTS have to be happy and consent, too. but it does mean kids get given a lot more respect, which sits really well with me and with my whole parenting approach thus far, and is kind of the extension of attachment parenting (AP) where you breastfeed and sling and co-sleep and build trust (pick up baby when he cries etc) and to me, a lot of parents do AP until they turn 2, then throw all that great trust-building out the window and start doing mainstream discipline. so that wasn’t what i wanted to do… so that is why all the discussion lately since a lot of us have kids just turning 2 etc.)

so the basic gist is that i don’t want to look at life as a series of things i “let” quinn do, or “don’t let” him do. i want him to get to experience everything, to his fill, and decide for himself what his limits are, not be told what they HAVE to be. (“children need limits” is one of my least favorite parenting cliches!!!) children HAVE limits, and they don’t have any sense of where they are if you don’t let them find some of that out for themselves. then there have been spinoff conversations for example what about things like tv and sugar, do we let them go at it and have their fill, or do we regulate, and other conversations about hygiene and teeth brushing and hair brushing and bathing, do we let them get smelly or do we enforce bathtime, that kind of thing… it goes on and on, but basically i feel i am finding that i really value quinn being his own person, knowing who he is and knowing his mind (what he wants) SO much more than i value being able to tell him what to do! so i am really happy to be discussing all this with the mamas.

i’ve been really aware of it all lately, like saturday morning i asked quinn what he wanted for breakfast. usually i ask it “do you want a bagel or cereal (which means oatmeal and blueberries)?” and he tells me his choice. or sometimes he doesn’t want to eat yet, or sometimes he picks somethng that wasn’t one of the options. but i usually don’t just ask open-ended like that, and what did he answer? “i want some quinoa and some bread!” he floors me. and i kid you not, it was a split second, he KNEW what he wanted and almost didn’t even have to think about it. with the self-regulation (like tv and candy) issue, i see him having so much restraint. he was at the shop with dada yesterday and he does “eat yoburp and see some winnie the pooh” routine whenever he goes there. and he always is done when he’s done eating the yoburp. never watches more than 20 min of tv at a time. dada never told him no you can’t watch tv it’s bad… but we also didn’t overexpose him while he was little. same with sugar, although have i told you about the lollipops dada got him at the co-op? fruit juice lollipops (i want a yowipop!) but still, i was not really keen on the idea. but he wanted one, dada got him one, he loved it, he asks for them occasionally, and they go and take a walk to the co-op and get one. and he eats maybe half of it. he seems to know his own limits. and he seems to also know what’s good- like i was making burritos on friday night and he asked to sit in his high chair while i was working on that, and i gave him cheese and stuff, and then i finished making some guacamole so i handed him a pretzel stick dipped in guacamole, and i usually don’t make guacamole (usually just chop the avos but they were perfect texture for guacamole) and so he was very interested, and tasted it and i said do you like it? and he said “a yummy TREAT for me, mama!” guacamole yowipop?

someone used the example of what would you do if your kid said he was going to jump in the deep end of the pool, having never learned to swim. would you just “let” them go at it, or would you offer info about safety and maybe give them some swimming lessons first? and again, i saw it as a misinformed position- she was challenging the “hands-off” approach of CL, and i see it as anything BUT hands-off. of COURSE i would offer him info if he asked to jump in the deep end. but i also would not just step in and drag him off telling him it’s dangerous, now be good. i would tell him everything i know about it, and my guess is, he trusts me enough not to jump in. BUT if he STILL wanted to, i would like to think i would try to find a way to figure out how we COULD do it- like i jump in with him, or i get in the water and let him jump in where i can be right there to help him stay afloat, etc. but the overall point is, CL kids are probably LESS LIKELY to WANT to try things that are beyond their limits (like jump in deep water) because they KNOW their own limits better and have a better sense of that stuff, BECAUSE they’ve been allowed to try stuff (within reason).

it seems like many parents are “knee-jerk” about using the word no. what a lot of people fall back on is they parent “on instinct” which i think is baloney. no one parents on instinct, they are far too full of conditioned knee jerk reactions to be able to know what their INSTINCTS really are anymore… if we parented by instinct we would be acting a lot more like chimpanzees, for starters.

things like grabbing…. if he tried to reach across me, in that case i may have also moved the thing farther away and continued talking about it… but i even want to avoid doing that much, if we can just have a civil discussion about it and that works, then i leave it where it is… he is doing really well with things when i acknowledge his feelings (it’s disappointing not to get to play with x) and then talk with him about ways we can help ourselves “feel better” which is such a catch phrase with him now. i love hearing him say it all on his own… baby bear will fall down and he’ll give baby bear a hug and say “hug, feels better!” and stuff like that. he is so cool.

we decided we should call ourselves the yes moms. whenever we think we need to say no, we first ask “why not” and then we ask “how can….” thinking it through to the point of, let me see if it IS really a no situation, or am i just being knee-jerk about it? and if so, how CAN we make this happen safely. i think a lot of people use “instinct” it to justify abusive behavior- i.e. swatting, spanking, yelling, etc., well i just acted on instinct. oh you mean impulse? not the same thing….

5-7-09

i’m brain dead. i’m so at the end of my sanity…. quinn has not gone to bed before 10 yet this week. one night it was 10:30 and other nights 10. last night i finally stayed up past him, because i knew i would go insane if i just went to bed with him for yet another night. oy vay. he totally wants mama. and that is awesome, so i’m trying not to feel sorry for myself for no alone time… i just have SOOO much on my plate right now that it is hard not to really really really want him to go to bed at say 9 instead of 10… so i can get some stuff done! yikes.

i have not nearly as much stuff made as i want to for the first farmer’s market. i have 2 finished slings, a handful of each size diaper, 3 hoodie towels, a little of this a little of that…. know what i mean? but it IS the first one, not expecting masses of people to be there, and i honestly feel less stressed now about the stuff (i can keep adding to it all the time- it’s only once a week!) and more stressing about things like… oh a business
name lol. i need to print business cards, not to mention price my “merchandise” and print tags and prices and such… so yeah that part is currently my dilemma.

5-7-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

Quinn’s first time crabbing!

“Go to my dada shop. Go to my dada house.”

5-11-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

we talk about him growing “big and strong and tall.”

“i’m a little person.”

5-13-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

another glorious garbage day. Fort under the play table, watched the “pumpchine” grade the driveway, and the garbage trucks dump the garbage cans.

“I thought maybe we could…” is a way he starts some sentences.

When I told him, “it’s not my first choice,” about something I wanted him not to do, he replied, “it’s my first choice.”

5-16-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

first week of solo farmer’s market with Quinn – fabulous! He wore baby bear on his back, played with 6 or 8 different kids, and had a great time!

5-17-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

“see the geese flying?”

“i’m just going pee pee in my diaper.”

“my thumbs can make a triangle!”

5-18-09

quinn’s dump truck is now his garbage truck. you should hear him talking about “when i get older and big, i’ll drive my garbage truck…” it is hilarious! he uses my kitchen tongs to pick up the garbage cans (empty thread spools) to dump them into the truck.

downward dog!

farmer’s market!

chillin at the FM, on his sleeping bag. eating a granola bar, i think.

with baby bear in his sling

reading the lorax to himself

carrying a driftlog off the beach (firewood!) he was so cute, we each grabbed a piece of wood, and both dada and i had it on our shoulder, so quinn wanted to do it too.

snowman pants are the proper hiking attire for drift creek wilderness area. quinn woke up in the morning and i asked him what pants he wanted and he told me “white!” and that is the only pair of white pants so…. snowmen.

this was a serious hike. he took two naps on my back. i will be SORE tomorrow. cute close up pix by the creek. and the last pic is of the “snowmen” (quinn’s name for them) we built out of river rocks.

“i LOVE the water!” Quinn told me.

5-18-09 (added 8-19-20 from found notebook)

“i LOVE kitty inside.”

“do you mean you love when she’s in the house, or that you love her inside your heart?”

“yeah. and she’s in my heart, having milk in there.”

muffins 2 am

5-20-09

i went home yesterday and quinn wanted milk so we went in the bed like we always do. and i was telling him how i love him very much and he replied “no.” and i said yes i do, i love you SOOOO much! and he said “no- you go work on salmon.” holy heartwrenching moment. i handled it great i think, i mean i could have just cried but i told him over and over how much i love him and how i love him even when i have to go work on salmon, and i love him when he’s sleeping and etc and he seemed to feel a lot better about it but wow. he is amazing though- he will tell me his feelings now, without prompting. sometimes i do need to prompt, but he is able to just outright tell me “i felt a yittle scared.” or whatever. he is also doing some amazing things with markers these days. i will send a pic cuz i’m just floored by it, but he is drawing spirals. not kidding. he starts in the center and goes around and around, it’s just incredible.

i am really interested from an art therapy perspective what they could mean, but also spirals are a universal symbol, i have my spiral necklace, and included spirals in my birth altar (moon snails, etc.) the boy is INTENSE right now. we went to the beach last night and he went in the water, there is a big creek running through the beach down to the ocean at the place we went, and he wanted to walk in the water so i took off his mocs and he went in in socks, holding my hand and splashing along the edge. he is so great.

5-23-09 ~ 27 months! (added 8-18-2020 from the found notebook)

Farmer’s market with mama – bubbles! “Yup.” Newts dancing, rolling on pinecones, swimming, climbing up to say hello. Newt scooch.

“All my life I’ve been searching… for blue ones.” (Dr. Seuss meets cat food cans.)

Hugging our legs “to feel you happy.”