Hands Full of Rocks

More things take root

For years, Mr G has been periodically something of a pessimist - a little cautious, a little anxious, a little wary. Not a lot, but a little, and not always, but regularly.

I think natively, he's more of an optimist (he was as a little child), but he also is enough of an odd duck that he has developed some caution. And then maybe too much caution, for a while. At school, he had a series of conflicts that left him feeling a bit iffy last year, like he didn't have skills and he didn't have ability. He started stringing those together into a series of unfortunate events, and that made everything bad.

So we talked (because we're lecture-y like that), and talked. I proposed the research-based perspective that optimists get more good events in life in part because they are always on the watch for the good thing, they know it is coming but don't know from where, or when. Eyes open, watching, waiting, and see, there! and there, again! Research shows that it isn't that life is so different for optimists and pessimists, but that pessimists miss opportunities because they are not seeking them with quite the same constancy that optimists do.

That was last year. Lecture over, I left it alone. Mostly. But over the summer, ignored it, let other things be important.

And then today, ep tells me that Mr G is loving school, loving it loving it loving it. When he was asked for more information about what/how/why, Mr G said, "I decided that every day was going to be good."

Elaborating, he clarified that he had made the choice to see every day as promising good things, and so he is finding he is always noticing the good things that happen. He's learning stuff, he's doing well on tests, he has adventures and talks to friends and discovers something new. Every day is amazing.

And he's also aware that this was a choice. He chose to look for the good. And see, there it is!

Damn, if only I'd known before I was 12 that happiness could be a choice. Heck, before 20.

I didn't learn to be an optimist until late high school, and even then it wasn't something I thought was a choice. It coincided (probably not incidentally) with me growing 6 inches in one year (4 in the summer), and suddenly being taller than my peers. My confidence shot up with my height, and I went from being fairly introverted and shy (both) to being rather a lot bold. The bold I think is what confused the issue on Introvert vs. Extravert - certainly I was way more out there, and that's when I started being a lot more, er, friendly (dating a lot more, that is). And those successes rolled into a sense of being successful, and attractive, and powerful, and probably arrogant and annoying, too.

So here I am, now. I still choose to be happy, to see the opportunities, to look for the chances. It takes effort some days, but that's okay - it is a choice I'm willing to make.

And so is Mr G.

What I did over summer vacation (1)

When I was a kid, summer meant I ran around and climbed in the mountains and went fishing, and for the big deal we went to California to visit my relatives.

Mr G, Mr B, Miss M, and Miss R get to do something that I would have just rolled over and died for.

They're helping on an archeological dig. It's not hugely historically significant, just local history.

But.

Mr G and Mr B helped find and uncover the foundation wall of the greenhouse on the site we're working. (That's him working it there, next to the string used to mark the site.)

Mr G, being young and sturdy, got to be down in the hole, digging out the wall along its length, pulling out chunks of glazing from the greenhouse windows that had fallen to the ground.

He's actually disappointed that the next dig date he'll be at sleep-away camp. He's super excited about sleep-away camp, but ... he's gonna miss a dig. Dang.

And Mr B?

Likewise electrified by finding history in the dirt. He was working the surface of the wall, clearing it out so we could find out how far it went.
Speculating on where the corner would end, how big the building was, and then following the brick line to see where it actually ended, testing his theory.

Down on his knees, every bit of his attention focused on scraping down to get the top layer of dirt off, then sweeping it away to expose the shape of it.

No complaints. Trying to tear them away even to go get food in them was a challenge.

The experienced adults on the dig were skeptical that the joy of being on a dig would stick - they get a lot of kids, but they grow up a bit and then are too busy with other things to come back. I hope that my kids stick around for the rest of it. Granted, my kids are huge into history, too, so that should help. And it will be okay if they decide they have more important things to do.

They'll still have had a chance to do it, discover history they can touch, learn about how the process of recovering the past works.

Miss M and Miss R were less mentally engaged, even if they were totally there physically - they're not sure what we're doing other than digging up stuff, picking wormies out of the dirt going into the screens for sifting, or looking for chunks of coal or pottery shards.

But that's okay. They're 4. They're good at picking worms out and looking for coal and pottery shards (Miss R is working the screen, fishing out rocks, worms, and roots and searching for pottery shards and coal).

Miss M is even good at loading the dirt from the trench into the screen (which is what she'd doing here - she's in the long-sleeve purple shirt, bringing a trowel-load over).

And before anyone says 'wow, what cool parents to get their kids into something like this' - I take no credit for the experience. When I gave my mom the job of adding enchantment to their lives, she took it seriously. Part of that is the joy in discovery of the world that exploring presents. She'd have been on this fast...

But this isn't even my mom's range. This, in particular, is my sister's gift. My eldest sister does a lot of charitable work, and particularly enjoys getting physically involved with some of it. In this case, she learned about this dig (which is run by a non-profit), and thought it was a perfect situation for the kids to get involved. She's a contributing member to the non-profit. And we provide strong backs and not-so-weak minds to shovel and clear, dig, sift, and collect.

Mostly, we cleared the site and started two small new areas of digging for the dig season. That one trench managed to hit the greenhouse wall was cool. But for the most part, we found nothing  interesting - a few pottery shards, some glass (period glass - turn of the century), a lot of coal. It's grubby, manual effort, with just a few moments of glee sprinkled about. It's also family time, working with mom and dad, aunties and Baba, and making friends across generations with others who came to dig. Mr G and Mr B worked mostly with a couple of older gentlemen - one probably easily in his 70's, the other nearer his 50's. We didn't supervise that, just let them get to work. More management was required for the girls, no shock.

Very satisfactory. I end up so grateful for family willing to engage my kids in their passions. Even if my kids never come back to the dig again, hopefully they'll remember, and have the roots of their lives forever tapped into digging in the dirt, and finding that history is something they can touch.

Research: Eat dirt! Be human.

One of my step-dads is a microbiologist. He wasn't involved in dirt analysis, but he certainly never had any trouble with us eating dirt. It was just what kids do.

But there's a lot of paranoia about eating dirt in the popular culture. Wash everything. Use antibiotic soaps. Toxins everywhere. Lead in dust in play lots. Toxoplasmosis in the sandbox.

What to do? We can home-test for lead in our garden dirt (the little test kits work on dirt, too), but ... well, beyond that, what?

And is it really needful? The hygiene hypothesis says it is important to be rather not-clean, as a child. To eat germs, even potentially get infected with parasites - it boosts immune function amazingly, being exposed to those relatively (cough) harmless bacteria found in the garden. Presuming you have one, I suppose.

I ran across an article by a microbiologist (actually from the same university where my step-dad taught and researched many years ago) about eating dirt. The article (linked below) is both scary and encouraging, and philosophical and multi-disciplinary... eating dirt is a human behavior that is essential and not at all uncommon around the world. It is, in fact, expected that pregnant women in some areas will naturally eat a lot of dirt. Kids tend to eat loam (topsoil), pregnant women dig for the good stuff. Eating dirt isn't just part of being human, at a fundamental level, eating dirt helps MAKE us fully human, at our best expression of that.

The depth of how it works, how it intersects with our sense of self at the biological level and beyond, that's what fascinated me about this article. (Learning how much dirt consumption was considered normal was also pretty interesting.)

It is worth reading the whole article.

More architectural solutions ...

So, where were we?

Right, architectural solutions, by sense.

Taste and Smell.

I'll start with Smell. It's funny that we tend to ignore this one, when it is so profoundly cross-wired into our psyches. I just read an article by a woman who lost her sense of smell, and ... well, it's a huge loss. It affects all sorts of layers of joy and happiness. Depression is a huge problem. Memory, nostalgia, our sense of place all tie into the sense of smell. Enrichment is not, however, the same as putting up candles and incense and airwick all over the place. The point of enrichment is meaningful scent. One aspect of this is cooking - not just heating up, but cooking, which fills the entire enclosed area with the aroma of the meal to come.

Another aspect of this is open windows, when this is at all possible, or otherwise experiencing the scent of the earth. Dirt, gardening, walks in parks, growing an herb garden on the windowsill or in window boxes, flowers, trees, water (fountains, pools, oceans, creeks, even marshland)... the experience of nature is embedded with scent. Enrichment with scent also includes learning to identify the herbs and spices of our foods by scent, and to find and use scents for comfort (lavender under the pillow, say). Identifying flowers in bloom by scent is a joyful game for many small children. What is it? Close your eyes, smell, and guess.

And then there's impoverishment, again. This is found perhaps in the reduction in the constant barrage of scents. Urban living is full of odors, often changing rapidly as we move along (granted, we're small-town-ish, not urban, but it still happens). Slowing down and noting the transitions of the smells, both good and bad, is one way to control and contain the information flow. Finding a place that has one strong steady smell, like a beach, can also be useful. The scents tend to drop to the background when they're constant. But the information is still there.

And now taste. Taste has some complex issues when it comes to toddlers. They're not really interested in exploring flavor once they hit about 2, at least where it comes to food. A few will remain interested in variety, but more will want to have the same same same all the time. This is genetic, and it probably relates to survival - toddlers and preschoolers able to leave mom's side would be more at risk if they ate everything they touched. So fearing new foods is a very helpful adaptation. The tastes will come back, in time, for most of them. Trying to force foods is just going to cause fights, though.

Instead, it may make more sense to explore taste without food. Herb gardens are one way. There's way less social/emotional/family pressure around, say, tasting a plant, than tasting grandma's cooked carrots. Growing a vegetable garden is another way for the kids to explore taste - trying, seeing if it is good, is far more fun if you grew it. It still might not be good, but it may be interesting.

And while it might not be the ideal approach, things like pet feed and bird seed can be fascinating explorations of taste. For the most part, cat and dog food (dry, presumably) won't cause any harm if nibbled (watch for choking hazards). Making food for the birds, and seeing if we like it, too, is another thing to explore (use appropriate caution with peanut butter). Other ideas: Making home-made play-do, that can be tasted, good. Tasting snow (fresh caught, LOL!), making ice cream, asking your child for advice on what else to put into the sauce ('can you sniff these herbs, and taste this sauce and tell me what you think I should add?' - my mom played that with me quite often, and I loved it as a game.)

Many people my age were raised with a horror of eating things that might be dirty - the extremes of sterilize/clean were impressed on us. But the hygiene hypothesis suggests that there's such a thing as too clean, too sterile, and it isn't good for us. Tasting a rock to see if they taste like anything maybe isn't a bad idea. Maybe not one from the sludge, though. Apply reason, not horror.

So, that's the major senses, other than sense of self.

What, though, if your child resists any attempt to prune or enhance? How do you deal with the concept of ownership of toys or books, at the same time as dealing with impoverishing the environment? How does one get past the natural tendency of the 2 1/2 - 4 1/2 (er, 6 1/2?) year old to HOARD ALL CHERISHED THINGS?

What we did was to give total power to return the item to circulation. At first, when we instituted the toy library, there was a lot of stressful running up and down, bringing items back out. We did the one-for-one trade option (though there was always creep anyway). We gradually moved toys into the 'to go down' box, and they fished through those as we picked it up to take it away to be sorted back into the bins. But as we kept allowing them to go get that one thing, they eased up. The toy library became their space, not 'invisible space'. They still tend to tear through it like a tornado, but if I say to them, 'I'm going to clear things down to the library - what two classifications of item do you want to keep?' they will think quite clearly about what it is they're playing with most, and wave a hand as they turn back to their work, and say, 'the rest can go down' with nary a blink.

It becomes a matter of choice. But it has to be brought in gently, unless you've started with it from the beginning, because it can easily smell a lot like parental control. I know people who use the library concept, but have the shelves nearer the play area. Some kids find that too distracting, though, and cannot enjoy the space and the play without wondering what's in THAT box, and the other, and what about this one? A separate room, accessible, is good. Harder in apartments, I know. Our house is tiny, but not quite apartment size.

Limiting what comes in to only that which is loved, beautiful, and quality is another way to go. But working that from the gift angle is hard, and so much cheap plastic crap (CPC, I think that term is from Moxie) leaks in around the edges. Add in loving grandparents, and the tide of even quality items can overwhelm. And if we had any issues of deprivation or want or envy that weren't handled well by our parents or peers ourselves, it becomes even harder to stem the tide - we don't really want to stop it, or are conflicted. Certainly I'm guilty of this with books. I could never have enough books as a kid. Now, my kids have effectively, too many. We could fill a small-town school library, with everything from science to literature, fiction, poetry... books. Love books. Too many books and one can't take care of them. More than 75% of the shelf jammed with books and to a child it looks like there's no place to put any more back.

And ownership - Since I had items taken away and sold without my permission as a child (and I remember it), I'm touchy about giving a child a gift and then treating the item as if it did not belong to the child at all, but to the adults. If you give it to the child, it belongs to the child. The toy library shouldn't be a taking away so much as a home for things not being used right this moment.

There are sensitive periods for the concept of organization and order. Preschool is one of them, but the earlier, the better. Once you get toward 4 or so, order itself transitions to organizing/categorizing (at least in my kids), and the emotional hoarding is a big deal, so having many places to put things (safely, in special places) is more important than having few or many items to start with. The next sensitive period seems to be the highly DISorganized 7-year-old stage, when their minds are transitioning from logic to social processing again, and they can again be coached and guided through the problem-solving, gently but frequently, with an assumption that it will take a good solid year for any of it to really develop as a strength of skill (remembering that one is dealing with a brain that is in flux in major ways). It is much easier to get them to choose what to keep out or put away when they get closer to 7. This doesn't mean don't try between now and then, but don't panic and tread gently when/if they resist. It's normal for them to cling to things at that age. And instead, find other impoverished spaces for them to inhabit - something as simple as a basketball court can be a blessing.

A lot of the process of architectural solutions is found in the intersection of their developmental level (as Cathy noted earlier) - the same issues of boundary and exploration will come up again, with a new spin and flavor depending on the age, over and over. That's why I often talk about parenting as a garden, with seasons, and years and years of season after season in which to work. Toddlerhood is just one of the seasons. 

A good day, and lessons learned

Went to the National Zoo yesterday, to meet up with some Moxie moms.

We got there later than hoped, and landed after most of the others had already left - 2 PM, right smack in meltdown-nap time. We forget sometimes that we're a bit on the older end of the kids for probably the bulk of Moxie's fans. Not the top, certainly, but past the mid-way point. Anything after 1 PM gets iffy.

So, regrets that we didn't meet more than two others. Wave in passing, we were in the same place, just not the same time.

All things considered, it balanced out to a good day. But there were definitely things to discuss coming out of it.

First off, I must say that the day started brilliantly, with B not only getting the usually pretty lazy one-eyed Snickers back into a trot repeatedly, but spending his entire lesson working really hard. Even though he was tired, he was grumpy because we (both) forgot his riding gloves, and he was kinda hoping for a horse other than the ever-foot-dragging ancient (but patient) Snickers. (he's 28 - the mom watching the lesson before us remembered learning to ride on him.) Anyway, I remembered my thinking about the smart/talent thing, and praised the effort, willingness, trying again. More, I remembered to be proud of his striving, not just his inborn affinity for horses. And I was proud. Proud to see him handle his horse back down from an unexpected canter, proud to see him learn - really get - about five different things that were interfering with his forward progress (like he was cuing the horse to slow down on turns, which is why he tends to end up at a walk on turns - hey, presto, the instructor figured it out, but he's getting it!). Anyway, great start, going from grumpy resentful embarrassment (he so hates being improperly outfitted for the task), to success and success again.

After that, though, we were winging it. Packing up (had enjoyed a slower pace the night before, so not packed or set up and the car had to be cleaned out for the trip, and... thankfully, ep stayed behind and worked while I watched the lesson). And then leaving, and then turning around and going back for the things we forgot (just a few blocks away, but still). And then going again.

During the long drive, we did our usual goal-setting. What are the goals for today? We've learned the hard way that if we don't state them, we tend to run on conflicting goals, and then someone ends up grumpy (or everyone). Lesson 1 for today: State goals for the event AND for the rest of the day. Ep had a goal of getting back home in time for a reasonable date night, and that wasn't stated. It could have been worked in, but we were working the 'hedra meet and connect with caramama and others' and 'kids enjoy themselves' and 'everyone is fed and rested appropriately' goals. We'd stated the goals for the 'trip' part, but not the coming home part. We could have done takeout instead of a restaurant, it would have worked well enough, coming home. We arrived home (including dropping the kids off) after 9:30 PM, and tired. Too late for the movie. And due to the miss, too grumpy for much of anything but dealing with the grumpies.

Lesson 2: Problem solving works even when we're grumpy (and we should probably start sooner when we're grumpy). The grumpy never quite got to the really miserable state we can (fortunately briefly) touch down in. At least on my side it didn't. We do tend to turn the lumpy bits over and over, trying to find a comfortable place to start, and that can be a bit uncomfortable. But... well, even tired and grumpy, we worked out the big lumps before heading off to bed.

Lesson 3: Consider carefully the duration of the 'fun part' compared to the duration of the transit part (and Lesson 3a: figure out in advance how to balance their sensory systems BEFORE the fun part). We left shortly after 11, arrived at 2 PM... with kids really wound up from the car ride, and then wired from the metro ride (sensory deprivation, sensory overstimulation... whee). M and R were relatively okay (ish) though R was signaling her sensory deprivation by climbing on me. M at least mainly needs to run and run and run and run and run, so sitting on the hill was good - she got to run. So she was fine. B and G... well, their main sensory re-set is through large muscle exercise, plus compression. Which means leaping on people and wrestling. Which just bugs the peep out of me, especially as I know that while they're down-grading their sensory response, they tend to get less and less safe with it before they get to fully settled. Ugh. I wasn't cuing well to their needs on that, and was really trying to set the pace to avoid the unsafe/disrespectful versions that tend to cycle in... but wasn't getting how to re-set their systems. Oy. that was a lesson learned in retrospect (and one I usually learn in retrospect, and then don't apply well in the process again - my own sensory processing issues differ, so their urgency to be jumpy and jumped upon does not compute). Sigh. Will need to work on that one still. But hey, at least I let M race around and crash a few times without flinching. I'm getting better at the not flinching with her (she over-reads my reactions, and ends up magnifying my response in herself - if I leap up, she definitely thinks something horrible has happened).

Lesson... um, 4: I need to figure out my own Beauty issues, still. When I saw caramama, I thought, 'she's lovely!,' and then wondered what she thought of ... not me, but of how I looked. GAH. My baseline feel was already 'nice person, smart, interesting, good instincts, good mom' and no matter what she looked like, I'd have felt the same on that. But the moment I noticed she was pretty, I wondered if I was pretty, too. Sheesh. (data points, 2, extrapolation: "the women who read Ask Moxie are all beautiful and their spouses are intelligent and interesting" - though I think I nodded to Colleen's DH a couple of times, and had only a few words more with caramama's DH. Regardless, they seem the kinds I'd expect to find interesting, and probably funny, at a party. If we ever saw them at a party where we weren't all chasing kids.) (EDIT: Note I already know the women are intelligent and interesting, hence only noting their beauty in the remarks above - it sounds like 'girl = pretty counts, boy = smart counts' but that's not what I was doing. I think if I already knew the guys a bit more, I'd probably go with the looks thing as the next item I noticed. If I'm allowed to notice their looks. ;) ).

Lesson 5: Reminder (this one I already know): It is impossible to actually get to know someone while you're both wrangling children. Observe them, a bit, maybe. Get a sense of them a bit. Get to know? Nope. It's all fragments of conversations, and the more complete conversations are usually with the kids, not with the adults.

Lesson 6: (maybe more of an interesting note than a lesson) Body memories from childhood can still pop up, even watching someone else's kids. I was watching caramama's charming (and intent) daughter trying out her hill-walking skills on the grass, and could feel in myself the startlement of the earth being higher on one side than the other. I could remember the crazy tilting feeling of trying to walk down hill in grass, feel the grass, feel the shape of the hill, feel the sense that someone kind of tilted the world with each step - it was FLAT and EVEN except here, each step the world tilted away from me. I could feel the crazy dragging downward of the slope, pulling me sideways as I tried to walk straight across the incline. I could feel the thrill of fear and courage below the urgency to master this tricky bit. On the drive home, I called my mom, and sure enough, I'd spent many a day on that very same hill, mastering the up and down and across. Only, in my flash-back recollection, the hill went on forever, endless up and endless down. Funny how much smaller the world is when you get big.

Anyway, lessons learned. Good lessons, for a good day. Glad we did it. As always, wish I'd done it better, but also not beating myself up - next time we do something like this, I'll have a better handle on it, and the time after that, a better handle again. By the time I'm doing this with my grandkids (if), I might have a good clue. Only they'll be different kids, and I'll be learning all over again. But that's okay, too.