Category: Parenting

Angels happen by

Posted on by Suki

I know that this is an experience common to many parents, though we parents of “quirky” kids experience it more often.

I was sitting and watching my daughter’s soccer game with dismay. This is a girl who has great skills in practice, who simply falls apart on the field. Or rather, she becomes hypnotized. That day, she had pulled up a handful of grass and was fingering it, watching it fall from her hands, as the ball and 7 charging girls whizzed by her. She didn’t even notice.

This is the same girl who can get in the 99th percentile on a math test, but can’t sit through a math class. It’s so frustrating to see unfulfilled potential. Even more frustrating to know that there’s no worn path I can follow to help her approach her potential.

As I sat watching the game, a man came by handing out flyers. It was Bill Trimpi, who runs Santa Cruz Soccer Camp, an amazing program we stumbled upon some years ago. Bill and I did a double-take and then I explained what I was doing there. My daughter was sitting out for the moment so he couldn’t see her playing, but I explained my misery.

“But Suki,” Bill said in his patient way, “You have to remember that it’s such an achievement that she’s out there at all.”

He’s right, of course. The first time I spoke to him, I was sure that she wasn’t going to be able to handle camp. She was six years old and all fired up to play soccer, but I didn’t think she’d be able to follow their schedule, get along with the other kids, and be willing to work on the skills they were teaching.

In time, she has learned to do all of those things. Last summer she did three weeks of camp, and though she had her up and down days, she really did it. She was there and she was present in mind and body.

Talking to Bill got me focused on the goal: To get her to come out of herself and at least try to take part in things that I know she very much wants to take part in. So after the game, I pointed out to her that she’d spent much of her time on the field studying grass rather than watching the ball. We talked about how it was disrespectful of her teammates to do that, and that if she wanted to be on a team, she needed to support the team. This all made sense to her. So I issued a challenge: I said it is not important how well she plays soccer, but it is important that she enjoy it and that she be there to support her team. She had been wanting to go back to the science store to buy a little robot she’d fallen in love with, so I told her that if she stayed present in her next game, she’d get to do that.

Now really, this wasn’t such a grand motivation—she would have gotten to do that anyway, and she wanted to use her own money. But by tying soccer to something she’d been obsessing about, I got her attention, which was what she needed. At the next game, she succeeded in staying present in the first half, but did lots of grass contemplation in the second half. To her dismay and anger, I said it wasn’t time to visit the science store. All I asked, I reminded her, was that when she was out on the field she stay present in the game and support her teammates.

At the next game, I made sure to remind her before the game and at halftime. And she was on. She had a specific goal and she knew how to get there. Now, she in no way got anywhere near her potential on the field. She still was largely passive and watched her teaammates play, sometimes jumping out of the way rather than going for the ball when it was coming towards her. But she did something important, and she knew it. When one of her teammates got a goal, I watched as the other girls piled on and hugged her. My daughter kept her distance, but then in a pause a few minutes later in the game, she gave her a high-five. She was present, and that was the prize.

Yes, she got her little robot. And it will amuse her for a while. But she also got the feeling of actually being in a game, which was much more important.

I’ve come to the conclusion that good parenting without others to support us is probably nearly impossible, at least for us mere mortal moms. And when our kids throw us special challenges, as they all do at some point, we need others even more. My daughter’s coach has been outstanding in welcoming her to the team; her teammates, who must find her baffling, have been kind; I hear other parents cheering her on. On top of that, there’s Bill to happen by and reset my expectations. All of this is part of how we support each other in the hardest, most important job we’ve got.

Moderating moderation

Posted on by Suki

In general, I’m a proponent of “moderation in everything.” I believe, as my parents did, that allowing not necessarily healthy but pleasurable activities, as long as they’re balanced with healthy ones, is a good thing. In raising kids, this translates to a household where:

  • We eat sugar, but not as a replacement for healthy calories
  • We let kids play and explore the world, even when it replaces academic pursuits
  • We watch movies, but as a treat instead of a way of life.

The place where I’ve had trouble with this approach in my parenting is with activities that are completely a waste of my kids’ time, and which have addicting qualities. So we simply have never turned on commercial TV, and I don’t think that’s hurt our lives at all. And my kids don’t drink soda at all, except for the very occasional (real) ginger ale (with no high fructose corn syrup). Again, I think my kids have missed nothing by missing out on Coca-Cola.

Minecraft
This is one of my kids' friends looking at them in Minecraft! My son took a screen shot and we made him a t-shirt for his birthday.

We’ve also avoided video games almost entirely. When they were small, I didn’t think they needed to be staring at a screen when they could be interacting with the real world. Now that they’re getting older, I don’t like the violence and sexism of games, and research is showing more and more that the addictive quality of games is something we should be paying attention to. Since my husband and I aren’t gamers, it wasn’t hard to keep them out of our house.

Then the Minecraft party happened. A friend’s son wanted a treasure hunt for his birthday, but  a huge rainstorm was expected that day. So his dad programmed a treasure hunt in the interactive game Minecraft, and my son got his first taste of online video game playing.

Minecraft is a world made up of blocks. Each player is a character in the world, which can be run locally or on a server so others can join in remotely. Players can choose to play in a world that has dangers, such as evil beings called Creepers, or they can play in “peaceful mode,” where there is no random violence. (I’m pleased to note that “peaceful” is my kids’ default choice.) The main pursuit in Minecraft is crafting—building things. The kids build castles, lakes, houses, shops…. whatever occurs to them. They can also destroy things (which my daughter and a friend are doing right now as I type, with virtual TNT!). But mostly, the game (as my kids play it) emphasizes creativity.

We’ve had some really positive changes in our household that come directly from Minecraft. First of all, social changes. Our son had a rough first year of homeschooling. He’s slow to warm up to other kids, and since he wasn’t seeing other students all day, every day, he hadn’t really warmed up to any of the kids we were meeting. Minecraft allowed him to connect with some other kids, and all of a sudden he relaxed around them.

Our daughter has problems with social situations and understanding interactions with other kids. Once she started on Minecraft, she found a world where she could make mistakes and learn from them in a much more forgiving environment. She and her brother, who had been warring for years, suddenly had an interest in common. One day as we were walking behind our kids, who were intent on a Minecraft conversation, my husband and I remarked to each other, “They’re actually talking to each other!” This was news.

Another great thing that has happened is the creativity. My daughter is endlessly creative in the real world, producing piles of pictures, signs, inventions, and machines that I have to sift through before we get buried in them. Similarly, she loves the creative aspect of Minecraft. She and her brother talk endlessly about new things they are creating, and all the different qualities these things will have.

My son has taken it to a different level. One day he announced to me, “I decompiled Minecraft so I could play with the code.” He’s been taking an online Java programming class through Cabrillo College, and he decided that programming in Minecraft was how he was going to learn. Looking at other people’s code and altering it is, I know from experience, a great way to learn. When I started learning web design in the 90s, there was one book about web design. (That is: 1) The way I learned how to write HTML was by looking at other people’s code and altering it for my own use. My son is now doing that in a world full of textbooks… and learning a lot more.

So far, my son has created a “mod” (modification) that allows people to float if they can catch a chicken and place it on their head. Also, he and a friend are now collaborating on whole new aspects to their world, creating things that don’t exist in this world and giving them specific properties. Yes, the online Java class is fine. But no, it’s not inspiring him. Minecraft is inspiring him.

I haven’t gone all the way over to the other side. I don’t kid myself that most games inspire creativity and improved social skills. Most games — like most entertainment — are aimed at the lowest common denominator. They exist to sell, not to inspire.

Also, I have noticed that the addictive quality of games is very real, and very hard to combat. My son, the more compliant of my two children, will play at any chance he gets, and grumbles when I force him off. My daughter, who displays a greater tendency toward addictive behaviors, has been much more difficult to work with. She has a terrible time regulating herself. When I give her a five-minute warning, the words just fizzle away in her brain. When I give her a one-minute warning, she becomes frantic, working harder and harder to achieve goals that she’ll never reach. More often than not, in the beginning, I had to remove her hands from the keyboard and close the computer. If I had to do that, she would lose privileges for a few days. Lately, she’s regulating better because I imposed consequences outside of herself. I’d like to think that this is teaching her to be able to regulate her own behavior, though I can’t say that for sure. Most former addicts I know of have had to force themselves never to imbibe their addictive substance again. When their brains are receiving those endorphins and screaming for more, no amount of internal pressure can overcome it. In the end, it seems, addicts need to acknowledge their inability to partake in the addictive substance and move on. Perhaps this will be my daughter’s experience — there’s no way to know at this point.

But I do acknowledge that, once again, moderation has been the key. My kids are not going to start playing violent video games under my roof, no matter how creative anyone tells me they are. We still have our boundaries, and we’re sticking to them. But in smaller amounts, video gaming has brought some positive changes into our lives. Just like fine chocolate, real ginger ale, and an occasional great movie, a moderate amount of gaming suits us just fine.

The education we deserve

Posted on by Suki

I’m always mystified by pundits who urge Americans to adopt a school system devised in a country with a very different culture from ours. They’ll look at a place like, say, Singapore and tell us, “Hey, their test scores are high. We should use their educational system.”

But you can’t just peel the educational system off a culture and transplant it. Singapore boasts high test scores, yes, but it is also a straight-laced police state where teenagers caught doing graffiti are punished with public floggings.

Yes, I’m sure plenty of Americans would say that perhaps we should have public floggings, too, but we all know it’s not going to happen. An educational system, just like every other aspect of our state, grows from our culture. Our institutions change as we change. That’s why our nineteenth century schools were likely to feature a teacher standing in front of rows of students reciting from memory, but our twenty-first century schools look nothing like that. We’ve changed; our schools have changed.

American culture is not homogeneous, but we have certain strong cultural trends that are clear in our schooling. One is that we value individual liberty. Although we get mini-trends when schools start to adopt dress codes and try to crack down on student activities, overall our students feel free to express who they are. Another is that we value freedom of speech. Although our courts continually try to tell us that our kids or their teachers shouldn’t be free to say what they want in school, for the most part we are free to disagree and stand up for what we believe in.

Other parts of American culture that have been very evident in our schooling have been our drive for creativity and innovation, our belief in the power of hard work to raise our prospects in life, and our denial of old traditions that endorsed class privilege and favoritism.

But here’s what I think when I hear people saying we should try to make our educational system more like Singapore’s: There’s a very wide gulf between what a politician says and the messages that come across much more clearly and forcefully from our popular culture. Our talking heads still spout American tradition: School is for creating a vital workforce, for creating opportunity no matter who your parents are, for creating citizens who can vote responsibly. But what does our popular culture say? Here are some messages that our kids are hearing every day:

Learning is uncool. Cool people don’t care about grades. They only go to school because they have to.

School is all about doing time. You do your time and the certificate you get is just your key to freedom.

Real life is what happens when you aren’t learning. Real life doesn’t depend on anything you learn in school.

Successful people get there simply by virtue of who they are. They are stars. They didn’t have to work for it.

You should only learn what you have to in order to achieve your immediate goals. Learning for its own sake doesn’t exist.

There’s no point in working hard when there’s nothing to work hard for. Give up on work and live to party.

Our culture isn’t homogeneous, and not all kids are being bombarded with these messages, but most of them certainly are. And when you have a country full of kids who are given these messages, is it any wonder that our school system “doesn’t work”? But of course, it does work—it works exactly as our popular culture sets it up to work. It works to contain our kids. To stress them out. To keep them from having fun.

How could our educational system possibly fight successfully against messages like this? Yes, of course, we have plenty of great teachers who inspire kids who have never been inspired before. We have lots of kids who are self-motivated and willing to swim against our cultural currents. But in a larger sense, our schools are what we are. We have houses full of TVs and video games. We have parents who talk more to their cell phones than to their kids. We have huge cults of celebrity but ignore real achievement that’s right in front of us.

Perhaps, before we go adopting another culture’s school system, our culture needs a little bit of public flogging. Until then, we’re getting exactly the sort of education we deserve.

Food Day!

Posted on by Suki

I have long been a fan of an amazing and wonderful organization called the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. It seems that every time there is positive movement in the kids’ entertainment world (such as Disney’s admission that Baby Einstein is not educational), the CCFC is behind it.

Food DayTheir latest missive to their supporters is about Food Day, something I hadn’t heard of before. It sounds like a great idea that many parents could learn from. From CCFC:

CCFC is proud to be a supporter of the first annual Food Day!  We hope you’ll join us today in celebrating the power and possibility of food as we work to create a healthy food culture.  Here are four great ways to get involved:   

1. From potlucks to film screenings to special farmers’ markets, there are thousands of Food Day events around the country today.  Visit foodday.org to find an event near you.

2. Cook with your kids!  Check out these great Food Day recipes: http://foodday.org/why-eat-real/recipes.php

3. Take a stand for children.  Join our friends at Corporate Accountability International in telling McDonald’s to stop junk food marketing to kids.

4. Tell Congress to support the Eat Real Agenda, a six-point plan to fix America’s broken food system including ending junk food marketing to children. You can read the entire agenda and send a message to Congress by visiting Moms Rising’s website.

I wish we didn’t have to have a “food day” in this country. Wouldn’t it be great if people just understood how to eat? If parents taught their kids healthy eating habits that they’d learned from their parents? Unfortunately, somewhere along the way our culture lost this essential parent-to-child transmission. There are kids out there being raised by people who never ate home-cooked meals, and who have no idea that their health problems stem directly from  the “food products” that were marketed to them in lieu of real, wholesome cooking.

It’s time our country fixed this problem. We’ve fixed plenty of other problems, so it seems like this one, which is really only about fifty years in the making, should be pretty easy to undo.

The problem is, the money is on the other side. And in this country, money is speech. Money is power. Money is why when you’re in the grocery store trying to buy real ingredients to make into real food, all your kids notice is Spongebob on the salty, fatty, nutrition-free product on the next shelf.

All parents owe a debt to people who spend their lives yelling at people who have no interest in listening to their message, except when it comes pre-lubricated with campaign donations. Every day is Food Day in my house, and it may be in yours as well. But pass this on, in case this information can change the lives of other children in your community.

How about just considering us people?

Posted on by Suki

I spent much of the morning sitting in a local bank, opening a new bank account for the new homeschooling cooperative — the Discovery Learning Center — that is now a corporation (and on its way to being a nonprofit).

Doing things in banks always takes longer than it should, doesn’t it? This is why we didn’t bring our children. There we were, four homeschooling moms, out to create something really great for our kids. I know that at least two of us have master’s degrees, and that we are all clearly over the age of consent. We’d brought all the paperwork. We had our act together. There was nothing about us to suggest anything but the obvious: four smart women starting a nonprofit.

When, then, did the young man helping us feel the need to refer to us—not just once, but repeatedly—as “girls”?

The first time he said it I only paused a second before pointing out, “I think we’re all women here.”

When he was off at the photocopier, we discussed this weird tick he had.

“I have to wonder,” said one of the moms. “Does he refer to male business owners as ‘boys’?”

I’d been wondering that myself.

“Most of us are old enough to be his mother,” said another mom. “I know I am!”

I certainly was.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “he’s not from around here. Most kids these days speak in a much more gender-neutral way.”

When he returned, one of the moms asked him, without embarrassment, “Where are you from?”

“Santa Cruz, born and raised,” he said.

Well, there goes that theory.

Feminists talk about the difficulty of reaching the “post-feminist” generation. Young women these days think that all the wars have been won. They think there’s no point in making a ruckus like their moms and grandmas did. Or at least, that’s the way it seems.

But really, “girls”? When I told my husband, he said to me, “I do hope you started to respond to him with ‘young man’!”

Alas, my irony-generator was out of operation. I just thought it was so weird.

Think about it: a few men starting a nonprofit corporation go in to start an account. The young female banker looks at them suavely, her face in a carefully insinuating sneer.

“So, what can I do for you boys today?”

That’s something from movies, right? Could you ever imagine a woman treating men—even more, men twice her age—that way? Or even a young man treating a group of men that way?

Really, I’d like to think we were angry, but we were in fact quite amused. Who does that… boy… think he is? He’s a bank clerk, for god’s sake. We’re doing something real, starting something that will benefit our community, and he sits around all day taking two hours to set up business accounts for businesses that make so little money the IRS hardly wants to hear from them.

Half of me wishes I’d said to him what I was thinking, which was something like this: “You are showing yourself to be so small, so weak, so completely lacking in worldliness when you call us girls. Do yourself a favor and grow up.”

The other half of me wishes I’d taunted him: “Thanks, boy, for handling that. Typing that data must have been so exhausting. Perhaps you need to rest your pretty head now a while.”

But the polite whole me of me thanked him and walked out. We’d made our point. The first time he said “girls,” I’d made it clear to him that wasn’t acceptable.

So for the rest of the time, we were “ladies.”

Great. And here’s for the really mind-blowing suggestion: How about just considering us….

…people?

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