Hands Full of Rocks

Oh, boy! Girls have noticed The Boyo... (again/still)

So, Mr G has a wee problem.

He's cute.

Oh, such a problem to have, but given the 12-year-old-girl-hormones-thing, and his tendency to think in terms of 'I am an island unto myself', we have something of a challenge on our hands!

Ah, but the fun, too!

Maybe not so much for him, as he finds it disturbing (though also gratifying by the smile he couldn't quite suppress) to have girls come up and just stand there watching him on the playground. Or talking to him about his hair. Or hearing from his friends that so-and-so likes him.

When he says 'likes me' the sound has italics. 

LIKES. Like, uh, 'that kind of like'. AHHHHH! he says, run away!

He's confounded.

Not sure what to do.

Flattered.

Weirded out.

A bit overwhelmed.

All of that.

And he's Mr G. So he didn't at first buy it - were girls really that hot over him?

So he tested the theory. He went and sat by himself on the playground. Looked pensive, and thoughtful, and solitary. Girls kind of wandered nearer and waved and smiled. The way he said it sounded like they giggled, too, though he didn't say so.

He was freaked a bit by it.

So I told him he had a simple solution - stop sitting by himself looking pensive.

Heh. Kind of like saying 'if it hurts, stop doing it'.

He didn't find that so funny. Darn.

Anyway, we've been talking the last few days as a result, about the Girl Thing. And the Girlfriend Thing.

He was thrilled with the idea that he could use us Parents as a stick to beat them back with. Mr G, if a girl starts getting to the 'would you go out with me/be my boyfriend' level of conversation, you have my direct permission to say, 'Sorry, my parents won't let me have a girlfriend until I'm (whatever age he chooses to say, I suggested 14 was a fair start).'

They might argue or pout or count him out as too reliant on his parents, but hey, still problem solved.

And in the meantime? We talked about how to be friends with a girl. Talked about asking her questions, being nice but not encouraging excess, and allowing her to just be friends. Giving her room and time to chill out a bit, calm down, get to know him for real instead of just watching him on the playground and admiring his hair and his fabo new teeth (braces off!).

I asked him if he thought any of the girls he knew were cute.

I got The Look.

The OhPleezeYouMustBeKidding look. The look had italics, too.

Still, I thought it a fair question. And he gave it a fair thought, but couldn't come up with how to answer.

Me being me, I gave him a multiple choice answer to select from. He picked (very paraphrased as I was rather direct with my comments): "I'm not really interested in prepubescent/near-pubescent girls, thanks."

Okay, so he already has a preference for high school-to-college-age women, with their, er, physiological maturity in evidence. So to speak.

But he's also handling that aspect well - he thinks dating a girl who is not physically demonstrating a greater maturity is kind of freaky. Ew! Girls that age are not ready to date.

He likewise has a strong preference for waiting himself - he thinks both he and his peers should be much more grown up first.

Which isn't to say he won't be looking at the older girls. He already does. He'll admire the older girls/women, but he really does not want to act on it.

Fine by me, all around.

Still, the start of some new conversations. About learning about girls from girls, and understanding that they are different from each other as well as different from him, and being okay with that. I want him to be able to hold to the statement he made when he was seven: that girls are just people, and there's nothing wrong with being friends with them.

It's kind of the Acceptant Loving Faithful thing, starting up for real. A new set of filters to bring in focus - remember that they are themselves, accept that even when you don't understand it, act kindly and with affection toward your friends, and act faithfully toward them and yourself.

Starting with Acceptant for now.

He seems okay with that perspective. Considering it. Taking it seriously. We'll talk strategies for conversations that don't go to heck immediately, and how to set a boundary (and how annoying it is to have to set it repeatedly, but also how very hard it is to fight hormones so some compassion and patience required in the process).

Is it weird that I think it is really really FUN to get to where we're talking sex, and dating, and pornography, and the implications of being too friendly, STDs, social risk, and heartbreak? I am thrilled that he went to Ep first, told him what was going on that was bothering him (Girl. Likes me. Help!!).

I'm also glad he then came to me after talking to his dad, and asked if dad had filled me in (Nope, he hadn't had time, but it was nice to not have shared it yet, on this go, as that set the tone and required he fill me in on the whole deal). And then that he went ahead and told me. Just let the conversation roll.

It's really exciting to me to watch him hit this stage, to see the teen inside the boy peek out, to watch the suppressed satisfaction of being attractive to someone leak out around the edges, but at the same time see the will to make sane choices remain.

I love that we get to have these talks. That he trusts us with it. I don't fool myself that all the kids will be that way with us - they're each so different. But I'm glad I get to have this child for my first run at it. I'm sure I'll make some mistakes, but hopefully nothing too catastrophic.

And meanwhile, I'll let him carry on working on learning how to be friends with girls. Hormonal preteen/tween girls.

Provided they don't go all weird on him, anyway.

Note to self...

Before letting child submit a proposal to do their science report model as origami, make sure we can actually FOLD the damn thing. Chambered Nautilus. WOW, did that suck trying to make it work.

Much for ep, on the suckage.

Less for me, because he found the simple version, so we did that instead. Not so cool looking, but still looks okay.

Still - test first on the new ideas before submitting. Proof of concept!

School begins, changes coming

The boys started school yesterday. Mr G is now in 6th grade, and Mr B is in 2nd. Miss M and Miss R are still in preschool, the year before Kindergarten, though their school doesn't start for another week and a bit. Everyone is at their old schools from last year.

I expect the process to be fairly smooth, this year. No freakouts, no meltdowns (or at least just the usual one). Mr B is going to miss his old teacher, but he also is excited about the new one. She rides (horseback). He's so in. He's also excited that they will be learning both French and Spanish this year.

Mr G is rolling right into the year like it was a shorter vacation between last year and this than it was. Yeah, yeah, knows all that, carrying on. Laughing at the dinner table, being teased about remembering his Latin from last year. He's easy with it.

Miss M is going to have her same classroom and same teachers. Miss R will have a new teacher in her room, but in the way of a small state and a small school community (Montessori), it is Mr G's favorite teacher from his old school.

The bigger changes coming up are for the grownups.

Ep is starting an architecture firm. He's already getting business slowly but regularly from his existing efforts. He's moving forward steadily at this point, and will be developing it gradually over the next few years. It is still a big deal, even gradually. sCorp, LLC, LLP, taxes, accountant, lawyer, insurance, aaaaaaahhhhhh!

I am also starting a 'new' job tomorrow. Same company, different role. It's one I am well-suited for, but it was supposed to only be 1/2 time. The client said no, they want full time. I'm going uh, wait, what about all the other stuff I'm supposed to be doing here, the stuff that I will not get to do if I'm working full-time on something else??? I'm really here for THAT. 

But full-time it is. At least through December. It is a very good opportunity, in that I'm the test-case for a whole new role, plus we need some depth in this tool, business area, and client area. So doing it for a bit is useful, but puts off what I want to do. Plus, I was working an angle toward being the second for my current boss, but he's shifting roles and they'll bring in someone new for that role (he's shifting off gradually, so in a year or so), so I'll be having to play wait-and-see on the new person, but in the meantime I'm still trying to make myself indispensable in other ways - I'm already the go-to on a variety of things, and my (two) bosses trust me and rely on me for those... do not want to let that slip.

This month looks to be hell, really. We have school start stuff, with the likely usual breakdown about two weeks into the new school year (I don't like my teacher, I want to go back to my old class, I miss friend X, etc.). We have finding an accountant and ramping up the company prep (though probably not incorporating instantly in Sept). We have me putting in heavy hours to get up to speed with the client and the tools ASAP, setting up capture methods to track my efforts on this, and forming the relationships needed to make it work. And then we have just having the rest of our lives function - house, marriage, parenting, garden, extended family, friends.

AHHHHH!

On the plus side, I have some worthy friends and family, who are there for us as much as we are for them. So we've got people who have our backs. Our financial advisor is going to help with the business decision-making advice (he advises a lot of small business owners, and is incredibly competent), my work friend A is always there for me (and we've solidly established the two-way-street-ness at this point, having spent yesterday moving him and his wife to their new apartment), my boss is concerned that I succeed with this job to the point that he has been very clear that he will do whatever it takes to help set me up for success, my mom has our family in the net, my sister's husband is bartering time to keep our garden under control so my yardwork effort is reduced to minimal... it's going to be crazy, but the most sane version of crazy possible.

Still, AHHHHH!

Research: What we already knew (modeling works)

So, apparently kids will use adults as a model for how to respond in a situation. They watch the adults, and then do what the adults do.

Shock, huh? But research needs to prove these cases, too. And this one holds true.

I liked the term 'emotional eves-dropping' in this one. The kids are listening in to see not just how they should act, but how they should feel, and then act.

Allow me to wince, since I know 90% of my kids acting badly with emotions are straight from us modeling the same. Their stage of development is part of it, and so is their serotonin level (from the fructose malabsorption fermentation reaction). But a big part is us setting the stage for 'if this, then that'.

I also skimmed a long technical article about emotional regulation that had some interesting stuff to say about kids who don't seem to cope well at the early part of an interaction or situation (like, say, early part of school year or the transition out of the school year, maybe?). (There's a lot more in there, this was just something that struck me). The kids who apparently struggle with the emotions related to a new experience appear to be more likely to make a positive adaptation than kids who barely react. Kids who barely react may have a less sensitive emotional process at the neurological level, and may just keep their heads down and carry on in their usual track with less positive adaptation. Some of this may relate to introversion or extroversion (IMHO), but part is just that there's an emotional surge early in the process of adaptation and integrating new information and experience.

I thought that was really interesting. My kids express that surge differently, but they all have about a two-or-three week into the process AHHHHHH! freakout. Nice to know that's actually adaptive, since there's not much we can do about it other than be supportive in response. (Some kids freak out in anticipation, also - I suspect that's probably the same function.)

Status report: All good

I think... we'll see when I get to the end of the list.

We just finished up school, and also did the annual exams on the kids (at least the three that still get annual exams... nobody told me that after 10, it's every two years!).

So, status report on the crew:

Mr G: Still himself. He's definitely growing into the preadolescent thing, getting comfortable with the body hair and body odor, and not minding that his body is shifting toward muscle mass and physical bulk. He's still a lean slim type, but he doesn't look skinny so much anymore. He also did a good job in school this year - he dropped some balls, but learned a lot of skills.

One of the key skills he learned this year was how to pull out of a school crisis. You may recall that we were voluntarily quarantined because of the whole Flu Incident. He lost a week of school, and picking that back up was somewhat challenging. Even though we did a lot of schoolwork while he was home, some stuff got dropped. Latin, for instance. And when I say dropped, I mean one of the assignments fell on the floor and was under his desk... Though the other incident was rather more interesting, from a parenting perspective.

Mr G had an in-school assignment where he and another student had to write a story employing Latin words. Not all in Latin, but pulling in things like avian, and pro forma, that sort of thing. The other student took charge and told Mr G that he'd write, and Mr G could just look up the terms. Mr G did not complain, just sucked it up and did as he was told. Only, the story wasn't working. They couldn't find the words they needed for the story the other kid wanted to write, and after three weeks, they had three sentences... (one class a week). Everyone else had three paragraphs. They were supposed to come in at recess to work on it, only the time that the other kid could, Mr G had Band. And then there was the whole week he was out (where no work was done by the other kid at all - and I do understand that it would throw off the sense of fair at this age to do it alone).

Now, to me, this would have set off the 'I need to solve a problem here' alarm, and I'd ask someone - say, the teacher - how to get past the roadblock. But no. Mr G dislikes confrontation, so he neither addressed it with the other student or the teacher. Instead, he ignored it. Until the teacher emailed us and pointed out that as things stood, with the missing assignment and the unfinished final project, his grade was 51%. Um, ouch? The final exam could pull that up substantially, and he was getting 100's on his tests and quizzes, so that would help. But he'd probably still get a C, without the other work.

So we proceeded to coach him on how to approach the problem - how to talk to the teacher, explain what the problem was, and ask for help resolving it. How to make it right with her (because a) she didn't want him to fail, and b) she might be a little sad that he wouldn't talk to her about the problem - or not, but humanizing her side of the problem is always a fine idea). We went through the Effective, Prudent, True process - how do you effectively get the grade in, without making it crazy for anyone, while holding to your values and ethics? Mr G learned a lot about how classes work - he had assumed that 'the assignment is the assignment, and the grade is the grade, and there's nothing you can do to work that system'. Which, as we all know, is wrong for many teachers. There's nothing wrong with going to the teacher, explaining the situation, and asking what you can do that would make it better. Sometimes the answer will be 'nothing'. But many times there's something extra you can do to get your grade to reflect your actual knowledge level.

He ended up writing the entire story on his own (the other student got credit for his own work, Mr G got credit for what he did). And we found the missing assignment (which he hadn't mentioned that he couldn't find and had therefore not turned in... ARGH), and got that in. And he aced his final. Ended up with a good grade.

He actually ended up with the grades we want for him - split between B and A, with A+ only in the 'easy' classes for him (Spanish, Music), A's in the classes in which he grooves (Science, ELA), and solid B's in the classes where he has to work for it. I'd rather see more B's in the grooving classes, too - I want him to be working for those, as well (otherwise he coasts), but this is okay. Enough bumps and lumps to learn from, enough rewards to make it seem worthwhile.

He also scored well-enough in the standardized tests in math, and distinguished in reading/language. That's more 'him being still exactly him'. He likes math fine, but doesn't have a passion for it. Reading and language, those he's owned since he was 18 months old. I could always get a few moment's peace by giving him a book, actually from much younger than that. So, yeah, he's still him.

Mr B, likewise. Mr B started the year very stressed about reading and talking. The whole 'mom failed as speech-language coach' thing had sunk him on that. He resisted, avoided, and generally was miserable around anything to do with language arts. BUT, we'd discussed this with the school, and they'd placed him with a reading specialist as his teacher. End of year? He scored outstanding on his reading. Years above grade level. YAY! The teacher had said she does not hand out O's easily. If you're doing really well, you'll get a P. Only the rockets get O's. Mr B's report card was nearly half O's. WOO! I'd pretty much forgotten (in all the stressing around language arts) that his first love (maybe second, after Art) is math. But he showed that he hasn't changed, there, either. He loves math and logic and figuring. He was the puzzle master, always - could put together puzzles that his four-years-older brother struggled with. It's a nice reminder that he is who he is, and even when I pay attention to just one aspect of him, he's paying attention to the whole thing (at least his teacher is!). This is why I like school.

And then there was the physical. He's returned to his curve, thankfully. Last year, he'd dropped to 10-12th percentile for height. Anything below 50th is Not Good (given our genetics), and he's been tracking at 25%ile since 3 1/2 or so (with periodic plunges below and the very rare creeping above). This is presumed to be related to the multiple carbohydrate intolerances (both lactose intolerance and fructose malabsorption). The combo in particular can stop upward growth. Short stature and higher weight is one of the signs of fructose overload (kids who just drink too much juice will end up the same). For him, it's pretty catastrophic. He was holding a 90th%ile curve until he was 15 months old, and fructose was introduced... sigh. But I'm glad he's at least back to the 25th%ile, now. 10th was troubling. 25th%ile is good enough, even though he'll be a lot shorter than the rest of the family, that way. (ep and I are both in the 97th%ile.) Still stocky, but not as much as before, which also means his diet is more effectively balanced - but not quite enough. More to work on, there.

Miss R's physical was also fine, and she's up around 90th%ile for height. She's got no trouble with the growing thing. And she also never stopped (she is also not apparently lactose intolerant - just fructose malabsorbing). Good, good.

Miss M also rebounded on her curve again. She's been weaving back and forth between 25th and 50th%ile. 50th is probably her normal curve, but when she stopped growing (same age as Mr B), that plunged her down the percentiles. She's all the way back up to 50th now, so while she's petite and notably smaller than her twin sister, she's also just fine for her.

I'm still waiting for the followup from the endometrial biopsy - they didn't expect results back until next week at the earliest, so I'm still hanging fire on that. Ah, well. Waiting is all I can do.

Ep has now got his license, and is a Registered Architect. WOO! :) :) :)

And my work is still crazy, but it's still working, too. There are some major shifts in how things are being done, but in good ways. And I'm still regarded as valuable. My 'report card' is coming back in the form of feedback surveys from the training sessions I'm doing the materials for - the materials are getting high marks, and there's a lot of positive commentary that direction. They'd asked for something really simple, I gave them more than they asked for, and they actually liked what they got (just 'simple' was not going to meet all the needs they had - they really needed complete and depth). And I'm still being asked to help out on my old project, both for the social/cultural stuff, and for the actual thinking and work. I like being asked to help 'because of my brains'. It's nice.

Today we're off to go help with an archeological dig (kids included). Should be a good day. (Last time, Mr G discovered a silver fork from 1897.)

I know the good stuff is often boring, but this is the payoff zone. We struggle with how to coach, how to allow them to be themselves without just letting them range entirely without structure, how to find our way to our own successes without sinking the rest of the family. The balance points tip back and forth all the time - crisis, or problem, or issue, and then problem-solving out of it. Finding ways to be effective, prudent, and true, over and over and over and over and over. It doesn't stop, but the effort gets to be comfortable - most of the time. And then we get the status points that work, get a chance to glimpse the system from a different perspective. They don't all look so pretty. This time, good. Next time could be another problem instead of a success.

But then we'll carry on and try some more, and hope that the time after that will look like this one. Good.

More success, through stepping back

More on Mr B.

Mr B had an articulation delay. He was late to start babbling. And then he babbled 'different' than usual. Mostly the same sounds, not the usual range of consonants and vowels. Most sounds that he produced were limited to front-of-the-mouth sounds. M, B, D, S. He managed G, but the rest was limited.

We let him develop as he would, knowing he was likely to be different from Mr G, who talked early and clearly. This was just different.

Fortunately, we also have an SLP in the family, who broke his usual rule and offered advice to family. He suggested we might want him to be evaluated (though he wasn't going to do it himself).

So we did the evaluation, at just under 2 1/2 years old. That was one of the places where I got a clear glimpse of how very smart Mr B is - he knew what sounds he could and could not reproduce, and would talk around the edges of the sound. Like this:

SLP: What's this? (points to picture of a frog, to elicit the F sound)
Mr B: It's green.
SLP: Yes, it's green, do you know what it is?
Mr B: It jumps, hop hop hop. And it's green.
SLP: Okay. How about this? What is this boy doing? (points to picture of a boy fishing)
Mr B: He's catching sings.
SLP: What things?
Mr B: Swimming sings. (And then he glanced up at her sideways, watching her, with a look that showed that he knew exactly what he was doing.)

He came back inside normal range, the Early Intervention folks gave us some activities to pursue, and asked for him to come back in six months for a re-eval.

At almost 3, he came back well behind normal range. But at 3 they're bounced to school system management, so we moved over to them, and did speech therapy.

Which he mostly ignored. Sometimes he'd participate in the session. Mostly not. Three is a hard age for that.

We tried at home, as well. Which mostly made him hypersensitive to the idea that people would notice that he struggled with sounds. The more I worked with him, the more he became obviously ashamed and upset about his inability to make those sounds. I think I worked with him two or three times before I noticed - and then I quit, because clearly I was not the right person to do this job. I passed on information to his teachers, instead.

And again, the next year.

And again, the year after. Even though he'd officially graduated out of speech therapy, he was still at the tail end of the range, and every summer he'd slip backwards - no teachers doing the proper emphasis without any emotional loading. I suspect he sensed every iota of frustration or worry I ever felt. Very emotionally attuned child. Mommy is not his best teacher, as a result.

Reading, also a challenge. When phonemes don't make sense, reading is harder. He was learning how in Kindergarten, but he wouldn't practice, wouldn't read with me, wouldn't be caught trying. The walls were up, resistance was the first reaction.

And yes, I felt responsible for that, at least in part. Much no fun, on the parenting front.

When Mr B was moving from Kindergarten at one school to first grade at his new (academically challenging) Charter school, I wrote up a letter explaining where Mr B was in his development and capacity. Partly it was about the Fructose Malabsorption issue, but part was also about the mistakes we'd made trying to get him talking and reading.

They placed him with Mrs. J, who is a reading specialist, and quite an authority figure (despite her slight stature, she is MASTER of her classroom), but who also has a very engaging style and some warmth. A perfect balance for Mr B, I thought (and hoped).

We've been through some interesting stuff on the home side of that - reading logs each week ended up being 'what I read to him because he won't read out loud to me' - even when he was reading out loud in class. Homework pages were always 'you read it' instead of him reading it. He'd do the work, but he wanted me to read it to him first. Yeah, part of that is that he likes being read to - who doesn't? But part was because he so disliked reading in front of me, because I suck at reacting the way he needs, and excel at reacting totally bass-akwards to what he needs.

So, yesterday was the reading assessment for the year. And luckily for us, it was also the Volunteer picnic, so we ran into Mrs J at the event (because Mr B doesn't brag on himself much, it embarrasses him). He got an O (outstanding) on his reading assessment. She doesn't give out O's without a veru good reason.

His reason? He started out emotionally resistant to reading in September. And now, he's reading two years above grade level.

YAY!

It can be hard sometimes to step back and let an expert into the spot that feels like it should be Mom's. I should be able to help my child learn to read. But I don't do well at it with one of my kids. We don't match up on style or approach for effective learning. Stepping back and putting that in the hands of the right person... it is great.

I'm reminded of the Ask Moxie thread two years back (about gifts for teachers at holidays), where a teacher reported that instead of getting soap or a mug from one parent, the parent handed her a wad of cash and said something along the lines of, 'You taught my daughter to love to read, I'm not giving you f-ing soap.'

No f-ing soap for Mrs J. Not that we have loads of cash, either, with ep still out of work. But something personal, from Mr B, perhaps.

Success for Mr B, through me stepping back. That's really more of the Acceptant Loving Faithful. I had to accept who he was, and that this meant that I could not play the role with him that I wanted to. It wasn't up to me. I had to step back with love, not resentment. And I had to have faith in him, as well as in his teacher. (Granted, I also know the school is good, and that the administration put in some effort to match the kids appropriately to their teachers. So the faith is founded in reality, not blindness.)

Congratulations, Mr B!

Working out dreams and fears

Mr G is having some issues with school.

Not class, but kids. See, um, (borrowing my sister's phrase, everyone put on your surprised faces) Mr G isn't your typical average everyday kid.

Nay, he is himself, and that means he's not like other kids. This is starting to present as a problem for him, as he develops his social life.

Even his friends think he's a bit weird.

Yeah, he's a history geek. He doesn't have a dog, and he doesn't have a game system. He has few points of reference between his life and theirs. If he talks about his dreams (metallurgy, smithing, having a house in the woods far from everyone where he lives a non-materialist, near-subsistence lifestyle), they all look at him like he's an alien. They say rude things or look away. They try to steer him back to something that fits within their worldview by being dismissive of his dreams and goals.

There's no way that doesn't hurt. Even though we know he knows himself and will be true to himself, he wants so bad to have peers who understand, who can relate, who can reflect him back to himself in a positive way. He has one, but she has a huge crush on him so he's somewhat iffy about taking in too much of that reflection. (She's also a babe, and smart, and has cool parents, and is a museum and history fiend, but those are apparently entirely beside the point.)

He really needs to be in a Quaker school or a school for the arts, or pretty much any school that isn't just a feeder-pattern school. Not that his school is really that - it is a Charter, which means (here) that everyone there is there because their parents cared enough to get the forms, fill them out, and get them in on time. After that it is lottery, pure and simple.

Either that, or he needs to have more friend contact outside school with the kids from church, or from Meeting. He needs access to the kids from Quaker camp, or insertion into something like the SCA. (I wince, I do - the historical recreation group I was part of as a teen was very down on the SCA for being too into the history and not enough into playing safely - we were very 'use padded weapons in battle recreations you dopes!' at the time.)

For now, though, this school is good - I don't want to pull him while he's developing this process. We want an exit strategy, but we also want working strategies for the process. It is not going to be the last socially uncomfortable situation he'll be in. So, we're working on that part. And these parts:

A) Family safety net: We're here for him. We listened, reflected back how much he'd like to have the things other kids have and love, so that he has points of reference to share. We heard his sadness and hurt over their dismissiveness, and we talked about the less overt forms of social control between peers, and he heard us when we acknowledged how much it hurts - it is essentially subtle bullying. He registered that he has something special in his family that other kids don't have - that we listen, that we respect him, that we take him seriously, that we honor his dreams and goals, that we don't try to control the shape of his future, that we don't use shame on him. He still loves and is willing to value that we're willing to shape our lives to the dreams of our kids - I certainly never thought I'd be sitting over breakfast discussing caudal fin shapes of various sharks with my 4-year-old daughter, but I'll do it because she loves sharks, and I'll love doing it. That's all good, and he heard it.

B) Making bridges to his dreams: We talked out how to earn money for the things he wants, and when we went over the things he really wants, it came back to his real future dreams, and not the things his peers have. Okay, so he does want a dog. And I'm allergic to dogs and we have three cats and a tiny house, and ... no dog. But the game system dropped off radar, and we were back to chain mail and archer's axes. He was overwhelmed with surprise and glee when he found out that (GASP!) mommy knows how to make chain mail. And daddy remembers a bit from watching his cousin (a long-term SCA guy) work on it. WOOO! Bridge structure coming up. We'll lay the planks as we go.

C) Peer management. This one is trickier, and has several layers. One, he has to be willing to address the attitude he gets back, in the moment or later. There's a HUGE decorum and respect requirement at his school, so he has power at his back. Plus the administration thinks he rocks, so they're likely to want to help him out. We'll be working on strategies for how to respond when someone goes iffy on him. We'll also work on strategies for deciding who is safe, who is not, what content is good to share, how to work into a conversation so that you can tie it to someone else's experience, how to listen (er, something he's not great at) to someone else's dreams without either going to envy or annoyance when their dreams differ from yours, and so forth. All the social stuff - which is a years-long task, but definitely could use some work (Mr G being rather a blunt instrument socially).

D) Peer outreach: That is, getting him more hooked in with the other peers, the ones who share his dreams. We've postponed the family reunion because of cost issues (that is, I've only just got my job offer for full-time/perm employment and I'm still mid-negotiation, plus ep is still unemployed), so we really don't have loads of availble cash. BUT, there is this huge Quaker camp (2-weeks sleep-away) that really would suit him, and would have kids whose values are in tune with his... a bit ouchy on cost, though not at all out of line with other camps. So, we need to work on hooking him up with those kids, with the kids at the UU Fellowship (outside school), and probably more with his cousins on ep's side (he's hooked up with two of the ones on my side, at least, and ep's family has a lot of the SCA/history/outdoors/low-materialism thing).

Anyway, that's the plan. That plus listening over and over, hearing him out when he's sad, reflecting that we understand, and showing him the shape of the future. Case in point: I was a weird kid, myself, but while I probably still qualify as weird, many people respect me, and they consider me aware and smart and wise and even interesting. When I had the same understandings about people and relationships and motivations at 10 years old, it was freaky and bizzare and unnatural (10 year old girls should not be observing relationship motivations and figuring out why people do what they do, they should be planning out their dream weddings and going gaga over cute Rock stars and actors, doncha know?). Having those skills now, though, is just useful (waaaay useful, especially since it is my job at work - yesterday was such a good day at work, I can't even begin to express it. Okay, I did express it all over the family, I think I said, "I freakin' ROCK!" - heh - I got a client-side team member (with greater power in the project than we have) to do exactly what we wanted him to do when he had already said he didn't want to and thought it was a bad idea... and to make it quite impressive I explained what I needed to do to my project manager before we talked to the client-side guy (let him get angry, hold him there on the point where he's angry and don't let him start making decisions from there because he goes off in directions that aren't useful, just hold him right to that topic until he calms down), I then did exactly what I said I'd do, and it worked. The client not only apologized for getting angry, he volunteered to do exactly what we wanted him to do. My project manager just looked at me like, 'whoa' and then suddenly started taking me very seriously. I feel all A-Team-ish, 'I love it when a plan comes together'. Heh. Er, okay, sorry, I'm gonna hurt myself patting myself on the back... Still, I have mad People-Do skills, and they hired me to use them, and it is very satisfying to prove the case. Probably more so because it feeds all the way back to the kids saying 'you're weird' when I was 10.)

So much of parenting this age is not letting the kids slip through the cracks or fall through the net. Its teamwork, in the best sense. It helps Mr G just to know we've got his back.

Mr G on himself; Me on not breaking our kids

Mr G had a class exercise that says a lot about who he is. Not shockingly, the exercise was called, 'I am'. But you know, when I was 11, I don't think I had anything like this kind of clue who I was.

Okay, so I knew what I wanted to be, at that age. I wanted to grow up to be a tall Asian woman with long straight black hair. That was pretty much it for dreams, vision of who I would become, what shape I wanted my life to take. I (strangely enough) didn't grow up to be Asian. I did grow up to be tall, and to study Asia, though. So in a strange way, that was my path - my only (very small) (rather odd) dream of who I would be is not all that far off from who I am, if one looks at it from a rather broad angle.

Not sure if that makes up for the lack of straight black hair, though. I so wanted that black-black hair. My hair is just really dark brown. I can blow-dry it totally straight if I want to, but ... eh, I like the slight curl. And I married a guy with black hair. Does that count?

Now, the poem Mr G wrote ... well, it is without doubt an 11-year-old boy speaking. He is full of his grand dreams and visions, churning with hormones, noticing himself and others, making assessments about his place, his identity, his goals, what drives him, and folding those all into the ideal vision of the distant future of adulthood, with one foot (sometimes both) firmly planted in in the magical boundaries of childhood.

He has agreed to let me share it. Because I think it is pretty cool, and also because it says so much about who he is. He wanted me to give him two reasons I wanted to share it, and those two (cool + very HIM) were good enough for him. The students were given the first one or two words of each line, and had to write the rest.

**************************************************

I am

I am the warrior and the wolf
I wonder how birds fly
I hear the whistle of wings
I see an empty battleground below me
I want to have magic

I am the warrior and the wolf
I pretend to have wings and armor
I feel like I am locked in a deadly battle
I touch the fire of imagination
I worry that I may not proceed
I cry when I am hurt

I am the warrior and the wolf
I understand that I am too young for my wants
I say that I will do as I will
I dream that I am a smith
I try to be ready
I hope that I can be what I want

I am the warrior and the wolf

******************************************

You know what I love about this?

I understand that I am too young for my wants
I say that I will do as I will
I try to be ready
I hope that I can be what I want

In the midst of fantasy, reality check.
In the midst of others saying what will be, choosing to choose his own way.
Expending effort to prepare.
Understanding that nothing is preordained - hope, yes, but a sense that time will tell things he can't forsee.

I'd love to say that I formed this, taught that, modeled the certainty, set up the blend of imagination and reality, taught him to strive, created the desire to hope and entrained a flexibility of an open future.

But really? He was born that way. Seriously, he has been like this forever.

All we did was not break that.

Not breaking that has been a great deal of work. But that's the core of how epeepunk and I parent. We don't make them who they are, we only allow them the space, opportunities, and resources to grow into what they already were. We prune a bit, but only within the nature of the growth, and even the skills building is more like watering the tree during drought and understanding when it needs to be fed than it is forcing it to a form. More on supportive measures for times of stress, understanding the nature of the tree (and learning it as it takes shape), less on deciding what shape it should take.

It also means we don't get to take credit for the who-they-are-ness of any of them, only for staying back and accepting who that is, and then making the space fit and the resources feed their who-they-are-ness, so they can become the full and leafy best of themselves. Quirky, sometimes, of course. That's the nature of humans when you don't force them into a form - they have a lot of interesting quirks (Montessori is great at producing kids unafraid of their own quirks).

They came to us this way. Walked into our lives (so to speak) with their DNA already in place. Yes, how they grow depends on environment, but it is the interplay between DNA and environment that makes it work out, not the overlay of environment smack on top of DNA. There is no clarity to any outcome as far as cause or source - skills, modeling, important conversations, they're just part of the tending, but not part of what makes the plant unique.

And I like it that way. 'Cause that's just the way I am.

Integrity rocks

So, we blew the homework support over the holiday. We checked very lightly to see if Mr G had any homework - did not double-check him when he said No. Didn't even check on either the percussion or keyboarding, which generally do have homework constantly. It's a holiday, everything went piff!

I don't know who remembered the log, but I did see it - three weeks of zero practice. Mr G had filled in 'No Time' (as in 'I didn't have time to practice') on nearly every line (though he'd figured out which days he'd been at grandparents houses and had entered those in specific - overnight at grandmother's house, no practice).

Er.

No time isn't accurate. We suck is accurate.

So, I asked him to correct the log to 'forgot' instead of 'no time' and wrote a nice long note to the teacher that started with saying 'we suck'. Okay, I did lead into that, but it was in the first sentence.

I also didn't beg for a better grade - this was a 30-point log, that's a big hit to the grade. But ... well, blew it is blew it, and the grade is not the end of the world. It's a learning experience (for, er, all of us). There's a hole in the data collection system, we checked his agenda and neither keyboarding nor percussion practice were listed. So, correct the system, and meanwhile, take the hit.

I wrote that all out in more specific words for the teacher, too. The note was a full page long.

And we got back a note applauding our integrity, and saying she gave him full credit for the homework assignment because we (including he) hadn't lied.

I love when the teacher gets what we're trying to do, and puts the reward on the right side of the line. It's the George Washington and the Cherry Tree story, essentially - having told the truth, the punishment is withdrawn. And since it turns out that this is the scenario that results in the most truth-telling (kids lie more after hearing 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' and lie less after hearing the story of George and the Cherry Tree - even if they never heard either story before)... well, good. More reinforcement that acting with integrity earns rewards including the avoidance of negatives.

Now, he still has to get back to practicing - hard. And we're going to install the software on my mom's computer so he can't get away with skipping practice there. Still, since he cares about the grades, it's a good lesson all around. Do the work, but when you blow it, fess up immediately. It tends to develop an ease with fessing up when the expected outcomes are more on the positive side if you do, which should be obvious.

Ep gets nervous about bringing up his mistakes, but less so when he knows he can present a plan for how to prevent similar mistakes (see the series of posts on apology), and the same is true for me. But nervous is okay - terrified is not the goal.

It seems we're succeeding on the modeling, here. Mr G was pleased with the results, as well.

Now, to work on the strategy (making sure all items of homework are gathered in a single place - the agenda must be something we can all trust, or there's no point to using it).

Mr G's birth mythology and homework issues

Strange how things loop around. It isn't like I don't know this - my entire parenting philosophy is grounded in the fact that while individual events may only happen once, issues, themes, skills, and deeper experiences and understanding develop in layers, covering the same ground over and over, building up, allowing each of us (parent and child) to develop what was ignored the time before, or repair damage, or recover injury - and to also encourage and enhance what went well, not to mention celebrate it as it flowers.

So, the loop this time is a very large circle - eleven years of circle.

Mr G's birth story is centered on a few themes that have been picked out over time:

Endurance

Patience

Alignment

Grace/Magic

Support

Endurance in the sense of marathon body effort, not in terms of bearing through something unpleasant. His labor was quite a nice one, it was just freakin' LONG. Eighty hours is long, yes? The midwives really wanted to call that early part prodromal labor (that kind of pre-labor that skips and starts and stops and hitches onward again). But it never slowed down enough to count as stopping. Even with meds trying to suppress labor so I could sleep, it didn't stop. And so carried on, not so much enduring as proceding with endurance. Someone at work noted that eighty hours is two work weeks, sequentially. Yikes. But at the same time, I lived through those eighty hours, ate, walked, napped (sorta), drank, talked, walked some more (and more and more and more), bathed... lived in them, with them, and through them. It was a lot of effort, it was exhausting, but it was easy enough - I didn't even get close to asking for a c-section just to make it stop. The pain was never too much, the relaxation method (Bradley Method) worked quite well, my support team were fabulous (epeepunk, my mom, my two best friends serving as doulas, my midwives, even the backup on-call OB was great).

Patience, also more in the sense of expectant patience. I was not in charge of how it went, and so I could only attend to everything that was in my range of power, and allow the others to do the same. That included my body. I allowed it to be what it was. I was open to it, and patient with it taking its own form and its own time.

Alignment, too. Part of the reason it took so long was a matter of alignment, in two directions. Mr G was aligned just slightly off center, and it took time for him to find a better position. And his head was also not tucked, due to a high cord wrap - he came down 'military' - that is, head straight ahead instead of back of head first. Kind of the big way. As a result, his head wasn't molded, and my body had to make room for the entire 14.5 inch diameter. That also took time, while my body aligned with his. So, we aligned with each other, and once we were both in true with each other's shape, things proceeded at the normal pace. From the time he lined up (and I did), it was about 12 hours of additional labor and pushing.

Grace and Magic are part of our family mythology. Whether it is Divine Grace, or angels, or fairies and elves, I'm not particular. My theology is flexible, and so is his. But there was magic in his birth, in how even my mom (who ranges quite far into rational skepticism, something common to a lot of ministers though they often don't say so) - even she saw something unexpected in his birth. She swears that even though the room was darkened, it was suddenly filled with golden light at the moment he was born. For me, I saw the echoes of all my ancestresses standing around me, sepia toned and transparent, dressed in all manner of clothing going back in time I don't know how far, all standing midwife to his birth, attending to the flow of generations breaking through one more bank into the future. 

And support I've already mentioned tangentially - the midwife, the OB, the doulas, my mom, epeepunk. Even community - people driving by as I walked through that long labor on the cool and cloudy November day would call out encouraging things as we went. Small town, you know - can't go anywhere without bumping into someone you know, or who knows your mom. It was enfolding, and lifting. No way to fall with that much help - where I ended up, no matter what, would not be a falling down - there was too much net for that.

Right now, Mr G's birth story is rather shorter than the others. He knows the flow and meat of it, and wants to hear certain details picked out. The three-plus days thing, he knows. He knows about me being tired, and moving up to the hospital from the birth center. He knows about the multiple trips in before that only to find out that nothing was changing. He knows about me napping in the bathtub, walking around campus, all that.

What he wanted to know more about was about the magic, and the things that moved us. He wanted to be reminded that his father cried when he saw even the top of his new son's head, before he was even here. He wanted to know about how his grandmother grinned and grinned as he was coming into the world. He wanted to know about the way the room lit up when he was born, and how I saw my ancestresses standing with me, around me, as I pushed.

I didn't bother to mention the puking incident (he hates puking), or the random mistakes and errors of the staff, or the time that one nurse got outside her bounds and essentially announced that there WOULD be a problem with the birth, and we WOULD need the NICU staff on call. (The midwife rolled her eyes, which was all the reassurance I needed.) I didn't mention the internal monitor inserted in his scalp, either. I did mention the hot spot from the epidural, though.

His story is so long, I don't even remember myself what order everything happened in. But those underlying theme come out anyway - if things aren't lined up, they can take much longer than you planned. It takes patience, and endurance, and support to make it through, to even wait for things to line up. In fact, that's a big issue in his life right now - that he's not all aligned with his goals and purposes, and so everything takes for. ever.

And the loop, then. Patience, endurance, and alignment are going to be part of our homework discussion this weekend. He has decided that he'll live low on the technology scale, and so a lot of what he's learning seems to matter less to him. It's not aligned with his purpose, so it jams up, and gets stuck, and takes forever.

Everything comes around, loops into another season and another age. The homework is tied to everything right back to his birth story, and to multiple layers in between.

How we respond is also tied into it all - if I don't relax and move with it, it will hurt. If I relax everything - stop tensing up in anticipation of what is coming next - not only will it stop hurting, but I'll get answers to questions I hadn't asked, and to those I did (like how when I couldn't figure out how to get the counter-pressure to work on my pelvis, because it was needed inside my pelvis, spectral hands appeared and did the counter-pressure for me - more magical events in the experience).

So, carrying on the loop. This weekend we're talking homework, and weaving those same themes back into the fabric of his experience.

Not now, though. Now he wants to use the computer to finish his homework. Hopefully not slowly. (He laughed at that over my shoulder)