I gotta get out of bed and get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose
~Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls)
a splash of color on monday morning
a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed
ridiculously verbose! you have been warned!
~covering 11-23-18 to 12-23-18~
i only had quinn for one week plus a partial weekend of this time period, because of trade negotiations over winter break. the next month, i would have him for 3 out of 4 weeks. i ended up having a lot of things to say about this month despite seeing him so little. it’s a reminder that i’m parenting all the time, even when he is not with me, and the parenting i do while he is away can be some of the most challenging parenting of all.
not enough quinn pictures, so lisa is filling in.
his grades fluctuated wildly this month. quinn is frolicking on the river bank, oblivious to test retakes and missing assignments floating past him on the river of time. he has not gotten the hang of checking on his own grades and assignments, and is still having a hard time remembering to write anything in his planner; paying attention to what it says is another matter entirely. he has not grasped the utility of writing what assignments will be due, and is not putting it together on his own that classwork he doesn’t finish in class becomes homework. he needs many promptings to initiate communication with teachers concerning make-up work, and doesn’t always internalize their instructions or expectations for assignments, classwork documentation, or note-taking.
he can legitimately believe he has no homework, but then when i talk him through each specific class he had that day, it can trigger him to remember what the class work was, whether he was going to have more class time, and in the cases where he wasn’t, realize that those assignments now shift to homework…. this is a thought process that is not automatic for him that he needs help both initiating, and seeing through to completion. he can and will build these skills, but rome wasn’t built in a day.
the only way to eat this executive functioning elephant, it seems to me, is one bite at a time.
coparenting, cognitive dissonance, choice
there was some coparenting strain this month, and it does relate to lifelong learning. i’m often torn how much to include of these behind-the-scenes moments because they may not be enchanting to quinn if he reads them in the future, yet they are probably very relatable to many parents. i think even parents who like each other will sometimes be at odds when trying to understand a new set of challenges their child is facing, and historically for us, times of high challenge for quinn have coincided with the absolute worst coparenting struggles. i foresaw that the transition to middle school may be analagous to quinn’s kindergarten transition, which i’ve been revisiting in my off-blog writing, a time in our lives that i have to partake of reading in small doses because it brings a tremble to my mama heart.
on the topic of quinn staying on top of homework, my job of parenting my child at his other house was impossible to carry out, because my coparent did not believe me when i brought up assignments i knew had not been done (via online grade book), because coparent did not trust me about quinn’s need for support in identifying or remembering what homework he did have, and accepted quinn’s daily “i don’t have any” at face value, instead of realizing that meant “i haven’t thought of any yet,” and then, because coparent would ask me to back off if i tried to involve myself in helping quinn stay up to date. coparent just kept telling me “he is caught up” and “he is keeping me informed of assignments” and then quinn would arrive under a big pile of unfinished work each time he came home to me.
he held tag status up as threat to quinn, saying if his grades don’t get better he may lose it, but also is encouraging quinn to not put much effort in, just learn to “do the system.” then providing such misinformation as his belief that high school grades are not important once you’ve gotten community college grades. there is a lot of work in undoing such erroneous messaging.
coparent told me quinn had been pulled off a bells part on a song for the band concert, and it had happened last minute. he said he wanted to give the teacher a piece of his mind about it; i said i had a feeling there was more to the story that we didn’t know, and suggested he could ask her about it if he was concerned.
at the concert coparent told me, “he is all caught up” and said quinn was telling him he didn’t have homework to do besides math. quinn did do some of the math at coparent’s house, but when we got to transition time after the short 2 day stint during which i cracked the whip over quinn’s 3 incomplete assignments outside of math, coparent said he was starting to feel like quinn wasn’t being honest with him. i didn’t engage that, but said, “he’s almost caught up now,” and filled in more details such as the schedule for his upcoming math test. he restated, “i think quinn is lying to me,” and sort of exasperatedly ranted in front of quinn, “if it’s not a learning disability or something, i mean do other parents deal with this?”
i feel like i have perspective on that, and attempted to explain. my sense is that it is not exactly the same as what other parents deal with, and while i don’t think it’s a learning disability per se, i do think quinn struggles in his own ways that other kids do not, and he has strengths other kids don’t have. i think he’s his own situation and he is still working out the skills to connect dots like “classwork not completed in class is homework” that other kids may not struggle with picking up on the fly. i said we should extend him the benefit of the doubt he is doing his best and being honest, if he said he would get it done in class on friday i imagine he did not intend to deceive, he may have thought he could do it, but it turns out that it is difficult for him to accomplish much classwork during class time right now, so he will need to be doing that work at home as long as he is having that difficulty. coparent cut me off to state that he does give quinn the benefit of the doubt, so that was productive.
talking to rich about it later helped me realize why it bothered me and why i stood up for quinn. i remember how messed up it always felt to be accused of lying. it was good to take a moment and remind myself that what he was doing to quinn is called gaslighting, lashing out to blame anyone else for dishonesty so he can deflect the focus from his own. to benefit quinn, a much more constructive conversation could have been had, if we had focused on how to scaffold executive functioning skills in a coordinated two-household manner instead.
days later, coparent wanted to talk about the bomb threat called in to our local high school. i did my best to dampen hysteria, though school attacks make the list of my own misgivings about public schooling. i have found coparent’s aversions to public schooling hard to tolerate in light of his historic insistence that quinn attend it when i historically sought alternatives to meeting quinn’s educational needs. my feeling is, if we’re choosing this, we need to fully embrace our choice. he kept pressing for my input about whether to send him the next day, which of course i knew he would disregard or hold against me. i stated simply that my goal is to teach quinn to make decisions not based on fear.
he kept quinn home.
i admit that it is disconcerting to me that there was no discussion of the bomb threat among parents. parents discuss parenting things all the time; the confusing letter from our pediatrician about their relocation to a new office, what’s going on at school, the dance, fundraisers, the recent concert. we all got a robo call and a text from school saying a bomb threat was received, high school was evacuated to middle school, everyone is safe, and authorities have cleared both schools. where are the parents discussing “are you sending joey? i’m not sure if i should send molly” or even just “thank goodness it was handled, thankful they are all safe, sobering to think of threats when this is all so very real.” i think everyone must become paralyzed by these things.
i had just been browsing back over the passages i highlighted in charles eisenstein’s book the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. he talks about this, through the lens of sandy hook.
“the absurdity of war has never escaped the most perceptive among us, but in general we have narratives that obscure or normalize that absurdity, and thus protect the Story of the World from disruption.
occasionally, something happens that is so absurd, so awful, or so manifestly unjust that it penetrates these defenses and causes people to question much of what they’d taken for granted. such events present a cultural crisis. typically, though, the dominant mythology soon recovers, incorporating the event back into its own narratives. the ethiopian famine became about helping those poor black children unfortunate enough to live in a country that still hasn’t “developed” as we have. the rwandan genocide became about african savagery and the need for humanitarian intervention. the nazi holocaust became about evil taking over, and the necessity to stop it. all of these interpretations contribute, in various ways, to the old Story of the People: we are developing, civilization is on the right track, goodness comes through control. none hold up to scrutiny; they obscure, in the former two examples, the colonial and economic causes of the famine and genocide, which are still ongoing. in the case of the holocaust, the explanation of evil obscures the mass participation of ordinary people – people like you and me. underneath the narratives a disquiet persists, the feeling that something is terribly wrong with the world.
the year 2012 ended with a small but potent story-piercing event: the sandy hook massacre. by the numbers, it was a small tragedy: far more, and equally innocent, children died in u.s. drone strikes that year, or by hunger that week, than died at sandy hook. but sandy hook penetrated the defense mechanisms we use to maintain the fiction that the world is basically okay. no narrative could contain its utter senselessness and quell the realization of a deep and awful wrongness.
we couldn’t help but map those murdered innocents onto the young faces we know, and the anguish of their parents onto ourselves. for a moment, i imagine, we all felt the exact same thing. we were in touch with the simplicity of love and grief, a truth outside of story.
following that moment, people hurried to make sense of the event, subsuming it within a narrative about gun control, mental health, or the security of school buildings. no one believes deep down that these responses touch on the heart of the matter. sandy hook is an anomalous data point that unravels the entire narrative – the world no longer makes sense. we struggle to explain what it means, but no explanation suffices. we may go on pretending that normal is still normal, but this is one of a series of “end time” events that is dismantling our culture’s mythology.”
as a chronic overthinker, this is exactly what i observed; the dominant mythology instantly recovered, the event seamlessly incorporated back into its narratives, we pretended normal is still normal. i am grateful that charles eisenstein was able to articulate the cognitive dissonance that makes me feel.
last year i was in quinn’s fifth grade class volunteering during a lockdown drill. i hid behind the cupboard in the corner with the teacher and all 30 kids (they all knew to get down, be quiet, hide behind something solid where they cannot be seen from the window). i can’t help but think that this isn’t the type of experience i want to saturate quinn’s brain with, drill or not.
but we are doing public school. we are embracing it since this is what we’re doing right now; if we want to pursue other schooling options, i’m game to discuss them, based on information and observations of what would work well for quinn’s learning. but let me say it one more time so the people in the back can hear it: i do not want to teach him to make decisions based on fear.
in more positive discussions, coparent observed out loud recently that telling quinn that he is smart all the time can backfire and set him up to be looking for our approval rather than tuned in to his own compass. i recommended alfie kohn; the well-worn orange cover of unconditional parenting still spends more time on my end tables for frequent reference than on a shelf, though i first read it when quinn was toddling around in cloth diapers, reciting curious george books, chatting knowledgeably about garbage cans, and pretending to catch heffalumps and woozles. i have tried to make a practice of asking him what he thinks, giving him space to decide if the painting he has made is how he wants it to look, what he likes about it, what he meant it to represent, or what direction he might take it in next. weighing in on what i think of his work may teach him to look to me as the dispenser of approval and trains him to disproportionately seek external evaluation for his thoughts, actions, and work. when i do comment on my observations, i try to speak to specific things i noticed rather than overall stamping my approval or disapproval on what he has done, or my assessment of his smartness. instead of me saying the painting is good, i can hear from him about his color choices and creative ideas. we can talk details all day, delving deep into connection, without subjecting him to the approval process.
now that he has started asking me about when i was once a girl, i am seeing one of my anticipated payoffs materializing. he doesn’t see me as predominantly being a source of evaluative judgment on his thoughts and actions, instead he sees me as a sounding board and source of guidance and information. that’s been one of the long-term goals i’ve had my sights set on, and i think it all ties together. thanks, alfie.
he read aloud from eragon of “paring roots” and when i asked if he’d help pare roots (rutabaga, to be specific) he was glad to do so.
oddments
there is a recent trend that he will eat three meals and have a bath during the course of his first evening home.
i left a wicked spanish phrases book in his room after sorting through a box of books. he started reading and got to the phrase “yours is the prettiest piglet, but it has sh@t in my lap!” he giggled like crazy, and pulled off the phrase with impeccable accent.
one saturday quinn spent the entire day in his room watching yu-gi-oh, and i didn’t really try to change that. he was content. rich and i discussed how at some point i’ll miss his clingy barnacle ways, but right now it feels kind of nice to not always have him neeeeeeding me.
tangential tag topics
i have mentioned at other times that i am still trying to get comfortable with the chip that is giftedness resting persistently on my shoulder, because as much as i have tried to shrug it off, it remains. it seems to be a no-brainer to all parties involved that quinn belongs in the tag program, though he hasn’t been formally tested, other than achievement testing. we can talk all day about how that type of identification misses a whole bunch of gifted kids, who have legitimate special needs related to giftedness but who won’t receive services because they are not high achievers; gifted english learners are also especially overlooked. my high scoring test-taker happens to have blown the ceiling out of every star test he has taken, and with achievement conflated with giftedness, no one is disputing his placement in the tag program. however, he is now hearing, from the tag program teacher for one, that because he is in tag, he should have all A’s on his report cards. “i mean, you’re the smart kids. that’s why you’re here.” this goes hand in hand with the common misconception that gifted kids do not have special learning needs, that they are fine in the system as it currently functions and shouldn’t receive services. the commonly held belief that giftedness only bestows advantages is at the root of the struggles our family has been navigating all along. it is sobering to realize that is the stance of the actual guy assigned to teach the tag class right now.
i disagree with the view of tag as a status and a privilege rather than a recognition of a learning difference and an attempt to provide desperately needed enrichment. i think TAG should be entirely disentangled from grades. the more i understand how his wiring diverges from the neurotypical, the more i see it as a special set of learning needs, not incompatible with the presence of other neurodivergences (learning disabilities, processing speed disorders, executive function delays, ADHD, ASD) that may mask/be masked by the presence of giftedness, may have their own sets of learning needs, or at the very least, combine to form a confusing mix of traits; a brilliant, intense kid with his shirt on backwards and an occasional D in social studies.
the chip on my shoulder tells me nobody wants to hear mamas talk about their kids’ giftedness and the unique challenges of parenting such a kid. it’s a popular parenting meme topic all across social media, and a common vibe in parenting forums: we don’t want you to talk about your kid’s giftedness, so i come by the chip on my shoulder honestly. but i also believe the memes come from a place of misunderstanding and assumption of what the g word means, not truth or knowledge, and that this closed-mindedness would dissolve into the wider basin of understanding if some of us continue to expand it by stubbornly sharing what we have to say, at the risk of being seen as chronic humble-braggers.
i want it to stop being heard as though i’m saying my child is “better than” when i say he is “gifted.” gifted is a different set of wiring. i appreciate the tilt parenting podcast founder’s use of “differently wired” and her inclusion of giftedness under that umbrella, and i appreciate the community of parents who refer to these kids as poppies (named for the hostile-to-gifted educational practice of “cutting down the tall poppies”), because these are closer to the reality of our experience. “every child is gifted” is only as true as the statement “every child has dyslexia.” fill in the blank with any other neurological difference and you will see why that statement is absurd. see also the myth, “gifted kids are the easy ones.” only if by easy you mean prone to intensity, existential depression, sensory issues, executive function challenges, crippling perfectionism, and asynchronous development.
it has taken me years to realize that the approach taken by quinn’s teacher at our living school also missed the mark. her idea was that every child benefits from the interventions beneficial to gifted kids, such as individualized, constructivist, emergent curriculum, and saw no benefit in singling him out. however, in retrospect, i believe she was uninformed about what goes along with giftedness besides the intellectual intensity; the emotional and sensory intensity, social skill and executive function lags, and asynchrony. i think if she had been more aware, she may have come to a different conclusion about quinn when she reached for asperger’s as an explanation for his collection of quirks. this is not a blame statement; our evaluating neuropsychologist lacked this awareness and missed it, too. while all involved could recognize the utility in identifying asperger’s had it been present, nobody felt it was useful to identify giftedness. i’ve had to do that through my own research, finding out what it does and does not mean, the other neuro-differences that can look similar and in what ways they differ, and how to support the child in front of me.
this is all it has ever been. giftedness is all it has ever been, and it’s not nothing, and it’s not what all kids are, and it’s not better than other kids, and he’s not an “easy one,” and it is a big deal, a big fat hairy deal at certain extra-pronounced stages of asynchrony, and the g word has seldom served to help raise awareness, help quinn receive what he needs, or help convey to adults around the boy who it is they have in front of them. but having no language at all to convey isn’t better than having one inadequately understood term.
not all kids benefit from some of the things that can benefit gifted kids. gifted kids often need grade or subject acceleration to avoid stagnation and boredom with their learning. to preemptively provide a rebuttal to, “some boredom is good for kids to learn how to deal with,” we’re talking about chronic 24/7 boredom that dims the lights of learning, not occasional healthy experiences of learning how to self-entertain. high achieving, hardworking smart kids who are not gifted often thrive in regular classes and continue to achieve well, whereas in accelerated settings, they eventually fall behind. those are the easy kids, if there is such a unicorn: focused, on task, on grade level, synchronized across social, emotional and academic aspects of themselves. gifted kids can paradoxically fall behind in regular classes, making it hard to convince anyone they need to move up. gifted kids are not always inclined to work hard, in fact they may not even start if they can’t see how to finish perfectly, or if they don’t see the point. they already know the material before you teach it to them; but try to get them to show their “work”. they grasp the accelerated material and it still isn’t moving fast enough for their brain. they can be frustrating and impossible and they neglect to turn in their assignments. they maybe don’t ride a bike or remember to use the bathroom, just to add another dimension of flavor to their particular spice blend.
raven
with all that was going through my mind concerning quinn and school and learning, it was fitting to choose the raven “intuition guides the way” card from my trusty card deck around this time. the cards always seem to make sense and involve inexplicable synchronicities. i was simultaneously writing about quinn’s age 3 lifelong learning circa 2010, which it turns out is when the cards were printed; and i found a journal entry while delving into those memories. in a dream quinn told me about, a raven told him, “i’ll take care of you if you are ever in danger.” raven, the messenger, seems to show up when there is some time we need to spend peering into our shadows and paying attention to what lurks in the darkness. ravens are more solitary than crows, so maybe it makes sense it shows up in times when i feel like i’m on the edge of society, perceiving myself as an outlier to the mainstream. raven seems to me to be associated with going inward and pondering big dark mysteries. in the dark, things can seem more fearful than they are; but bringing them out and letting light shine upon them can transform and heal what we are working through.
language
quinn’s language arts work has been fun and engaging all year, and i have to hand it to his teacher for assigning great material to encourage meaning-making and providing practice for quinn’s most reluctant area: writing. in addition to the writing practice, there have been thought-provoking assignments for inspiration. i particularly enjoyed the art box assignment and the six word memoir from this month. his six-word memoir was:
i wander but i’m not alone
his art box:
he also has some really cool blackout poetry going in the dragonsong book.
music
first band concert! we listened to the choir first, then the beginning band, and then quinn’s band performed last (intermediate band).
i am glad quinn got to listen to the beginning band and hear how spectacularly awful they sound; as it should be, and i applaud the teacher for letting them play their awful songs, 4 measures of whole notes, with such earnestness. she spoke highly of their effort and progress and how she doesn’t usually give a full length piece so early in the year, but they begged her and they learned it in two days. i know quinn likes her as a teacher, and i can see why, with the positive regard she has for students.
quinn played the smaller parts in his band (he was on tambourine for one song, jingle bells for two, and bass drum for one), but he was really into it (his head bopping is my favorite) and he still played twice as much music as anyone in the beginning band. i think it would have been fine for him in beginning band, if not for the math conflict. but being part of something that actually sounds musical, though they are still rather new to this stuff, is a happy thing for quinn.
the teacher expressed appreciation for the intermediate band students as well, praising that they cheer one another on when they get something right they’ve been working hard on, and that they coax one another along when something is difficult. supporting and celebrating with each other, kindness. nice kids. it was good to hear they are that way, and nice to hear that she supports that culture in her room. he wouldn’t be the first kid in the world to find a place of solace in a band room, though, would he?
quinn played a lot on the bells that weekend, perhaps feeling inspired after the concert. he played his harry potter song, and a bunch of stuff from his practice book. i asked him if he had played the hp song for his teacher and he said no, but he had played it among his fellow percussion mates. i asked if any of them know it, too. he said only one other kid does, and the other kid just moved to this school two days before the concert. quinn told me his name and grade and what they talked about and that he had introduced him to aragorn (who is in beginning band on clarinet) the night of the concert. i told him i was happy to hear he had been friendly and welcoming to a new kid, because it had to be a big deal to change schools, especially in the middle of a school year. i mused that it must have been hard for the new guy to learn all the songs at the last minute. quinn said yes but that the teacher gave him parts he could do easily, and also that he is pretty good so she also gave him parts others were struggling with. she had switched quinn off the bells on the one song, because she needed a part for the new kid to play. i asked how he felt about it. “i was fine with it!”
more to the story indeed.
accessing encrypted files
i had quinn from a friday after school until a sunday at 3. in order to head off his “where is my trigonometry book” (which was to be under the christmas tree), i checked out the next 2 books in the warriors series for him and they were waiting in the car. he got in after school and opened up a book and didn’t talk all the way home.
i fed him all the dinners, sent him to the bathtub, and let him read and watch yu-gi-oh and just chill. he wanted to play a warriors game with me, made out of legos. we didn’t actually play the game, but we did get it set up, which involved building our cats, and naming them. mine were in the “ocean clan” and had names like wavestar and rainbow eye. quinn’s were in forest clan and he had leafstar and white streak. i haven’t read any of these books, so i had to keep reminding him that he’d need to give me some background info about how to choose a clan and how the naming works, and he was happy to oblige.
on saturday we went and chose our christmas tree. when i had told quinn that rich and i might get the christmas tree while he was at his dad’s he was devastated, so i had taken a day off from farmer’s market to fit it in on this one and only possible day, on the weekend of rich’s play. it was fun to walk around commenting on the trees with my guys. after it was cut, quinn grabbed the trunk to help rich carry it down the hill to the truck. seeing him be all teenager sized, and helping without being asked: quull. we set up the tree, and quinn helped me hang the “bird family” ornaments.
i spent the afternoon nudging quinn through his science assignment. at first, all he could tell me about the assignment was that he had to draw a box of crayons. he had spent the class time looking up a tutorial for drawing a crayon box, but he hadn’t gotten it done. he did a very painstaking drawing of the crayon box, spending an inordinate amount of time dividing the rectangle of space in 7. he eventually “remembered” what the rest of the assignment was; to name the colors, using alliteration, incorporating the climate terms from the unit they are studying. he knew he wanted to make “land breeze light blue”. he had the hardest time recalling whether it was supposed to be colored in. as he went, he seemed to recall details of the instructions, and ended up coloring, writing “convection crayons” and a slogan, “100% recycled, 100% recyclable” before he finished. in addition to the painfully slow start, he got stuck another time; there wasn’t a term in his list starting with y, but he needed a yellow crayon, because the tutorial had one, so he couldn’t get past that without help. i suggested putting ‘yearly’ in front of a term and call it done.
through talking with him, it’s apparent he doesn’t use class time efficiently, and gets sucked into the internet of ideas (he did this for spanish too, looking up food words for his food rainbow assignment, but applying none of them to the sheet of paper). he also doesn’t seem to observe what other students are doing (i asked if the kids colored theirs in, and he had no idea). then just when it seemed as though he hadn’t heard the instructions at all, it was as though he had stored them in some type of encrypted manner and incremental details started being revealed only as they were needed.
i said it was fine to bring work home, if he just couldn’t do it at school, and also tried to offer support to find solutions to using the class time, like blocking out noise (put in earbuds) or finding out missing instructions (ask teacher) or obtaining missing materials/ruler/computer paper (same) and encouraged him to make a point to go past those obstacles, not stay stuck behind them.
executive function skills as applied to yu-gi-oh cards are all in order.
theatre and literacy
that night we went to rich’s play! quinn seemed to enjoy it. i heard him giggle when one of the animals rich pulled out of a paper bag, “salmon,” was a spatula. bear was made out of a berry bucket, a cup for the snout, and some buttons. quinn immediately memorized the line, “i wonder what would happen if grandmother found out i put holes into her berry bucket.” when housman asked for some tea and rick went out to get tea but instead came back with a big log that someone must have left, housman said, “i wish to once again register my complaint that this (gesturing at log) is not tea!” another line quinn insta-memorized.
at the very end as the authors all walked out and rick was peeking into the stacks after them, housman came back and said, “more of them are coming! i can see edgar allen poe… and elinor wylie …. and oh god, it’s tolstoy!” rick responded, “tolstoy!” and burst out laughing. on sunday as i was telling rich about quinn loving the “tolstoy!” line, i was having a hard time remembering what book he wrote, and quinn chimed in from the kitchen, “war and peace!” that kid. my bff suggested a new segment on the blog called, “how do you know that???”
his answer: “charlie brown.”
there was also a line in the play to the effect of, “if you want to get to know somebody, just go to the library and ask for their checkout list!” on the way home quinn and i discussed that line, and talked about going to the library and saying, “show us every book quinn has checked out.” he listed percy jackson, kane chronicles, magnus chase books, guardians of ga’hoole, diary of a wimpy kid, wings of fire, spirit animals, lemony snicket, etc. i said, “if this play had been about quinn, it would have been 3 of your favorite authors who came out of the stacks to talk to you.” and he said, “yeah, rick riordan, tui sutherland, and kathryn lasky, probably!”
it’s the merry month of may, with flowers brought to you by april showers, and the most likely month of the year in which rainbow mondays will take place on tuesdays.
red: there is now more light reaching the leaves of our little japanese maple tree, because sometimes my husband participates in unauthorized dangerous activities while i am away at farmer’s market on saturdays. he built his bridge and walked out on it with his chain-saw-on-a-pole to saw a few limbs off of this cedar. always trying to let more light into our lives, that guy.
red: red-legged friend in my rainbow garden
orange: california poppies with forget me nots and herb robert flowers.
orange: this bee thinks comfrey flowers are the bee’s knees. you could see her orange saddle bags a little more in some other angles, but i had to choose this shot because i love how she has dived into this flower with such abandon. busy bees are certainly an apt mascot for this busy month!
yellow: the golden chain tree has bloomed its curtains of flowers.
yellow: mustard-covered fields viewed from the passenger’s seat.
green: i got to play assistant chef to the guy in the trex shirt, as he arranged plates of lemon-filled crepes with strawberries, sliced moro oranges, and whipped cream.
green: a bayou friend sipping from the newly bloomed twinberry flowers.
green: rich and i are both fascinated with the dramatic stages of budding and blooming on this chinese snowball tree. one of my favorite stages is when the flowers are still green, on their way to becoming snowballs!
blue: speaking of snow, several fields full of white flowers threw us for a loop under the warm blue sky of may when we drove through the valley. we saw signs for radish seed nearby, and i think radish flowers are white. otherwise, it could be some sort of fun flowering cover crop.
blue: also on our valley drive, we stopped at a favorite place to rest and found the wild delphinium in full bloom.
blue: it was good to immerse myself briefly in their setting; cool, blue, blossoming right where they are meant to be. their name, synonymous with the effortless, gliding grace of a spirit friend of mine, reminds me of my word of the year, streamline. a timely reminder, that i am unfurling my petals right where i need to be, too.
purple: i am grateful today for my husband’s way of knowing when i need a little aromatherapy (when he steers our walking path past the lilacs in bloom), or therapy behind the lens of my camera (making possible this here rainbow post), or simply need to be hugged for a long time and told i am loved.
a splash of color on monday
a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed
lifelong holidays learning!
one saturday rich was working so i brought quinn to farmer’s market with me. i parked him in front of my display that i was building and had him put bundles of broccoli raab into a rainbow arch around the basket where the bell peppers would be going, and he got right on that. then after he finished that job, i showed him that the cauliflower would be going in a big basket, but kind of cascading out of it onto the cloth, and he was like “great! i can make a cauliflower cascade!” and just kept following my instructions and being legitimately helpful. he likes all the people i work with, and they all like him, so i would ultimately look around for him and he’d be helping someone else doing things. he helped put up the price signs and someone would tell him “cipollini, those are the flat onions.” and give him hints so he could learn what things were (he knows a lot but the farm has a LOT of veggies and some of them are hard to differentiate if you don’t know that, say, parsnips have an innie belly button and parsley root have an outie! actually he knows those two… and one of his favorites is romanesco! but some of the other turnips and roots and shallots… less so.) if he started needing my attention more than i could handle while i was helping customers check out, i would send him on a task. i had him fetch some empty totes and build me a side table and cover it with a piece of fabric so people could set their basket/bag on it while checking out. then i sent him to buy himself a pastry and get rich a cinnamon roll, it’s only about 100 yards away and in line of sight of numerous people who would throw themselves in front of a bus to protect quinn, but still… it is not lost on me that he is getting big and independent. then he went and picked up my coffee for me, including adding the milk “and about 3 blups of honey and 3 shakes of cinnamon.” i let him buy a honey stick and a small honey bear even though we have 4 gallons of honey at home. his final task was to figure out how many apples for his lunches he could buy with the money he had left over. he entertained himself really well reading his book, drawing in his minecraft journal (a graph paper composition book) and then he ate most of my lunch from the german food vendor, which was really yummy meatballs and mushroom sauce. he loved it and said he wanted me to figure out how to make mushroom sauce.
he brought home some interesting and unique vegetables like the cutest tiny jalapeno pepper… he and my friend rachel found it together, and were chatting (i heard later) about its cuteness and describing its attributes, and then he came over to me with it and asked me with a grin, “how do you feel about anthropomorphization?” and then giggled uncontrollably. i love how he knows what will make me laugh or surprise me or catch me off guard. he gets my humor, it’s almost like he’s related to me.
he was my farmer’s market elf when he was a toddler, and he is still my farmer’s market elf now as a big kid. at the end of the market day, i tasked him with sorting the baskets by shape and fitting them onto the cart, a job we both have the right kind of brain for.
another day i brought him with me again, since the first time had gone so well, and he was very taken up with a project, so he helped a bit less, but was still delightful to have along. “i’ve just created a new runic language. if you want to take the oath to join my tribe, you can be allowed to learn the language!” again with the graph paper. i should buy stock in graph paper.
when we got home, i took a bath while he read and then we had leftovers and got ready to go to a play. the addam’s family was fun, and it’s entertaining to watch quinn watch a play. he gets so sucked into the plot but at the same time he can analyze what’s going on back stage, on how they made a certain effect: “i think the lever was just a prop, and they made the chains move from behind the panel” was discussed at intermission. he memorized his favorite lines “wednesday is growing up, before you know it, she’ll be thursday!” and so on. after the play he got a hug from his theatre camp counselor, who was a member of the cast. i love how he reads through the program now and finds all the people he knows…. it’s a small town after all.
in december, i had quinn for the very beginning and very end of the month, for christmas. this is our second year of doing a two-week swap around the holidays (we used this trick last summer as well) which has worked out very well. it is one of the things that i am proud of after the years of toughing it out with a difficult coparent, that on topics we once couldn’t handle negotiating at all, we have become rather flexible and win-win about the process. the biggest winner, of course, is quinn, who gets the best holidays in either household (solstice there, christmas here).
the one drawback on this end is that he misses a large chunk of the season of advent at our house, which has always been something he really savors. the anticipation and expectancy of the coming holiday has always been my favorite part of christmas time as well. this year we made the most of our one week of advent together, feeling a little more settled into dragon house 2.0 for our second christmas in residence here.
on that sunday, we slept in and had pumpkin pancakes. rich’s mom had given me a form that makes the pancakes into christmas shapes just the day before, so i figured i’d use it right away. we already had his playmobil and lego advent calendars out, sparkle advent stories and color-in calendar in use. since this day was turning out to be glorious, we figured we should get the tree now, while he could help pick it out and decorate it (as opposed to last year’s tree which we put up on december 23rd).
we took a drive to get our tree, and it’s out past where we camp in the summer, so on the way back we stopped at the campsite to see the river. at the tree farm, we walked up the hill, rich with his chainsaw in hand, and the three of us walked and pointed out trees of the right height. we told quinn that it needed to be not much taller than rich so he was looking back and forth between rich and the trees. then he got to one and it was the first one where he commented “ooh this one looks nice.” just then i heard a hawk screech and looked up to try to find the hawk, then started taking pictures of it flying over our heads. rich asked right then, “which tree should we get?” i said, “i think the hawk just told us.” and quinn said, “yes, this one!” so it was decided. i had quinn hold my camera while i held the tree and rich sawed it. quinn’s documentation is mixed into the photos above. then we carried our tree down the hill and took it home with us!
quinn got in his bed and spent the rest of the entire day reading calvin and hobbes.
i made my mom’s swedish meatball recipe but added mushroom soup to the gravy to make it mushroom sauce for quinn. also since he’s reading norse mythology i pointed out the connection there, and told him we have norwegian ancestry, but he said, “mom, magnus chase takes place in boston.”
after dinner rich went outside and then stuck his head in the door and said we should come outside and to bring my camera. so we went out to look at the supermoon. quinn went back inside because i sent him to check if his bathtub was full, and it was, so he didn’t come back outside. instead he read his trials of apollo book in the tub.
on monday morning taking quinn to school, i realized that i haven’t been at school much to pick him up or drop him off, it had been 3 weeks without me going there… his dad had him, then i had him for the thanksgiving week off, then dad had him again. so i’ll have him for drop offs and pick ups this single week in december, and then i won’t do it again until january! i was remarking on that as we walked up to the school, and i decided to be a dork and squeezed his hand more firmly and said, “so i’m going to do a really good job taking you to school this week! don’t you feel like you’re being taken to school well?” and he played along swinging our hands and we giggled the whole way there.
we spent monday evening putting on the lights, garland, and decorations!
he chose to finish waking up the next morning beside the tree.
and whooooosh! it was christmas. lots of fun presents were opened, and a modest family gathering revolved around playing risk and parcheesi.
in the department of books, he received wizardology, a minecraft book, 365 days of wonder (mr. browne’s precepts), and the mother-son journal called between mom and me. i wasn’t sure how his presents would be received this year… i felt as though i gave him a few that were organizational tools disguised as presents (a mallet holder, a music stand, and a karate belt display hanger). i thought he would like the book of precepts, having read and watched wonder in the early days of fifth grade, but i was not sure he would embrace the mama-son journal. then to top it off, he got a shirt, a hat and a scarf… clothes! but he was delighted with every single gift, and expressed his gratitude.
it turned out that he was very into the journal, and was excited to start working on it with me. i’m pleased he sees it as more than another writing assignment, and instead as a way for us to connect through writing. he does like to write, even if it isn’t his easiest subject, and opts to write for his own creative purposes frequently. one night at bedtime he was torn between reading his book (the second in rick riordan’s kane chronicles), writing in the mama/son journal, and drawing “because i just thought of a book series i want to write and a movie i want to make” with 5 minutes until lights out. the flood of ideas right at the time he needs to fall asleep is epic as ever!
i told him about thumbnail sketches and had him do a few for the movie script, then put down a jot list of reminders for the book series so he’d remember his idea, and we filled out our “guidelines” pages in the journal. “people who are close to us are allowed to know about it” is one of the guidelines, so i don’t have to keep it a secret. it’s a pretty good format. we decided how we’d keep track of where we are with a special bookmark (and when he misspelled special we added a guideline that we will correct each other’s spelling because i asked if he wanted me to correct him on things or let them go and he wants the spelling “100% perfect.”) the bookmark will need to be made but will have a green owl stamp on the left and a purple dolphin stamp on the right. and our address with “return to” on it, but written in pencil, so it can be updated as needed.
we still often lean on the “dolphin story” during bedtimes like these for relaxing and emptying his busy brain, but he shared that lately his best strategy to calm down alllll the thoughts, is to choose one thing to really focus on. at bedtime he will name it out loud “i’m working on the next chapter of my mage novel in my head tonight” and then he can drift off.
something dragon-related is happening here… on graph paper.
he and i played risk again, and he beat me as usual. then he became inspired to work on programming a risk game in scratch, on his piper computer. he started out by drawing a world map (divided into the proper territories for risk) out of shapes in the background, but realized he would need to start again and make each territory a sprite that could behave independently (attack, defend, be conquered). he did further research on the scratch website and played someone else’s versions of risk on scratch, a wwii version and a napoleon version, which he then plans to study for how to code his own. as he was playing, he ended up with the world atlas in his lap, studying flags of european countries. when i talk about using the screen as a tool (for learning/creating/accomplishing goals), rather than simply a platform of consumption, this is what i mean.
we talked a bit about his progress in khan academy, where he is going through the 6th grade math curriculum at school. he is plugging along, and he was explaining his latest lesson on calculating volume of a rectangular prism. we got to chatting about finding volume of spheres, pyramids, cylindrical prisms, and such, and he was having so much fun that we developed a math problem for calculating the volume of goods able to be carried by an oregon trail conestoga wagon.
brain surgery (still going strong with lunch-making!)
is it wrong to tell your child you will only buy them tangerines for their lunches if they write it on the shopping list in cursive?
one night we were driving to karate for open mat, and he let out a gigantic sigh. “hey buddy, keep breathing.” he said, “it’s just… the paper mill.” (we have one in our town…) “it makes me upset because it’s destroying the earth.”
what do you even say?
other worries he carries are… less worrisome.
“something that has been worrying me ever since the end of 4th grade is, if a fly is flying inside of a train car, is it still going the same speed, or is it going faster because of how fast the train is going?”
i gave him the “it depends” answer based on what frame of reference we are measuring velocity with respect to, the ground or the train itself, we discussed some high school physics definitions, and talked about how the math works, depending on whether the fly is flying in the same direction as the train is traveling, or the opposite direction. oh yeah, and mentioned that this was the type of question that inspired albert einstein to develop his special theory of relativity, bringing a big paradigm shift to the field of physics.
i came across a podcast called brains on that had an episode entitled the flies on the bus that further addressed his “worry”. he listened to it, and then proceeded to choose a few more of the brains on podcasts to listen to next (they’re great, i think the segment called “um” is my favorite name for a radio show segment ever) and his first pick was farts smarts; understanding the gas we pass. so you know, it’s rare, but sometimes he does act exactly his age.
i love finding new audio for him to explore, he is soothed by it. he can be overstimulated through his ears (with sound, water, etc), and yet that is also the sensory pathway that is easiest to reach him to help restore calm in him. it is not lost on me that my sound-sensitive one who used to flip out over the use of the coffee grinder or vacuum cleaner, is the kid driven to take up drumming. within the problem are the seeds to the solution, sometimes. i wonder how many other sensory channels this can be said for, in other kids with sensory differences.
we had the delightful opportunity to offer quinn a chance to go to a winter wonderings 6-week saturday class on a nearby college campus, and be a poppy in a field of other poppies. he got signed up at the very last minute, based on his initial lukewarm response to the pamphlet that was sent home from school (you’re pre-approved!), and my uncertainty whether my coparent would drive him the 45 minutes to it on his 3 saturdays, and especially since we knew going into it that we’d miss the final week due to our upcoming trip. given that this was such a cool opportunity, though, i jumped on his last minute enthusiasm for signing up, and we made it happen. the clincher was really him getting on the phone and advocating for himself with his dad, which is an ongoing theme, and worthwhile lesson. i called the head of the program and although quinn’s top class choice of minecraft ancient civilizations was full, he was excited to try the outdoor survival skills class. i got him in just one day before he was set to attend the first one! and the first one went very well!
wake-up time with lisa kitty, a boy folded up in child’s pose on the couch, and another yoga pose of unknown identity while reading calvin and hobbes. (he’s pretty perpetually reading calvin and hobbes!)
these months in music: “there needs to be a way to write in the music for it to go in a circle.” like his insightful observation of “fourth person point of view,” quinn grasps yet another concept (the musical repeat, and the need for its notation in sheet music) before being taught the formal lesson.
now that we’ve been doing lessons and practice for a while, it is becoming trickier to keep him motivated to practice. writing his own songs definitely helps, and playing along with the practice cds, or with me on another instrument, is helpful. but sometimes it is as simple as me renaming “clair de la luna” as “luna lovegood” and he smiles and tries to play it. he has also arrived at the space where he cannot instantly memorize the entire (8-measure) song (of repetitive half and quarter notes), and must actually fail at the first attempt, and absorb the imperfection and go on to try again. even now, each song (now with 16 measures and more variation in quarter notes) may only take 3 or 4 tries to master, but that was the first high hurdle for him in his musical education. his perfectionism can be a huge stumbling block. after he mastered luna lovegood, he tried the next one… felt like he had failed, and had to be talked into trying again. i used the “be goofy” trick again and sang him the lyrics to “down by the station” which include the word “pufferbellies.” finally, he worked through the page of luna lovegood and pufferbellies, with the added bonus lyrics learned as well, and i think he is in a better place to keep learning increasingly difficult pieces.
back in december we also attended quinn’s school concert, and a good time was had by all.
karate practice in the sun!
this is the happy face i want to see after a long day of learning… there is one pretty spectacular title teacher at his school, and even though there is no tag program at school this year, she has her ways of reaching them all, including the way she made sure his pamphlet for winter wonderings came home, but also her time in the classroom is always something quinn looks forward to. he got so excited about learning origami after her lesson on making an octahedron! he was so on fire that i heard about it after school, on the day she introduced the project, when he had only reached the halfway point of his finished octahedron. describing it, he told me, “it has 6 vertices!” and other fancy geometry jargon. by the next afternoon, he was bringing it home completed, feeling accomplished, with a big smile on his face.
the last lifelong learner post was posted over 6 months ago! wheeee, 2017! so it’s time for a lifelong learner catch-up series. do people binge-read blog posts?
time traveling back to the end of april….
self-initiated dragon-drawing lessons. he got this book out of the school library, brought it home, and applied himself to learning to draw a dragon.
baby dragon book; more drawing research.
quinn made some linocut stamps and sent grammy a card.
grammy correspondence also included his newly learned skill of email!
more artwork involved a new card game he is designing.
in his tag group at school, he was supposed to join edmodo in order to coordinate things… that never really panned out, but he did open himself an edmodo account as instructed, and i mention it because i love his choice of features for his avatar, including a beard!
i received minecraft lessons from the lad and built rainbow terraces and a rainbow greenhouse in my first world.
class memories – love the focus on reflection (in case that wasn’t obvious about me): “my happy memory is the rubber band cars because right at the end of school i hit the sweet spot. sweet!” i’m pleased he remembers that victory, as it was one i watched him work through frustration and persevere until the very end of the school day. also from school: i have a dream poster, comic about plastic water bottles, poster about saving owls, mood meter, and his wonderful journal from 4th grade. i got a tour during his school conference, and was very impressed with the writing he had been doing, including a fan-fiction spin-off of the spirit animals series. here is his synopsis on the inside front cover: “a dark force has risen from the depths of time and now it’s up to two brave kids.” i know i am dying to find out what happens!
quinn’s class also studied the native american tribes of oregon, and his project centered on the nez perce people. while making his diorama, he went into business making toothpick people for classmates, and was proud that his design was in high demand! we did a little further research at home concerning the nez perce, because i thought he would be interested in their cultural and spiritual traditions, in particular their version of spirit animals, or weyekins, who came to an individual in spirit form, bestowed their own characteristics on the individual, and stayed with a person throughout their lives. he learned all about their way of life in order to build the model and to report on what he learned. for their project he also led his group’s presentation and although i know he would have contributed some wording, i’m pretty sure he let someone else in the group be the scribe!
he found an owl’s face in the driftwood
tidepooling always makes for wonderful lifelong learning.
certified hummingbird feeder filling technician.
half-orange belt test for karate! he had a great test, once again such a positive learning experience for him, including the camaraderie with his fellow students, and caring guidance from his instructor.
part of what i love so much about our dojo is how far beyond the karate our instructor goes to make the kids feel a part of a community. there are movie nights, board games, sleepovers, seminars with our sifu’s sifu who visits from california. in addition, sifu takes the kids running around downtown when it is a nice day, and the little main street in our town has a lovely clay studio from which giant bubbles sometimes go floating by. finally, both sifu and his wife take time with each kid to discover their passions and invest time into connecting with them. quinn has sat with each of them this month helping them make their d&d characters. i don’t know if i realized how rare this was in teachers, until i saw it in action here. i know that quinn will remember the way they’ve made him feel when he is much older, that what he cares about matters to them, and that they are so available to help him learn but also to just simply be there for him.
outside times increasing in frequency as the spring weather truly hits its stride.
and inside times… creating a lego dragon game we played on a grammy play quilt spread out on the living room floor one afternoon.
whistling while he works! this month held a big milestone for quinn, who happened upon the ability to whistle at last! he was startled by it at first, and then was very exuberant in his practicing, excited to be able to accomplish louder notes with practice.
certified pancake flipping technician.
overnight field trip! we took our 4th graders to our state capital! it was a lovely trip, and believe me, i had some doubts about how it would be to chaperone 27 ten year olds for a sleepover in a school gym. it was extremely well planned, however, and his teacher put together a great trip. one of the places we stopped was champoeg state heritage area, where the kids got to check out the oldest barn structure in the state of oregon. inside, they ground some kernels of wheat the old fashioned way, and learned about the importance of wheat to oregon’s pioneers and overall economy. inside the museum were displays concerning native oregonians as well as pioneers. i did not get a chance to wander over to the heirloom apple orchard off to one side of the heritage area, which i would like to return to with my parents for a visit!
newell pioneer village was an easy walk from the state park entrance, and we went there to tour historical buildings like newell house, which was filled with historic artifacts, and do some experiential learning about what pioneer life might have been like. quinn liked writing with a quill pen and making “buzz saw” toys with a button and a string.
he thought being a pioneer child in a pioneer classroom was fun, including having to answer “yes, ma’am” to everything the teacher said to him, and having to stand beside his desk to answer a question, to practicing sums on his slate.
historic flood levels on a humungous cottonwood tree.
as pioneer children, they also got to dip candles, felt wool, and wash laundry using a washboard.
fun times with friends. before we camped on the gym floor, we took the kids to the northern lights theatre and all watched lego batman while eating pizza for dinner! this was a stroke of genius on the teacher’s part, because it enabled all of us to breathe for a few hours of fun and laughter while relaxing our head counting and behavior-curbing efforts. we had a pretty easy time as parent chaperones, given she had recruited enough of us that our ratio was essentially 2 children to 1 parent, and 1 of our 2 was our own child.
the next morning we ate cafeteria breakfast, and one of the dads made a heroic trip for a gallon of coffee to bring back for the parents. a visit to a botanical garden inspired quinn to draw this violet from memory upon our return home. i have been gleaning parenting/education support and information from an online community called “raising poppies” and this photo of quinn in the poppies makes me smile. poppies is a term that resonates much more with many poppy parents than “gifted child” and refers to the practice of “cutting down the tall poppies,” the practice of holding kids back in order to encourage uniformity in an educational setting; instead, the group focuses on how to help our tall poppies thrive in life, learning, and all the areas where they may struggle. as parents of these actual children know, poppies come with quirks that don’t always feel like a gift, and can make life extra intense sometimes. far from the common assumption that gifted kids are set up for success, there is often a lot to overcome in spite of their intelligence.
i have more to say on this topic, and still haven’t elaborated much, because it’s a really hard topic to tackle and not be perceived as humble bragging. or just plain bragging. or complaining! none of which are my intent. in reality, some of the hardest challenges of my parenting career have stemmed directly from the peculiarities of having a gifted/poppy child, especially when attempts were made to evaluate him and categorize him into one diagnosis or another. a lot of poppy parents have been there, and it’s validating to find them, because they get that asynchronous development, the hallmark characteristic of poppies, is what we were really looking at, but professionals are rarely trained to see it for what it is. asynchrony means your 3 year old may accurately tell you whether you are driving north or south, has memorized and regularly recites the lorax, is a little professor using 5 syllable words on certain topics like dinosaurs and garbage trucks, but isn’t yet sleeping through the night. it may mean your 6 year old is able to read at a high school level and do long division, speaks eloquently with adults, but does not remember to take a break to use the bathroom, and comes unglued about “his” disposable plastic water bottle being floated in the buoyancy bin and has to leave the home school group for the day. or it may mean your 10 year old is able to comprehend high school math, makes complex inferences about concepts like author’s point of view, but has his shirt on inside out and backwards and doesn’t ride a bike.
so your kid can be ages 3/1/7, or 6/15/2, or 10/18/5 in the course of any given day, encompassing all of the blessings and complications that can present.
there’s more… there are overexcitabilities, some of which, like emotional intensity, can be crippling and lead to a tendency to underachieve. there are sensory ones as well, which can make daily tasks like grinding coffee beans or vacuuming potential landmines for an epic meltdown (thankfully no longer quite so epic), and mean that your kid still can’t stand having his face or ears in the water.
i wouldn’t know anything personally about the pitfalls associated with being a poppy, but i have a post draft that i created in may 2016, and since it is not yet perfectly articulated by december of 2017, i can’t yet publish the post. when i do, its title might have something to do with how i dropped out of the tag program at my school when i was in second grade. so i definitely do not have a chip on my shoulder about this topic at all! (wink.)
i digress! the overnight field trip, continued:
the willamette heritage center was our next stop, and we got to tour some historic mill buildings containing impressive machinery for processing wool, learned about the industrial revolution, and more about the economy of oregon.
wandering back across the campus of willamette university (home of the aforementioned botanical garden) we also got to visit the rose garden, as well as a grove of cypress trees whose five crowns formed a star high above our heads.
we finished up the trip with a tour of the state capital! not only did we get to visit the house, we got to stand on the floor of the house, which is only possible if accompanied by a representative. we were in luck, and our representative david gomberg was our tour guide for our visit to the floor. this was cool, not only to get to stand on the amazing tree carpeting, but because we got to look closely at the desks occupied by representatives when the house is in session, and see such things as the buttons they push to vote yes or no on measures. after having our questions answered, we bid farewell to mr. gomberg and walked up the spiral staircase to the roof to see the gold man. finally, we visited the senate briefly, though not the floor of the senate, just the viewing balcony, with its coordinating salmon carpeting, and then we were back on the bus to head home! it was a long journey packed with learning to top off a fabulous month.
