Tag Archives: self advocacy

~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ existence

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Christmas was just the three of us. We were sick so I called off plans and visitors. There was something sweet about it, and though we missed our family we know we will see them soon. For me it resembled Rew Christmases of days of yore; we took turns opening presents and took time to express our thanks. We sank into the slow simplicity, Quinn explored his gifts and learned some html on the side; learning extra as he does when he has a break from school. Speaking of school, this fall has been pretty laid back; comparing in retrospect to sixth grade, seventh grade has been a breeze.

Quinn made me a trio of origami dolphin ornaments, which I adore and will treasure for years to come.

 

Quinn is rocking the texting this week! I heard from him tonight and the last few days and he’s been gone over a week so this is a big deal. getting closer to italy so the timing is perfect of course. putting in his paleontology camp application tomorrow for the first round deadline, and some of the texting was about getting letter of rec from his teacher and he texted me back “i did it” and I’m just feeling proud of the kiddo.

Quinn had a tearful moment writing his letter of intent for his paleontology camp application. He was bogging down and asking for wording suggestions… a wall went up when I suggested he not only say why he felt the camp would be fun for him, but also why he would be a good candidate for the camp – why they should invite him, why he would be a great addition to the group. It took some time to see behind the wall, but ultimately what was bugging him was trying to say he was any better than any other kid. At first he was phrasing it that he didn’t want to “make the decision for them” with his letter, and then I explained all kids applying would be writing similar letters, and the admissions people would have to make a tough decision if more than enough kids applied… well, he was just hating all of this information, but it was presenting more like anger or just simply aversion to “having to” write the letter but I didn’t go there… and then I finally got it. “Are you picturing the kids who don’t get to make it into the camp?” and the tears spilled over. Oh, not stubbornness, resistance, or aversion. Just empathy. Just intensity of emotions. That’s my kid. I finally got him convinced that most kids got in, that if there were kids who would cause problems, they’d figure it out from their teacher letters or things like that and maybe not invite those kids, and that worst case scenario, worthy kids who didn’t get in this time around get put on waiting list and get in next year. He still had scenarios he needed to cover, “what if this year would have been their only chance?”

“You mean if they’re a senior in high school?”

“Yeah.” We talked through all the scenarios, and how the instructors want for all the kids to go, and that’s why they have been expanding these camps (there are a whole panel of new ones this year- more fossil prep, one on illustration, etc.). I had been giving him words like “positive attitude” and “making contributions to group work” and he hadn’t been able to start typing yet but then I said let’s think of a time at last year’s camp when you showed these qualities… and tell it that way, like a story (finally a good idea) and he ended up using the story of last year’s camp having rainy weather and how he maintained a positive attitude and they still found fossils, and even pitched in to redo their instructor’s tent that flooded.

Since last time he was here, we have been playing lots of double nine dominoes (the game called chicken foot that Aunt Margie taught my brothers and I as kids). I guess I got a set of dominoes at the thrift store a while back and forgot about it, but they have been so fun. Funny when all the new Christmas toys are sitting here and we’re playing the 50 cent game. Hid play with his new stuff too, but playing games together might be his love language.

All the dinners last night. I made pizza for third dinner for everyone. He ate lots of pieces while playing dominoes. I am bragging about winning at point accumulation (which means I’m losing). I had market today, and while I was gone, he ate breakfast and more pizza, and by the time I got home he was back in bed asleep! He never does that. He slept for a couple hours and I woke him up at 4:30 to play more dominoes and eat more pizza.

We giggled a lot about contranyms.

As we played dominoes I would ask him one of his spelling words (on our list from words he had been misspelling that I gathered from his homework) every so often. One was field (he was writing feild). I told him about i before except after c, and then showed him, “except when your foreign neighbor Keith receives eight beige counterfeit sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters.” because that also made him giggle.

He wasn’t ready to sleep last night at 10pm because of his nap, so I left him with headlamp and magic cards (his dinosaur themed deck needed some rearrangement to add in his new rampaging brontodon card from his christmas stocking) and went to bed.

I did a free two week trial of the headspace meditation app. Originally it was to help me kick off my new meditation habit, but it ended up being a help to Quinn in a few difficult moments. One afternoon, overwhelmed about his homework piling up from not being up front with his dad about how much work he had, I encouraged him to take a break and listen to his favorite song. When seven nation army didn’t do the trick and he still wasn’t feeling able to get started, I asked him to come do a five-minute meditation with me. He was still grumpy after that but no longer flopping around refusing to even start, and was able to make some headway on his work. At bedtime I told him that headspace has sleep meditations and he said, “yes!!!” with both arms thrown up in celebration. I let him choose from the options, one of which is “sleepcast” which is “storytelling in a range of soothing voices” and he scrolled through and found one with an owl icon called “sleeper mountain” and he fell asleep that night listening to a 45 minute sleep story about the mountain and meditating with crickets and forest sounds.

In thinking over what to do about Quinn’s homework stress at his dad’s, I do think something will need to be said, but I think it’s going to have to come from Quinn. I am trying to keep my eye on the long term goal of Quinn self-advocating, even with his dad. The short term fix of me bringing it up to coparent could risk a blow up and I already told Quinn I wouldn’t. I’m having an ongoing conversation with Quinn about how preventing his dad’s anxiety attacks is not his job, and that it is causing his own anxiety to increase when it gets in the way of him getting his homework done for a week at a time.

He was doing better a few nights later… mostly caught up, and in pretty good spirits.

I have always sort of figured I should be able to meditate yet I have never done it. On the other hand, I realize I actually do it all the time, just not for very long. I quiet my thoughts, focus on my breath, when I’m feeling like I need to re-center. I also do it with Quinn, so he’s quite familiar. Another morning I gave him another 5 minute headspace one and he just sat on the couch with it and it’s a beautiful thing to see him sitting with his eyes closed just breathing. What do I want for him in life? That. Being ok in there.

Q asked me for a snuggle today after school and he had me sit on couch and laid himself on my lap with two fuzzy blankets over him (he was basically in egg configuration but didn’t play the egg game just then) and then Lisa kitty came right over and climbed up on top of him and curled up and we sat that way for ten minutes. I kind of want to brag on facebook about my kid, but not necessarily that he is in bed reading statistics right now, but, “my son, age twelve years ten and a half months, five foot eight inches tall, still asks to get on my lap.” It’s mildly painful but it is so sweet at the same time.

He is writing something but I don’t know what, and when I asked he wouldn’t tell me but said, “when I’m done you can read it.” I told him I totally get that, I am the same way! The apple doesn’t fall far.

~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ null gravity

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I’m playing catch up on some lifelong learner posts… I had put this process on pause during the early stages of the pandemic when it still felt too raw to look at such normal memories full of things that felt certain (like going to school); now it feels like more of a comfort to remember these moments, so the time is right. Also, we remain lifelong learners; time marches on and more lifelong learner posts are always in the making… can’t let the backlog get too out of hand. Sending love to all the home learners, whether it’s what you’ve always done, or a new path laid out before you.

~10-23 through 11-23-19~

This was the first Halloween in quite a few years that I got to see Quinn! It takes all the fingers of one of my hands to count the years I sewed Pokemon costumes (Spheal, Kyogre, Bulbasaur, Charizard, and Rowlet) and sent them off with him to wear while his dad took him trick-or-treating, or didn’t. This year, Quinn advocated for himself and made his own Halloween plans, and I was lucky enough to be involved (and with no big sewing requirements of me). Although Halloween fell on a Thursday (the day before he would come back to me from his Dad’s), he asked me to pick him up from school that afternoon and take him to the dojo to have a cookie contest with Sifu and another karate kid, each of whom baked their own batch for a cookie-bake-off. Since Quinn was going to be at his dad’s the night he needed to do his baking, he measured out his ingredients in a tupperware to bring to his dad’s, and made a plan to bake them in the toaster oven there. He baked his jam thumbprints and he brought them to the dojo! Then he participated in the final Haunted House of the year.

Quinn is navigating his homework journey with the added component of coparent’s tension on the subject. He seems to be keeping his dad in the dark about some of his assignments in order to protect against added anxiety and stress in that household. We had some serious talk about that, and about how kids aren’t supposed to have to take care of their parents on an emotional level, but he was very matter of fact. “It’s in my own best interest,” he explained, and I acknowledged his point, but also asked if he could think of any areas where he had to handle me and my emotions that way so they didn’t overflow onto him. “Nope!” He seemed relieved I wasn’t going to be an informant, but I just nod and smile when coparent tells me Quinn is all caught up, because Quinn lets me know the real work load when we get home. He is going to have more work to do in this area so he doesn’t fall behind each week he is at his other parent’s house, but I think he is already developing those strategies by metering how much communication he is doing about homework at all. I have encouraged him that he can just get to work without saying much at all, and that “less is more” can sometimes be a good communication policy on topics that can cause stress. He is also developing some capabilities such as finishing an assignment during another class (!) which, while it is less ideal than doing it at home, is an executive function skill to be sure, and one I wasn’t sure I would ever see him do.

When I got home from farmer’s market on Saturday he made a plan for the evening. He is rocking this – I give him some parameters like, it’s 3pm now, and you have until 8:30 when you get ready for bed, and you can fill in that time however you think would work well. Please fit in dinner somewhere. Then he sets his timer and sticks to the plan. No nagging! In two different sessions of one hour he got his binder completely organized. On Sunday he made an all-day plan (we had 12-2 blocked out for going to the Fill-your-pantry market to pick up our 4 gallons of honey, and I asked him to fit in meals and a shower). He stuck to the plan, opted to shower in the earlier of the two possible shower time slots, doesn’t need twenty-seven reminders and assists with showers anymore, it’s really crazy how development is just speeding along right now. That day he completed two math assignments, a couple pages of math notes, a social studies current event, a science assignment, and a language arts essay!!!!! It was five hours of homework but he wasn’t judging it because “things take me longer.” Much of it was past due work but the current event was turned in early.

That was what I meant when I said he was majestically rising to the occasion.

We had some details to work out about the holiday calendar, and Quinn got to practice letting his dad have his feelings, then deciding to do what he wants to do (take his belt test, even though it would take place on their evening of solstice). I asked if he felt caught in middle and he said it was more like he felt like all alone, like he alone could settle and decide things. I think he is noticing that he is growing into a lot of decision power and it’s good, but hard.

We got home one Friday and food was administered, but around 5:30 I recalled that last year’s day two or three gratitude had been about the middle school dance, and I had been thinking there must be one coming up soon… sure enough, it was that night. We’re still working on the two-way communication while he is at his Dad’s… But he showered and changed and I took him back to the dance, since he knew some of his friend group would be there and wanted to go. When he got outside after the dance, he looked like he was a little bummed out. When I asked what was up he said, “the friend group might break up,” and explained about two unrequited crushes, and if they both find out their crushes don’t like them, it could really destabilize the whole group and he worried that it would break. He was very upset, and I tried to tell him I thought as friends they would still have their friendships, even if it was uncomfortable to hang as a group for a time. I thought maybe it was going to be ok because maybe they wouldn’t all break each others’ hearts all at once, and maybe there is more we don’t know that can happen. I said if the group did split up, he’d still be friends with each person, and if there were brokenhearted friends, he could look around and see which friend needed him most and be a good friend to them. By the time we got home he seemed to feel better. These car ride conversations. There have been others lately with high emotions and deep topics, he and his friends being at an age where the various dimensions of their identity are really being explored.

I noticed this week I can see his Adam’s apple. and his voice has gotten one level deeper.

One night he fell asleep upside down in bed on top of his covers before he brushed teeth or said good night.

The next morning, he ate a stack of pancakes then decided he would also have the biscuits and sausage gravy that rich and I were having. I always make Quinn a biscuit, but he used to say the gravy was too spicy. This morning he just gobbled it up for second breakfast (which was eaten while he was still sitting at first breakfast.)

Quinn finished reading Ender’s Game… he loved it. That series is one of those that I’ve been waiting all his life until he would be ready for it. I recently took his hoopla (library app) off of kids mode, because I feel like it’s time for him to not have his literature censored… he may come across something more graphic, but he also is getting old enough that I think he needs more unfiltered access to the world, where he decides on the filtering out… and can come to me with questions of what he encounters, etc. I still have google on safe search – that’s still letting a lot through, but keeping out the most obscene things, and I haven’t lifted the you tube safe mode controls yet either (again…. still a lot available with that filter in place).

He got another booster shot, this time for MMRV (measles mumps rubella and varicella aka chicken pox).

He had some major fear/anxiety this time, leading up to the appointment. It was like stages of grief. he shed tears, he bargained, he did denial… I just sort of let him process. We had same nurse who was great last time (lets him watch the needle like I’m sure zero other children besides poppies). The room had dinosaur stickers on the wall but they were cartoonish and we laughed about the triceratops with four horns. Then we were talking about Ender’s Game now that he is reading the second book (Speaker For the Dead), and he was reminding me of all the cool null gravity combat details and why Ender was so good at it. Quinn really loves the use of three-dimensional space and x-y-z coordinates in the book. Ender’s trick of designating the enemy’s gate as “down” was a big deal, and once he said it, I remembered it from when I’ve read the series myself. When I told him that I have been waiting for him to be ready to read that series, he said, “and I finally am reading it, and now I’m like obsessed with null gravity combat!”

After the shot, the nurse asked him, “so how much did that hurt?” He said, “not much!” I said, “can I get that recorded?” and we all laughed. When we went out to the car Quinn actually did record a video selfie to his future self about how the fear is worse than the shot itself, and that he should not worry about the pain and just be calm.

On the ride home, we  discussed the way Ender travels between planets that are x number of light years away and how it only takes him a week or so to get 22 light years away and meanwhile his brother had been the ruler of Earth after he and his sister left, but 3000 years have passed on Earth while Ender is only a few years older. Relativity space-time stuff. “It’s kind of like wrinkling, I think,” he said.

His current math unit is the Pythagorean theorem, and he loves that, but especially that besides a2 + b2 = c2 there is also a2 + b2 + c2 = d2 to handle the third dimension. He is all about x-y-z coordinates and null gravity combat right now so math and literature are really syncing up nicely for him at the moment.

~a month in the life of a lifelong learner~ unrivaled unraveling

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~1-23-19 to 2-23-19~

 

winter wonderings

Quinn took three classes at Winter Wonderings at OSU this year, and finally got to enroll in one of the Minecraft modules. He also took manual chess programming and Oregon geology. Rich drove him to his class one Saturday while I worked farmer’s market; so grateful for his stepdad presence in Quinn’s life.

he was excited about an idea he had for his next minecraft tag class. he wanted to plant all the different species of trees, and one thing he has figured out how to do is how to plant a giant spruce tree (you plant a 2×2 area of spruce but then let one of the saplings grow, apparently) and then when it’s fully grown, he planned to mine into the trunk, creating a spiral staircase that ends up in a watchtower up at the top.

social and cultural

nestled among the progeny of camp boss

the second middle school dance took place, with a theme of midnight in Paris. He came out afterwards with his scarf and said he was the only one who attempted to dress French. “it was a semi-formal!” i had no idea. obviously a lot of other kids didn’t know what semi formal meant; he was not the only one in jeans. he had a great time, and danced all night again. otherwise, that day was a Friday and so, the usual 3 dinners and a bath.

saturday afternoon quinn binge watched naruto and rich and i napped. then we ate leftovers and went to the little mermaid. quinn had seen it with school, but he wanted to go again. he tried to prepare me for different parts “this part gets a little sad, but it gets better again later on.” he wasn’t the only one; the 3 year old girl seated in front of us breathily whispered to her mom, “it’s ariel!!!!”

quinn’s female friend who will henceforth go by the pseudonym goldberry has become friends with the whole fellowship and has been eating at the same lunch table… goldberry was in the little mermaid cast, and quinn said hi to her afterwards in the green room. this month he asked, “do you think goldberry and i will ever actually go on a date?” she was back in his group in science, and he seemed really happy about that. they were working on green home design. then later in the month, she confided in him that she is gay. he dealt with some disappointment about it not looking like they’d ever date, but also felt honored she had been comfortable enough in their friendship to know she could say this to him and trusted that he would be a good friend to her. he also seemed to appreciate that i had experienced the same thing a time or two in my life.

other social engagements this month included a sleepover at aragorn’s where there was much playing of the game go as well as video games. Rich, quinn and i attended the valentine’s dance performance. we also drove quinn and aragorn to and from their penultimate winter wonderings, and rich and i had a nice lunch and went shopping for fun chopsticks while we waited for them. as we headed home for a birthday sleepover, we got to listen to them singing every word of take on me (every bit as popular in grade 6 this year as it was in 1985 just after a-ha released it – in fact the marching band has chosen it for their song list to memorize for this year). We of the front seats of the car strained not to laugh out loud when aragorn asked, “are you guys familiar with the band nirvana?”

Anime/ramen birthday party! the characters of naruto eat their favorite food, ramen, with chopsticks, so the boys all dined accordingly. They ate lemon cupcakes in the conventional manner. We celebrated with aragorn, legolas, and legolas’s little brother. A good time was had by all, and the boy turned 12.

fine dining

We met rich’s mom for her birthday at the noodle cafe. quinn ordered shrimp tempura and udon noodle soup. he ate the tail on the first one and then said, “oh, you’re not supposed to?”

“it’s fine to eat it but was it chewy?”

he said, “yeah, it was hard to get through it.” the noodles there are amazing and big and homemade. for the first few he’d pull an individual noodle out of the broth onto his plate and cut it into bite size lengths with his fork and stab each one to convey it to his mouth. then he switched to getting one end into his mouth and sucking it in. we were laughing about how he doesn’t get out much. he kept getting distracted by the tv on the opposite end of the room showing cool aquarium fish. and then he would talk about his advanced theory on some topic… then he’d know absolutely nothing about a topic (government shutdown) so we’d explain it to him. it was fun. he asked if we could come back to the noodle cafe again sometime because he really liked the shrimp and noodles. and the crab and cheese wonton appetizers.

karate

quinn is being taken to karate by his dad on occasion, which is a big win in the department of self advocating.

One night i had no idea he would be there, so i walked in for my class to see him working with sifu, which was a pleasant surprise. i got a nice big hug and a short check in and observed that he was still wearing the same yoda socks he left in days earlier. grubby, but happy.

He had his half-blue belt test this month. he did well and got to show off his analytical side as usual, and he is doing better all the time with sparring. he still gets put on the floor in a headlock, but we talked more about the one kid who does that to him every time, about how he really doesn’t do karate when he spars, he just tackles. and how that shows a lack of skill on one level. i was able to point out some specific moves quinn made that were especially showing his strengths like his speed (he was getting punched a bit by one kid, but then got off a really fast punch to the kid’s face (and it was well within the expected range of control, he wasn’t mean or malicious but he was getting a good shot in, and both he and the other boy knew it.) and when headlock/tackle boy got quinn wrapped up, well, quinn wrapped him up right back… neither one of them were getting off the floor… it felt less one-sided than usual.

he did very well on his techniques and forms as he usually does. if someone forgot a technique, sifu would often have quinn demonstrate. he also reacted really well on action/reaction testing.

Over the longer term, it is easy to see so much growth in coordination- things like keeping his hands in fight position when he kicks… he used to always drop his hands and now almost always maintains hand position.

The ceremonial kick was still a struggle. when he talked about it later it sounded to me like he actually doesn’t believe he is flinching or feel himself flinching. i think the way he experiences it may actually be that he is doing his absolute best not to flinch, and he can’t control it. In other areas he is still figuring out how to be consistently aware of his body and i have a hunch it’s in the same category. i don’t think quinn is trying to be defiant or noncompliant, or that he is *not trying not to flinch… i think he truly believes he *is not flinching.

the awesome thing was once he told me his take on that, he moved on and wasn’t obsessed or stuck on it or disappointed with the one thing that didn’t go well, he was happy with other things, and was able to feel good.

we also had a great discussion of goals he has for his karate. he could articulate exactly what a setback it is to not be going to class during his dad’s weeks. he told me he had been discussing it with his dad, and had asked him to take him to at least one class each week so he can go a faster pace and still try for his goal.

after the belt test he grabbed two more pieces of pizza and his graph paper, pencil, and ruler/protractor/circle stencil/triangle tools, and sat at the table drawing an elaborate graph papery something. he would not tell me what it was, just that he *needed to do that at 9:30pm after a 2 hour belt test, before he could let his brain go to bed. intense!!!

we both attended a weekend karate seminar with sifu z at our dojo, which is a pretty big deal for our little town. sifu z is a 9th degree black belt from LA and we’ve been at his seminars before, but only in bigger dojos. we were worn out by the end, and learned a ton. quinn did a great job with his partners, who are both kids he can often goof off with, but they stayed on task. he was very animated on the way home, saying, “at one point we had three black belts helping us! sifu todd, sifu z, and mr martinez!” and then listed all the black belts in order of what degree (how many stripes) and then was rattling off facts about how the different lineages of kenpo pracitioners relate to one another. knowledge he has picked up by absorbing and listening to everything.

sifu todd had told sifu z’s 6 year old that if he behaved throughout the whole seminar, he would get out a balloon for him and he could take 6 tries at popping it on the ceiling fan (our sifu knows how to motivate each individual child). at the end of the seminar, he did as he had promised, and inflated a giant red balloon and the boy started launching it at the ceiling fan trying to pop it. i watched from behind quinn, who was sitting on the bench watching very intently, with his fingers stuck in his ears. Quinn has come so far with tolerating sensory input, but it’s moments like that when i realize sensory intensity is still such a big deal for him. things like popping balloons, he can now deal with emotionally (he isn’t grieving the death of the balloon anymore if it’s not his balloon) however he still wants nothing to do with hearing it pop.

executive function literature

i finally managed to get my hands on the book misdiagnosis and dual diagnoses in gifted children and adults through interlibrary loan. it’s something i should have read 6 or 7 or 11 years ago. i think i remember my therapist telling me about the book, back in the 6-7 years ago time frame, and it would have helped me sort through my is-this-asperger’s quagmire. had i been gainfully employed at the time, i may have just bought it, but that was part of the quagmire and all.

i also enjoyed another book called differently wired, written by the host of the tilt parenting podcast. both the book and the podcast i would recommend to anyone else with a person in their lives who doesn’t quite fit into the neurotypical mold.

finally, an audio book on processing speed called bright kids who can’t keep up has been on while i’ve been analyzing lab data. i have only been passively absorbing some of the soundbytes from it, but some of the things standing out are examples like your kid not remembering a party invite until it’s the last minute; or staying on the edge of the playground deciding what to do and meanwhile all their time goes by… there are lots of glimpses of how processing speed could easily be part of quinn’s package.

Quinn’s math class started geometry (he was thrilled). on his homework, he was calculating area of a parallelogram and said, “whenever i see a parallelogram, i think sandcrawler, from the jawas.” (is it okay if i’m a little disappointed he doesn’t need to slay monsters anymore to get his homework done? it was so brief. he is impressing me with some observable work ethic improvements.)

on to trapezoids, one problem gave him the area of 160, and the height of 8 and base2 of 30, but he had to solve for base1. this stumped him briefly, as he had so far been calculating area from b1 b2 and h. i said, “they give you…” and restated the values listed, “so you basically solve for x.” i continued rambling about how i thought he should write down the steps and he interrupted me “10.” then it took until the next night’s homework session to get the steps written down, though he had solved it in 2.5 seconds. there was no fretting or fighting though, just time wasting and lollygagging now. less stressful these days. this same month was when he had to determine the surface area of the pyramid of Giza but got sidetracked on the fact that the base length was a fibonacci number.

he had an A in math at the halfway point through sixth grade! most of his grades were good, though he would have had more A marks if notebook grades were not factored in (his math teacher being an exception – she overlooked his incomplete notes given he had clearly absorbed the material). he will need to work on note-taking skills more. executive functions include things like note-taking, and while some kids might just start writing down what teachers say or write on the board and develop the skill without direct step-by-step instructions, i think quinn is a guy who needs more steps spelled out such as, “if i am writing it on the board, you should write it in your notebook,” or “make sure you write down xyz notes during class today,” and most likely beginning the sentence with the name “quinn” would help it take effect. other contributing factors for him might be that it takes him extra time to write anything down, and i think he has trouble dividing his attention between listening and writing; he is absorbing all the information without taking notes, and acing his exams, so there’s that. he will continue to find his balance of effort required to learn the material vs effort required to achieve a certain grade; he has no problem learning material without taking notes, but notes are often part of the grade.

one social studies assignment had been due on friday but he “thought”‘ he could get more time to do it monday. i told him i’d rather he got it done at home because if it had been due it made more sense to get it handed in asap, and also i am encouraging him to get a grip on his notebook, so focusing his class time on that seemed wise.

they did mayan and aztec civilizations and had moved on to inca, and i remember loving the quipu knot tying code system of the incas. their assignment was to make up their own code system analogous to quipu, so basically if you have 1 knot it means A, double knot means B, etc. he did the project completely backwards. he tied knots in some yarn, “i just did what felt right,” and then he was in a position of having to reverse-engineer a code that would result in his randomly tied knots to make them stand for something meaningful.

so it was a very good thing we tackled it at home because he was stuck (how could he not be) and i encouraged him to start from where he was, and write down how many knots he had of each kind (single, double, triple knots) and then we’d decide how to reverse it. we did come up with a system, and between choosing letters to represent what he had already tied, plus adding in a few more knots or untying a few that were extra, we made it work. he is such a funny guy. this is where the executive function comes into play (or fails to) and in one of the books i am reading they use executive function interchangeably with “judgment” and say how in gifted kids judgment can lag behind intellect. he is the poster child.

somewhere buried in a homework episode about tying and untying knots to reverse engineer a solution is a metaphor for parenting.

in between busy weekend and busy school days, he has read 3 books (warriors and 2 books from the diary of an 8-bit warrior minecraft series; none of them terribly difficult but he is just as insatiably absorbing literature as ever….)

another stuck moment occurred on a math homework question: give an example of a real world application where one would need the exact area of a circle, as in, the area expressed in terms of π instead of a decimal approximation… photos were placed beside the question, one of which depicted a round skylight window. i am not sure how or why quinn would or should know why it would be necessary to calculate exact area of a circle, and i personally do not know how an area of, say, 4π  square feet is ever useful in practical application, so i was little help, but i encouraged him not to overthink it, and notice the image clue of the window. i asked what it made him think of… “a hobbit house!” and he wrote down, “to build a round door in a hobbit house,” and moved on. yay for avoiding stuckness!

his whole math class failed a test, so she gave them all a retake, and quinn worked on it thursday with everyone else, got 1-6 (out of 28 questions) done, but got stuck on 7. on friday he finally figured out 7, but got stuck on 8. i found this all out monday, with prodding and interrogation. “well, let’s go over the types of questions so you can get it finished tomorrow.” it turned out that he could reproduce the problems 7 and 8 verbatim (drawings and everything) and we sat there until he could tell me how to do them (i said i would help but not tell him how, since they were test questions) and he finally got it. he was just so convinced he “couldn’t” so therefore he could not. he just lost confidence again.

we discussed a couple things i think we can also file under executive function skills.

  1. if you struggled through problem 7 and went home that night knowing you would have the next day in class to finish the test, but went back to it with no extra preparation, you probably struggled just as much! next time, go home and figure it out or ask someone to help you figure it out. you have to believe you have the skills and were taught the things you need, and that you can find them out with a little bit of effort.
  2. if you don’t know how to do #7, skip it and come back to it after you finish the rest of the questions. when i was helping him prepare for the next attempt at finishing it, i asked him what other types of questions were left and he hadn’t even turned the page, so he didn’t know. now he hopefully will be less stuck on doing the questions in order every time. i asked him if he was open to going out of order if he was truly stuck, and he was honest and said he did prefer to go in order, but that now that we’ve talked about it he feels like he sees the benefit of skipping and coming back in this type of scenario, to save time.

one car conversation launched from quinn telling me he is going to drop out of accelerated math. his teacher told him they would either have to take the state test at the end of the year, or take her own test of the material, which was not going to be any easier than the state test. he had planned on opting out of state testing forever, but he also did not fancy the idea of taking her test, at least not the way she so threateningly advertised it. our conversation centered on talking him down from dropping out (he may have learned to look for extreme “solutions” somewhere); providing reasoning such as that the other math level teachers may have the same requirement so leaving his current level may not solve the issue; discussing how his current teacher’s communication style can sometimes feed his anxiety (and when i reworded what she said, re-framing the end of year testing as a choice he could make, simply providing reasoning that she needs to see how far they have come this year and what level they should be pursuing next school year, rather than making it sound so daunting and threatening, he admitted that didn’t sound as bad); and speaking of how the state smarter balanced testing works and why it is stressful for him, and how we can work on coping strategies if he does decide to try that one again this year. my understanding is that the sb test keeps presenting the student with more and more incrementally difficult problems until it eventually stumps them, and thereby determines the extent of their knowledge by measuring an “end point” of sorts. “but i’m a perfectionist and it causes me an unrivaled amount of stress!” said quinn. i love that he realizes why this bugs him, but also that he can carry on a conversation with me about why it doesn’t need to be a source of anxiety for him, since we agree the scores mean very little to us (we measure learning differently), that if he goes in knowing there will be some too-tough problems, he can head off that stress.

on being differently wired

during another car chat after school one day, quinn and i had another installment in our ongoing conversation about his learning style and his particular challenges and strengths in school, which i believe is helping him develop the language to talk about it all. he was telling me something about naruto and one character was said to have “an IQ of over 200!” and after he was done telling me about it, i asked him if he ever wondered about his own IQ.

“no…. yeah, actually.”

i asked him more about it and he asked, “can you give me an IQ test?”

“no, it’s a pretty involved test, so it just takes some planning… and i’m not sure if you can have one at school or not, but maybe.”

“okay.”

i was trying to convey with my tone, “if we were interested and wanted to pursue it, we could,” not stating that we were going to pursue it yet… just seeing where he stood and how he felt about it all.  delving more into what he believed would be beneficial about knowing his IQ, he told me he wasn’t sure other than knowing he would like to know.

“well, i think those tests usually say other things about how you learn and what your intellectual abilities/strengths/challenges are. people have all different combinations, say even if you have high IQ, you could have lower processing speed, or someone could have high math ability but low verbal ability, or different things like that.” i was intending to give non-specific examples but he picked right up on processing speed.

“yeah, like how my processing speed makes me need more time to think of what to write, or to take a test, but i can easily do the test, and understand the material,” and he listed some of his own quirks. and it was cool to hear him talk about his particular spice blend.

then he said, “i feel different, and i know i am, but sometimes i would like to know for sure.”

more talk about what it means to be gifted and how it’s not that someone is better or worse, it’s a difference, and it can come with things that are beneficial and others that are challenges, but it’s real and true about him. we talked about how sometimes it is nice to know and be able to name things and for example say to a teacher, “i get stuck. i really have a hard time getting unstuck sometimes. i’m stuck right now and can’t figure out how to start this assignment….” and using his teachers as a resource, once you know this Thing is something about you that maybe not everyone experiences, and being able to see yourself starting to have that experience again and call it what it is and go to your resources (teacher, peers, book, google classroom, etc.) to help you with unsticking, not just stay stuck. or, “hey i sometimes struggle with processing speed, so i need more time to finish my test,” might be something worth knowing about your learning and be able to articulate it to someone who when they hear those words will understand what they mean. i explained that sometimes tests can be beneficial if they help identify areas that can be solved or improved for the way a person learns, if that person isn’t able to just go and ask for what he needs and has to prove it to teachers that they must give more test time (or whatever the accommodation may be), but that tests are not always needed if one can self-advocate.

on the topic of identification of gifted students it turns out quinn has quite an opinion about it and feels that some kids get missed who should be in tag, and that a lot of the kids who are being missed are also being labeled other things. he said, “i’m not sure i want to have slow processing speed identified by a test or if it is, to have that told to my teachers, because a lot of people get labeled things like that and end up getting stuck in special ed.” i did not want to jump to a conclusion about what he meant by that so i asked if he knows any kids in special ed, and he said not really but he knows of one kid, (we’ll call her), “silvana. she is in special ed but the times that i have met her or been around her, i could just tell she was like me. i think when you’re like me, you can tell when other people are the same way, and i felt that with her. she may not be able to speak the same or show off what is inside her the same way i can or others can, but i just *know she is every bit as smart as others, probably a lot smarter.”

i melted into a contented mama puddle, hearing him say that. silvana (not her real name) is a dear sweet child who indeed is in special ed, does have language and learning disabilities. however, i see what he sees in her; she has been on numerous field trips with quinn’s class over the years, when i have been along as chaperone. i just love that while so many would assume that she is unable to understand, he sees right through that.

he seems to realize that gifted isn’t necessarily an easy path, it comes with its own obstacles, and not everyone who is gifted is recognized as such, and recognizing struggles sometimes means you get treated like you’re anything but gifted… and just discussing how gifted is its own special need, too. he is also seeming to appreciate having a vocabulary for his path and a way to articulate what it is like to be him in a learning environment.

i told him that for some kids, special ed is exactly what they need, in order to learn in a way that suits them. i agreed it would not be the best setting for him to learn in, and what his special needs require is maybe more time on tests, help with stuckness, etc., but also acceleration of material so he does keep moving forward with his learning. i wanted to give him perspective on how being placed in special ed isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it is the right thing.

it was a really nice chat, and he seemed to feel validated by it all, and latching onto some of the language and ways of articulating needs and solutions to challenges.

~two months in the life of a lifelong learner~ turrets and portcullises

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minecraft fortress building was a frequent occupation these past two months. quinn has also been inspired to build games in scratch, making use of a book fair purchase to familiarize with how to use code within the scratch framework to generate a game.

 

birthday books; on the right, an excellent story called eagle boy that i found at our local book store.

contemplating fortress features (like hidden sky libraries) with kitty ball.

mission control; where the scratch games are made, as well as some of the minecraft work accomplished. the head lamp slays me.

we cleared off a small area of his desktop so his piper can fit there, alongside a story cd. (he was listening to harry potter and the deathly hallows). i asked him if he felt he had figured out how to work in scratch, how to use the various commands.

“the only one i don’t know what it does yet is pen.”

“have you ever just played around with the commands and figured out what they do?” i asked.

“yeah! i figured out how to make someone jump! you go “face in direction zero (which is up) and then say move 5 steps then wait 1 second, then face in direction 180 (which is down) and then move five steps. and you actually JUMP!

“…and i know how to make gravity.”

he made his “first game ever” called whale saver, in which you have to click the space bar quickly enough to get the mama whale across the screen to the baby whale. if you are too slow, the mama whale drifts towards the left, and you lose if she gets all the way to the left and her thought bubble reads “defeat”; if she makes it to the baby, her thought bubble reads, “victory!”

then he made it more difficult by adding a shark that the mama whale has to out swim in order to reach the baby whale before the shark does.

we have an ongoing discussion concerning cool math games, and before he played it one day, we talked about using it to research how parts of a game work together, with his new perspective of game making in scratch, i.e. how you make it look like a penguin is swimming even if he is in the middle of the screen, by making other objects move past the penguin. though in my opinion there is nothing cool and a negligible amount of math embedded in cool math games, a site which i resent the schools promoting because of its blatant ads targeting kids and its ability to require restarting my computer, i am trying to find the middle ground between adamant disapproval of (big air quotes) cool math games and finding some redeeming value since it is obviously something quinn enjoys. reverting back to my principles, i asked how can we use even this despicable platform as a tool for learning?

 

he came home pretty psyched about his tag program one afternoon, just absolutely buzzing with inspiration about automata. they are going to build automata. i played dumb and asked what’s an automaton? he regurgitated the definition, understood what it meant, and was able to discuss it critically, such as when i asked “ok, so what makes it different from a robot?” we ended up watching some of the you tube videos he had seen in class, finishing up with the TED talk of theo jansen, which quinn subsequently reenacted, listing each adaptation that was added to each new iteration of strandbeest. his capacity to memorize reminds me of my ten year old self, while my 39 year old self has trouble remembering where i parked.

raspberry storytelling.

becoming entrusted with more dangerous kitchen jobs; serrated knife use, birthday candle transportation, and (the incredibly risky) making of guacamole.

shown above, his finished essay on martin luther king, jr., plus a collection of notes and research on the subject. one worksheet (most of which was empty, classic quinn) contained a space to write one connection made during reading/research on mlk where quinn had written “martin and i both are as non-violent as possible.”

 

we’ve been getting outdoors between bouts of rain. when we trek to the bayou, we sometimes catch imaginary pokemon; other times we observe trilliums, trout lilies, the flora and fauna. he was compelled to do some irl minecraft brick laying. i was intrigued to realize that he understood to alternate the way the bricks are oriented so their seams are offset in each layer. play is never pointless.

his class took a field trip to cape perpetua. we hiked, wrote and drew in nature journals, did a visitor’s center scavenger hunt, and hiked some more. our final hiking destination was the giant spruce, under whose roots the whole class crawled. walking together alongside a stream, quinn and i brainstormed descriptive language; gushing slushing sploshing galoshing giggling clapping hooshing whooshing shhhhhh… were just a few i can recall, describing our impressions of the different character of various sections.

he fell asleep on my lap on the return bus trip to school.

the library hatched a batch of baby salmon, so we stopped and paid them a visit.

baseball! i am surely biased, but i believe that quinn has very good aim, and i adore his pitching style of raising his left arm as though to place his pitch where he wants it. he has been practicing archery since he was quite small, and i noticed that when he began learning to use throwing stars, he aimed well with them, too. we are looking forward to more throwing stars, nunchucks, eskrima sticks, and bo staff classes that are going to be happening soon at our dojo.

quinn worked diligently on a birthday present for the baseball buddy pictured above (aka panda)… his very own pokemon collection. quinn sorted through his own binder to find cards of which he had duplicates, to put together a pretty awesome starter collection. he put them in a binder for panda, colored the front and back covers (raichu and greninja, panda’s faves) and he was very excited about giving him his gift.

earth day! more (slightly unfinished) school artwork.

one day when i was volunteering, quinn’s class discussed and voted on several topics, items that had been submitted to the suggestion box. one was written by quinn about rotating between play porch, gym and classroom when brain break has to happen somewhere other than the playground due to rain. his suggestion was the one voted into effect, after careful consideration of pros and cons of each alternative. their discussions are amazing to behold. (“who can show proof of listening to jasmine, and add to what she said; do you agree or disagree… because…” were some of the prompts the kids are accustomed to receiving.) they also voted on saving spots in the classroom for work (this was sorted out in all its nuances of when it is and is not okay to save spots), as well as whether to do yoga both at the beginning and end of the day (they already do it at the beginning) and they did institute an end of the day yoga session by majority vote.

quinn was pretty elated when his suggestion about brain break won in a landslide.

we also got to do a yoga session while i was there. quinn asked if we could order a set of the yoga cards for home, “so i can teach you yoga.” so we ordered some! we have done quite a few sessions so far. as yoga has been an incredible source of self care, solace, exercise and healing in my own life, i am quite pleased to see quinn embracing this positive practice.

feeding ice cream for mama’s birthday to the family of camp boss. beautiful sunny day to play with friends!

easter egg dying and hunting, and a fun (belated) easter basket when he got back from his dad’s.

one recent wendesday morning wake up (after a late bedtime due to karate then dinner then bath) was not one of my better ones (nag nag nag), so for thursday morning i decided to do a better job. when i went in he was burrowed under his grammy quilt, head and all, and my usual “good morning boo-pa-loo” song turned into more of a david attenborough narration.

“here we see a rare undescribed burrowing creature in its natural habitat. this animal has a fuzzy head and is very quiet, just before emerging from its sleeping burrow. we are hoping to catch a rare glimpse of this new species, which we shall give the name boo-pa-loo boo-pa-lee-doo, as it rises to consume one of its favorite foods; biscuits. with any luck, the aroma of the biscuits will entice the creature out of its sleeping burrow at any moment.”

for some reason, that worked better. it was easy to then coax each appendage out of the sleeping burrow with further narration, sans nagging. (i say it again: play is never pointless!)

play can be a science experiment. quinn made some spinning tops from legos, and it was a great avenue to discuss experimental design. he was telling me that the one made from the big lego wheel and the taller stick spun for the longest duration because it was the biggest. i asked him if he thought it was the larger diameter of the wheel or the weight of it (which aspect of “bigger”) that helped, and whether he could design an experiment to determine which factor was most important. he hesitated, then told me “you just gave me an idea” and came back having tested the wheel on an even longer stick, having found out that with the same wheel, the longer stick helped the top spin longer (yet another aspect of size). then he was able to verbalize how one could test two different diameters of the same weight on the same length of stick, or two different weights of the same diameter on the same length of stick, to test the diamater vs weight concept.

“concept” is a word he is using quite frequently. his battle/dungeon/castle/mythology/pokemon story language is as lyrical as ever.

in the realm of d and d, he has me on a mission to defeat a dragon, who is guarding a treasure stolen by some orcs/goblins from the elf high council (my character is an elf and she is apparently a member of said council) and right now we are discussing an alternate plan, instead of killing the dragon, to get him on our side. i freed one of the original guards who wasn’t killed when the treasure was stolen but who was taken prisoner, so he informed me that the dragon has one scale missing over his heart and that’s his weakness and the way to kill him if i wanted to, but i suggested making the dragon a shield/artificial scale and offering it to him in trade for the treasure (agreeing to set him free in the process) but then it turned out one of the orcs has the missing scale (made of mithril) and is using it as a shield so before i face the dragon the new plan is to go kill the orc with the missing scale and bring it to the dragon to return it as a peace offering.

and the experience of actually playing d and d is a lot like an incredibly long run-on sentence, so i’m going to leave that exactly how it is.

 

there was more work to be done these past months on the theme of advocating for himself. quinn arrived at the conclusion after one frustrating karate session (frustrating because of a missed week of class, and because he had forgotten the techniques he had learned the previous week) that he was disappointed about not being brought to karate at least once during his dad’s weeks. we had a pretty good conversation about how he, quinn, has a lot more power to change that than i do, and how he would be wise to communicate his wishes to his dad.

karate has provided a plethora of opportunities for self-advocating and initiative practice. our sifu believes in letting the kids have space to learn how to initiate their own advancement through curriculum; this implicitly allows them space to flounder, until they realize they are in charge of their own destiny. i very much appreciate this, and have had numerous discussions with quinn about this dynamic; such as discussing how open mat classes allow an ideal time to “bug sifu” for a new technique, given the smaller class size and therefore increased availability on the instructor’s part. children deal with so much powerlessness, and i want to teach quinn how to use what power he does have, teach him that, “it is what you make of it” and the structure of self-paced learning at karate is helping him see how much control he can have over his learning.

both his classroom this year at school, and his dojo, are achieving some of the educational priorities i hold nearest and dearest, such as connection with his teachers and a sense of belonging.

though my favorite memory this month is not my shoulder injury, one bright spot in that particular evening at the dojo was the way quinn rushed to help me with carrying my bag, and holding doors for me.

one morning we parked at school several minutes early so quinn sat on my lap and snuggled while we finished a deathly hallows chapter. when i turned it off and took the keys out of the ignition, quinn tried to take them back, then got this twinkle in his eye and said, “i’ll roll you for your keys!” and i laughed so hard. our sifu uses that particular choice bit of slang (and other good ones… “you talkin’ mess?” for example… when he’s creating a scenario for using a given self defense technique). sifu had joked the previous night to quinn, about his new day-glow safety green karate hoodie, “i’ll roll you for that hoodie” but having q use it on me (and immediately start giggling uncontrollably) was hilarious.

and i will leave you with one final gem from the school spring concert, during which such rites of passage as 50 nifty united states, found a peanut, and the rattlin’ bog were sung. but this one really says it all!