2e Tuesday::Being Put On The Spot.
The kids and I finally went to our local library to check out books and get a library card. When we met up with the librarian to check out, we encountered the type of person who you suspect, if it were legal, would carry around a switch to beat people who breathe too loudly or read too noisily. She was not the type of librarian to read books to children in the reading nook, or the kind that you want to take home with you because they are so attentive, calm, and smart about how to get things done. This one kinda scared me as she greeted us with a cold stare and a tapping pencil.
We had gathered handfuls of books, which really pissed this woman off. I’ve noticed that there are two kinds of librarians…the kind that want you to use the library and all the books with wild abandon, or the kind that feels like each and every book is their own personal ward of the state and belong right there in the library for time and all eternity. She informed me that I couldn’t check out that many books anyway, because new members can only check out 3 at a time until a grace period had passed. I looked at each of the three kids and decided to get them cards, too, so we could at least leave with 12 books instead of 3.
This is when it started going wonky. And by wonky, I mean, badly.
She handed each of us a form to fill out. Full name, birthday, address, etc., etc.
If there’s one thing we are shaky on over here, it’s form filling out. Without the homework and state test forms to prepare them, my kids aren’t the best at filling letters into boxes and lines.
For the 3 of us with dyscalculia, also shaky would be remembering addresses and dates.
For the 2 or so of us with dysgraphia, shaky also defines writing anything down, period.
There’s the school of thought that says, “if you know there’s a weakness, then you focus on making them do that thing until they get good at it!” So, I would have all of us filling out forms and reciting addresses and birthdates at home.
Then there’s my school of thought that says, “if I know there’s a weakness, first rethink it not as a weakness but just as something that’s a part of who they are. Accept it. Stop freaking out about it. Allow them time and space to explore doing the things they want to do instead of things they aren’t ready to do. Trust that eventually they will develop skills and patience and have an experience where their interest will lead them to doing whatever their previous ‘weakness’ was and they will find a way to overcome it. Or deal with it. Or accomodate it.” So, we don’t fill out forms or write down addresses and birthdays at home.
Anyway, being faced with the form wasn’t a big deal. Naturalist couldn’t remember our address and asked me if I had a checkbook or something that she could copy it down from. Golfer took his time painstakingly writing each letter. Sassy couldn’t be bothered with the form at all and was looking through her library books.
The librarian pointed at Sassy and said, “You have to fill out your form to get the card. Write your name down.”
Sassy, 7 and dyslexic, gets a little antsy and rebellious whenever writing comes up. She just looked at the librarian.
Librarian: “Write your name down. There. (pause) You DO know how to write your name, don’t you?!”
Sassy: … (her gaze quickly matching the stern and exasperated librarian’s)
Librarian: “Well, do you? Do you know your letters?”
Sassy: … (stone. cold.)
I intervened. I can’t stop people from interrogating my kids, but I can run interference. Often I don’t have to if the tone is respectful, but when my kids or I fear that the next question will be “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!” then enough is enough.
I put my hand on Sassy’s shoulder. “All these lines are where your name and information get written down. Would you like to do it, or would you like me to do it?”
Sassy said that I could do it, so I did.
Librarian: “Well, she has to sign her name herself on her library card.”
Sassy just looked at her.
I told Sassy that the line on the card was for her to put her special mark down on it. Her name, or something that made her think of who she was. So she wrote down a series of hearts, happy faces, and plus signs.
The librarian was not happy about this at all, but by this time I was giving her the stone cold look.
I almost never run interference by saying things in front of the kids like, “oh, she’s dyslexic. That’s why she can’t write her name”. I really don’t like labels, and I really don’t like excuses. I like to know what labels can be applied to find out information on whatever particular thing we’re dealing with, but stop at that. I like them to know it doesn’t define them, and I respect this by not using it to define them to other people.
By this time, the exasperated librarian had broken her own rule of not helping to help Naturalist finish filling out her form. “So, is your middle name spelled with a C or a K?” She asked. Naturalist said, “Well, let me think. It could be either one, I keep forgetting…” … “Mom, is it a C or a K?!”
The Librarian sighed.
Then Golfer turned in his paper. Except for writing very slowly, he remembers everything with almost photographic detail. So, I was surprised that when the Librarian asked him, “And what does your middle name start with? You forgot to write it down” he said, “N!” followed closely by, “No, S!” All I can say is that usually being put on the spot makes quick thinking harder to do.
The librarian looked at all of us like we had three heads, leveling her gaze on him. “Well which is it? We can’t get this wrong!”
Because yes, heaven forbid we get something wrong on a plastic slip.
The librarian had one more question….for me.
“What is your youngest’s birthday?”
I had forgotten to write it in.
I am terrible at date recall. I am terrible at recall at all when I’m on the spot…I’ve incorporated this into my “get out of tickets” routine. I started sweating a little bit.
“Well, it’s sometime in the 2000′s. Like, around 2002 but not after 2005.”
The librarian looked like she wanted to jam her pencil into my ear.
“2004. I don’t want to get it wrong, like you said. So I’m pretty confident you can write down 2004. If I’m wrong, I’ll come back and tell you!”
We got our cards and books and walked away. When we got out of the library I stopped and laughed really hard.
Golfer, who is always the most concerned about what people think about him, said, “I bet she thinks we’re all really stupid.”
So we talked about that a little bit. What makes someone stupid, what is stupid, if we were stupid.
I always like to go back to my standard speech: “Different people are really good at different things! Some people build things easily. Some people are good with numbers. Some are great with animals. And those same people are also not so good at different things. Like, I can’t speak very well, but I love to write. Just because some things aren’t easy for us doesn’t mean we’re stupid.”
Then we had some ice cream at the local corner store. And laughed some more at the story the librarian was going to tell her friends about stupid homeschoolers. Sometimes we break the stereotype, and sometimes we totally make it. Either way, I hope my kids are learning that it’s pointless to spend time stressing out over what other people think of you. You accept who you are and go from there.
read more2e Tuesday::Emergency Quick Fix for Parental Stress.
My 2e Tuesday blogs talk specifically about 2e, or twice exceptional learning…kids who are both gifted AND have learning differences; ie, dyslexia, sensory issues, dyscalculia, CAPD, etc., etc., etc. These kids don’t fit into any standardized molds, which makes for some traumatic experiences in our current over-regulated states of education and parenting. They aren’t ‘typical’ sequential, orderly thinkers, and this affects every area of their lives. But generally these 2e blogs are also about questioning if anyone really DOES fit into a “normal” range, and why is it so important to think we should? I’d rather everyone celebrate that we are all unique individuals instead of molding everyone into a nicely boring square peg.
Of course, celebrating the unique can lead to certain amount of stress. Everything is a little more wild and crazy. Nothing is as regulated or predictable, and everyone’s timeline for learning things can be vastly different. You leap into a world of unknown, not sure how anything is going to work out but holding doggedly to a trust that it all will. It’s exactly what I did with Naturalist when I pulled her out of school at 9 and she yelled “I’m never going to read a book for the rest of my life!”. To a dyslexic child, forced daily readings at home and at school is a serious form of torture. So I told her she never had to read if she didn’t feel the need to. So she didn’t for a long time. Until the Warriors books came out when she was 12, and her deep love of cats and a good story helped her work through the dyslexia to start reading like a fiend. But you better believe that in those 3 years of not reading, I was worried sick.
I know, I know, I’ve blogged a lot about how to handle stress–running, jumping, meditating, playing, reading, talking, etc. Because the thing is, if we don’t deal with our own stress then it bleeds out onto our kids. So lets say I’m getting stressed that, at 7, Sassy doesn’t know how to spell her name yet, or read a book. It doesn’t mean that she’s stressed that she can’t do those things. It’s my burden, not hers. Do I think that someday she’ll spell her name? yes. Do I think that someday she’ll read a book? yes. It may not be until she’s 12, like Naturalist, but I know it will happen when she’s ready. So I can lighten up, work my stress out on my own, and continue to celebrate and encourage her on her own path. Or I can let the stress take over and start coercing her to learn what I want her to learn when I want her to learn it. I can focus on her weaknesses and create a feeling between us that I’m worried, upset, and/or not pleased…which only serves to undermine my trust in her and even worse, her trust in herself.
It’s always a good idea to find an outlet for your stress before it becomes your child’s burden.
And what is better for stress than a martini?!
Hahahaha. I kid.
Kind of!
I mean, other forms of stress control are better in the long run, but sometimes you need a kickstart to get you there, am I right?! So if that’s what you need, I’ve got something for you.
I’m just a year into drinking, so I realize that many of you have moved on from frilly fruity drinks and are in wine country. But I’m still more wine cooler than wine. So. I made up my own special recipe! I consider this the best martini I’ve ever had, and even though modesty demands that I use “one of” in front of “the best”, I’m going to leave it out…I’m also going to immodestly keep the name a waitress in Washington gave it: “The Tifftini”
The recipe:
equal parts…
whipped cream vodka
Godiva Chocolate liqueur (white, dark, or milk!)
Peppermint Schnapps (aka Rumplemintze)
Baileys
Whole Milk (or cream, if you want to go crazy with it!)
This tastes just like a Thin Mint. The deliciousness masks the rather high alcohol content, so it could also be called “The Troublemaker” (or, as my sister likes to call it, “Whorin’ It Up”). I just want to illustrate this fact before you all go out and mix one (or four) up for yourselves and end up sleeping on your front lawn with a magic marker mustache drawn on your face and toilet paper for clothes. I don’t want to have that on my conscience.
Tara, the one and only Organic Sister, will help illustrate. She was there when the Tifftini made it’s debut, and these are the actual photos I took of the event. Also note the effect that the Tifftini has on photography, please.
Hi Tara! Let’s have a Tifftini! Ha!
Tara! I wish you would stop moving around so much! You’re so blurry I can’t even focus on you! Hahahahahahahaha!
Wasn’t that drink delicious?! Let’s have another one!!!
Oh man. T! You won’t stop moving! I can’t even see you anymore! Which one of us is moving? You or me?! HahahahahhahahahAHAHAHAHAhahahhahahaha!
Who cares. Let’s have another! HAHAHHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!
Maybe I can just lay down on your lap and giggle for a while. The room seems to be spinning! Do you mind if I take a little nap, too? HAHAhahaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……*snore*
*************
So, to sum up, allowing for uniqueness in kids can lead to adult stress when they show that they actually are really very unique. Because they don’t do things in the way or in the time that everyone else does. So find some stress release for yourself, either through an activity or interest or hobby or anything. And if worse comes to worse and you need an emergency quick fix, find yourself some good friends, make yourselves some Tifftinis, and let it all hang out!
Share TweetThe Myth of “Getting (Educationally) Behind”.
I decided to put educationally between the ‘getting’ and ‘behind’ because I’d hate for anyone to misread my title and decide that I think behinds are myths. Or that I don’t believe in getting behind something.
No, I’m talking about the idea that people have about education being something that can leave you in the dust.
I hear it all the time…”How are you sure your kids are staying up with what their peers are learning?” This is said with a fair amount of stress and panic. Catherine Zeta Jones and some other celebrity mentioned that after dealing with terminal diseases with themselves or their loved ones, they were thinking about taking their kids out of school and traveling around as a family. Because, you know, when you deal with life and death you tend to get new priorities that don’t involve sending your kid away for 7 hours a day so they can sit at a desk and memorize shit. The public backlash was interesting to see. “You can’t take your kids out of school! They’ll never catch back up!!!!” was the overall reaction.
Guess what. I’m not sure if my kids are keeping up with other kids their age. Or, rather, I’m quite sure that they aren’t.
Guess what else? The idea that kids are “keeping up with” other kids in their grade is bullshit. Yeah. I’m calling it. Because OK, so your kid is top of their class at school. Can you be sure they’d be the top of the other classes in their grade, in their school? What about all the classes in their grade in the school district? In the county? In the state? In the surrounding states? In the country? In the world?!
If this were true, then all you California publicly educated people would be screwed. When I moved from So. Cal. to New Jersey at 12, I spent the last year in California going to a private Episcopalian school to get me up to speed with what my peers were doing back east. And when my parents moved back when my brother was 12, it took his school in So. Cal. two years to get to anything new that he hadn’t already learned back east.
Also screwed would be the entire United States of America. In case you haven’t heard, we don’t do too well keeping up with our foreign counterparts when it comes to education scores.
Going to school is no guarantee that anyone is keeping up with anyone else. Does this doom everyone in the state of California to a life of ignorance and bondage to their educationally superior east coast compatriots? Does this mean that all the students in the United States will remain educationally ‘average’ for all eternity?
Does it mean that my oldest daughter, who didn’t read until she was 12, never ‘caught up’ in literacy with all the kids who started reading at 4 or 5? Does it mean that Sassy, who is most likely dyslexic and who cannot write her name or recognize the alphabet, will never be literate at all? No! That’s totally not true. The bullshit starts when we treat it like that, though. When we mistrust that our kids will find a way to learn what they need to know, and instead put value on a system that does, admitedly, leave kids behind. Naturalist was left waaaay behind. Why else would they even create a “No Child Left Behind” act if kids weren’t being left behind?! But the fault isn’t with the kids who are being left, the fault is with a rigid system that places more value on standardization than individuality.
I have this opinion because my two girls, dyslexic, couldn’t have kept up ‘educationally’ even if they wanted to. Which they both do. They are both bright, driven, smart kids. But they both struggle with letters, words, reading, writing, and doing a whole bunch of academic ‘milestones’ that kids their ages are doing. The best I can do is give them the time to figure stuff out in their own way. I can do this because unlike an unnatural system that leaves people behind, I know that real and true learning is lifelong. It doesn’t rush or expire. Learning is everywhere, and it happens anytime, not just during school hours when school’s in session. I am OK if they aren’t performing on anyone else’s schedule, or keeping up with anyone else, as long as they are staying true to themselves and where they want to be.
This is part of my 2e Tuesday series, where I blog about different learning styles, dyslexia, learning differences, giftedness, and other things that can create a quirky, unique kid!
read more2e Tuesday::Dyslexia Watch, 2011.
Dyslexia is a sneaky bastard, for those who aren’t aware of it or had personal dealings with it. There are so many different types and symptoms of dyslexia, and diagnosing it and/or understanding it is a rather complicated and tricky thing…and no one has identical signs when they have it.
Because Naturalist does have it, and because there are other people in my extended family with it, I watch the other two kids to see if it is an issue with them. I do this with bated breath, because after watching Naturalist deal with it I’d much prefer no one else that I love would have to go through that level of frustration, anger, and hurt. Even though I know that I wouldn’t change anything about Naturalist and we both agree thatthere are a lot of strengths of dyslexia,
“>, there also are a lot of reasons to freaking hate it.
Golfer breezed through reading and spelling without any hitches. He went to Kindergarten, then when we pulled him out to unschool he pretty much taught himself to read, spell, and write without any formal lessons. After watching many kids make the transition from illiterate to literate, I believe that it usually flows in a very easy, organic way, like it did for Golfer. Schools lead us to make the assumption that without phonic lessons and daily spelling tests, kids wouldn’t learn any of it, but that’s not true. Literacy, in a general way, follows passion and interest, and kids are driven to read, gather information, and self express.
But Sassy. Oh, Sassy. I’ve been keeping my eye on her for a while now, and think I’ll start sharing what I notice as it’s becoming clearer to me that she is dyslexic like her sister. There are a lot of people out there either unknowingly dealing with dyslexia or who know someone with it, and I hope that by making our process public it will help shed some light on what dyslexia is like. The symptoms of dyslexia start out innocently and in ways that, taken individually, don’t mean much. But when you put them all together it adds up to trouble when it comes to reading/writing. These are the things I’m noticing in Sassy that may or may not indicate dyslexia…
She has a hard time remembering her nouns. Sassy makes up words. For a long time, stars were ‘gips’. She’d have other nonsensical stand in words of her own making for other common words. When she isn’t making up her own language (she’s kind of slowed that down the older she’s gotten), she will mix nouns up. She’ll say a random noun instead of “Taco” for instance. Or, when I say something like “spatula”, she doesn’t understand what I’m talking about until I describe it to her. Then she knows what I’m saying. But words, especially nouns, don’t have a lot of meaning to her without context. Often dyslexia makes it difficult to associate meaning to symbols…and words are symbols for an idea.
She knows the value of reading, but still can’t. In my experience, as soon as a kid realizes that there’s a world of words out there to be tamed, and then finds a reason for taming them, that’s when reading starts. And usually once this combination locks in, it’s fairly unstoppable. I can’t remember…stop me if I’ve said this before…but literacy, in a general way, follows passion and interest, and kids are driven to read, gather information, and self express. Sassy has the strong desire to read, sees other people reading, but still can’t.
This is in spite of working with letters and words for years. We have enough games, toys, songs and books to give her a good toehold on literacy. She still doesn’t have an order to her alphabet, or much letter recognition. I’d say she knows maybe 10 letters by sight. I become the lightning rod in this area of her development. When family/friends/strangers realize that she can’t read/doesn’t know her alphabet, they immediately put the focus (blame?!) on me. Because I unschool. Because if she were in school she’d be doing all this. Because I’m not a teacher and she obviously needs a teacher. Etc., etc. But, Naturalist was in 4th grade when we pulled her out, and she couldn’t read, so I know that’s all bullshit (I’m calling it!). But it is hard to deal with the outside opinions.
This inability to do something she wants to is uncharacteristic, and frustrating. Many people with dyslexia are bright, gifted, creative people. Sassy is no different, and when she puts her mind to something, she always finds a way to do it. Except read and write. This exception leads to extreme frustration that is always on the verge of turning inward and becoming a negative self reflection. The more I sit down to try to help her focus on practicing learning letters/words, the more frustrated and upset she gets. If I were the Tiger Mom, I would make her do it come hell or high water. But I’m not Tiger Mom. I have more respect for my kids as individuals than to agree with that nonsense.
So, what am I doing about it?
Well, I’m doing what I wish I would have done for Naturalist when she was little. Nothing. Actually, more than nothing, but less than Something (with a capital ‘S’). Let me rephrase. I’m actively staying calm, upbeat, supportive, and unafraid. I’m focusing on the things she can do and work around all the things she can’t do (yet). This runs counter to every parental fiber in my body when I see a child of mine in distress with a potential life altering issue facing them. What I want to do is freak out, find experts, put her in a program that will make her mind read, bribe her/force her/help her NOT have any dyslexic symptoms and then pretend everything is OK. I know this is what I want to do because it’s what I did with Naturalist, and it didn’t work out so well for her.
There’s a big push in our culture today for early intervention, and there are lots of resources to put Sassy into to try and “fix” this. I resist this, though. I know it’s not to be ‘fixed’, first of all. Second of all, I want her time to be spent exploring what she can do, not sitting for hours at a time focused on what she can’t. Thirdly, I know that dyslexia won’t stop her from being independently literate but it will have to happen in her own time. For Naturalist, this happened around 12. Fourthly, I don’t want to tamper with the way she learns but I do want her to understand it. So when she gets angry and frustrated because she can’t read, we talk about it. About how her brain might not be ready to remember how to read even though her friends brains do. And for the fifth thing, I prefer to take my nervous energy out in research and not out on her. So I use my time to understand dyslexia (thanks to brilliant places like this) so that I can help her best. I do want experts to help me help her, but I’ve discovered that dyslexic kids are their own experts. Given enough time, space, and encouragement, they have remarkable capability to accommodate and work around their issues.
So right now I’m giving her time, space, and lots and lots of encouragement.
I’m doing what I try to do with each of my kids: accept them for who they are right at the moment and then take my cues from them as to how to help them be who they want to be.
2e Tuesday::How To Handle The Critics.
This post about handling people who make ignorant and critical comments about dyslexic kids is inspired by a question I received, asking:
“Recently a relative announced in a room full of relatives, that M. was just lazy and idle, and that he could read if he wanted to, he just needs pushing more. All heads turned to me, and I found myself trying to calculate who was in agreement with her, and how I should play this out….as my initial reaction was to shake the relative so hard that their teeth rattled. Not a good advert for unschooling, dyslexia or me in general.
What should I have said, what would you say? I don’t want to come across as a mother defending her child regardless, but I am so annoyed that people can think such idiotic things.
I want to know how to handle family, critics from all areas, in a gracious but not weedy way. I want to stand up for what we do and why we do it without sounding like a fanatic.”
This is a tricky situation. It would be easier if the goal was to handle family and critics while sounding like a crazy beyotch, because that’s exactly where my mind goes when someone demeans my efforts as a mom and/or my child’s efforts as a learner. It’s also tricky because often the harshest criticism comes from the people in our immediate circle–friends and family. It’s easy enough to call some stranger on the street an ignorant asshole (like the guy whoo asked if I was planning on ‘home employing’ my kids after I was done ‘home schooling’ them), but dealing with friends and family requires an effort to be respectful even if they aren’t.
My fall back is always humor. Humor, humor, humor, even though it’s not funny at all for a grown woman to call a 6 year old lazy and idle. It’s not funny AT ALL to suggest pushing and coercion as an answer to remedy a learning difference. As parents of dyslexic kids, and possibly as dyslexics ourselves, we understand how terribly difficult things are like reading/writing are to a mind that works in a different way altogether. A mind that doesn’t associate meaning to symbols easily, and that trips up on something that seems so ‘easy’ to everyone else. We understand what it’s like to watch a bright, gifted, intelligent child suffer from low self esteem and self doubt because they know that they are different and get frustrated and upset because of it. We understand that they work 100% harder to learn some things, even if it looks like they have only learned 10% of what ‘other kids’ have mastered easily.
So, I don’t mean humor as in, ‘haha, that’s funny you’d say that!’. I’ve learned the truth to this quote by Max Eastman: “Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.” Which is mirrored by Bill Cosby (whose son, Innis, was dyslexic): “You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.”
Humor is good not only for handling ignorant people, but also in helping our kids develop an important skill in handling their dyslexia. Humor also disables the ignorant person’s arsenal of weapons like righteous indignation and saying things for the betterment of the child, while still getting your point across.
My first inclination would be to answer back, “Oh, is that right Aunt so-and-so. Is that what’s keeping you from making a decent meal? Laziness? Is all you need a little push?” or, “Scary to take your advice, seeing how your own kids turned out…” But that’s just as nasty and mean spirited as the initial comment. (But soooo tempting!)
To avoid making those statements, I clear my head and my heart and just assume the person is so ignorant they have no idea how hurtful they just were. I assume they have no malice towards me or my child and want to be educated about it. I keep my emotions and tone light, like cotton candy. I realize, like the question pointed out, that I am an ambassador of dyslexia/unschooling/homeschooling, and it would be best to keep my cool. I pretend that they are my best friend asking for an explanation out of the goodness and love of their heart, even if their question or statement is made from a place of fear and bullying.
I stop and repeat, like the famous “Don’t have me because I’m beautiful” ad, “Don’t hate them because they’re ignorant!”
As an ambassador, it’s important to have a lot of facts stored in our heads…not only to share with the people around us but also to share with our dyslexic kids. Some things that have helped me are:
what dyslexics have said about being dyslexic
strengths of dyslexia
the lists of famous people with dyslexia
Additional list here
an entire website devoted to interviews from famous dyslexics
videos on youtube that talk about dyslexia, like this one:
In this way, I can approach whatever people say with facts, in a humorous lighthearted way. My fall back is always something like, “Yeah, they said that about Albert Einstein/Thomas Edison/Winston Churchill, who all had dyslexia. Luckily they had compassionate people around them who were able to support them and give them time to learn in their own way!” Incidentally, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison were both homeschooled. As well as a bunch of other famous and impressive people.
I’ve discovered that most people are critical if they feel like I am the only person in the world to homeschool my dyslexic child, but if I mention it’s been done for some random famous person who had dyslexia (like Leonardo freaking Da Vinci!) it really changes their attitude a lot.
But the bottom line is, while we have an opportunity to educate people everywhere we go about dyslexia and homeschooling, it’s not up to us to make them listen or even respect it.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters about dyslexia is that your child and you learn to accept and respect it. And even get to a point where you can celebrate the gifts that come along with it while tempering the heartwrenching frustrations that also come along with it. Helping your child learn how not to cry every day because of it, helping them find their own smile and appreciate their own strengths while accepting the things that are hard for them…those are the things that matter most. And if you and your child can do that, then it really doesn’t matter who does or doesn’t support or understand the road you are going down.
2e Tuesday::Beyond the Labels.
Labels are a double edged sword. On the one hand, they help us easily recognize things and give us an expectation about what to find in them. Like, tomato soup when we’re hungry! However, they also can be misleading, especially if we rely more on the label than we do on what we know. For example, a few years ago I bought beautiful Christmasy pine boughs to drape on our staircase and fireplace mantle. The instructions were to mist them with water. I just happened to have a water bottle, labeled ‘water’, filled with a clear liquid. And even though while spraying it I smelled something distinctly ‘not water’ about it, I trusted the label more than my common sense. Which is why I sprayed natural carpet cleaner all over the beatifully delicate pine boughs and killed them within the week.
If you have an out of the box thinker…a kid that marches to the beat of his own drum…labels are a good stepping stone to group characteristics together. Having words like ‘dyslexia’ and ‘dyscalculia’ has helped Naturalist and I discover more about how her mind works and how to help her when she struggles.
However, when we see the label before we see the kid, then it can do more harm than good. When we allow the label to define the child rather than the child define themselves, it definitely does more harm than good. There comes a time, after gathering all the information we can and educating ourselves and our kids about labels that may or may not fit, that we have to let it all go and see the child as a whole.
So, when the school told me my daughter, at 8, was a whole bagful of disorders (Anxiety, ADHD, OCD, etc.) that we could fix with medication, I felt a little overwhelmed. I researched it. I asked questions. I felt afraid. I learned as much as I could about it, while at the same time removing her from school. It was dawning on me that if the school fixed itself then I wouldn’t need to medicate Naturalist to keep her in there. And sure enough, in a suitable learning environment, she blossomed like a flower. Without medication. Without labels. All it took was understanding, patience, and a willingness to listen.
I lovelovelove this video so much…
As Naturalist and I have taken our education out into the world, we’ve experienced so many different kinds of people doing so many different kinds of jobs. A fantastic effect of this is realizing how similar different behaviors are within certain professions, and how relatable those behaviors are. In school, Naturalist’s powerful imagination was a source of concern for the school staff. They found it troubling she still had imaginary friends at 8 years old. Turns out, many writers are 1) dyslexic, who 2) have imaginary friends. You can’t write well about something you don’t have a firm grasp of in your mind. She also relates well to animal activists, empathic healers, creative artists, and humanitarians. If she’s going to be labeled, I prefer those.
We all have a different silhouette. We are all a different combination of short, fat, tall, skinny, etc. We can look beyond all that and see that each of those parts create a whole person, able to cast their own shadow and do their own thing.
Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer::A modern retelling.
Ever since Golfer called out the bogus nature of the point of the Rudolf story, I’ve been thinking about that reindeer, his red nose, his “friends”, his family, and the elves. I’ve wondered what the story would be if it were set in modern times. And I think I have the answer! So here we go…a perfect little morality tale, based loosely on the old stop motion TV show, to accompany this Christmas Eve day.
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Once upon a time there was a reindeer who was born with a glowing red nose. His father, Santa’s lead reindeer Donner, feels ashamed. Soon, it’s time for Rudolf to go to reindeer school. The teacher notices that Rudolf isn’t like all the other reindeer. He’s not as coordinated as the others. He’s interested in other things and doesn’t pay a lot of attention to what’s going on around him. Instead of playing reindeer games, Rudolf just wants to fly…it’s hard for him to stay still because he keeps trying to take off. Everyone teases him because he’s different. And then there’s the issue of his nose. He’s bullied because of it. Instead of helping the other reindeer accept Rudolf for who he is, the teacher calls a conference and sends Donner to the elves, who tell him that they’ve been working on a pill that will fix everything. His mother doesn’t see anything wrong with Rudolf’s nose, but wants to make everyone happy and so goes along with it. How bad could it be?
Rudolf takes the pill every day. It stops him from caring about flying so much, so he’s OK that the reindeer school schedule focuses more on reindeer games. It makes his nose stop glowing! It stops his brain from thinking so much, so it looks like he’s paying attention when really he’s not thinking much at all. He stops being interested in things the other reindeer don’t care about. He begins to look and act just like the other reindeer. This makes his dad, Donner, really happy. Now he’s not embarrassed by how different his son is, and doesn’t have to listen to the teasing anymore. This gives him hope that maybe now Rudolf can be successful doing things reindeer are supposed to be successful doing, instead of anything else.
Christmas Eve comes around, and a big thick fog rolls in. Santa and all the reindeer on the sled team start panicking…how will they see enough to get through the fog to all the houses? Santa remembers there used to be a reindeer with a glowing red nose. “Hm, that would be useful right about now!” he thinks. He walks around asking “Where’s the reindeer with the glowing red nose?!” Rudolf steps forward and says, “I used to have a glowing nose!” but when he tries to make it glow, he realizes he can’t anymore.
Santa brainstorms and thinks that maybe if he takes a few more reindeer up with him to pull the sleigh, more eyes will be able to help guide it. Unfortunately, the reindeer curriculum emphasizes flying in the second year, so none of the younger reindeer are capable or strong flyers yet since they studied mostly reindeer games. Rudolf briefly remembers how much he wanted to fly, and how frustrated he was when everyone stopped him. “Maybe I could have helped out more with my glowing red nose and advanced flying skills,” he thought. “Now I’m just like all the other reindeer, but right now we need something different.”
Santa had to cancel Christmas. The world was sad, and lost faith in the North Pole. Everyone started taking care of Christmas themselves, and demand dropped for elf toys. Soon Santa had to lay off half the elf workforce and 1/3 of the reindeers. Donner was the first reindeer he let go.
Eventually, Rudolf became old enough to make his own choices, so he stopped taking the pills the elves gave him, regained the use of his red glowing nose, and flew away to find others that were unique like him. He subsequently finds the island of misfit toys and becomes the CEO of the toymaking factory there. They make such special and whimsical toys, demand for them skyrockets throughout the world. Rudolf starts hiring Santa’s laid off elves. Within 2 years he puts Santa out of business and they merge companies, with Rudolf remaining in charge of both.
After embracing who he is, and finding others who do the same, Rudolf lives happily ever after.
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Preventing Sensory Overload.
There was a time in the not too distant past when my whole raison d’etre was preventing sensory overload in my home.
Sensory overload is what happens when you have a really particular kid who is extra sensitive to noise/taste/touch/environment/visual stimulation, mix that kid up with some thunder/particular food/clothes/school/fluorescent lights, and stir in some sleepless nights. Voila! You have created the emotional volcano that erupts from a child who is sensory overloaded and who then takes it out on anyone around. Especially if that person is you…because they feel safe and secure and loved by you and the calm and quiet place you provide for them. Except you do not feel calm and quiet inside. Inside, you feel like you are being rubbed on with a brillo pad…raw and pained.
I am not a big labeller, I don’t like to diagnose or treat ‘disorders’. I like to know and love kids and everything they bring to the table without putting them in a box. But, the day I read about Sensory Integration Disorder, I felt angels singing in my ears. Each of my kids is prone to sensory overload in different ways, and when I learned about how to make the world easier for them as well as taught them how to handle the overload, my life became much less complicated. It is always empowering for everyone involved when there is understanding and respect for how the other person processes things.
Naturalist has the hearing of an owl. (disregard if owls don’t, in fact, have good hearing. What do I know, I’m not the Naturalist. But I’m assuming they do because their eyesight is piss poor but they still manage to find enough to eat.) When she was 3, she refused to sleep because of the ‘not monster’. A monster who would come into her room and whisper “not, not, not” over and over until she went insane. This, in turn, drove me insane. This went on for yeeeeeears. Then we moved to Vegas when she was 5, and for a few days she slept really great! Then I unpacked a box of her stuff and she immediately exclaimed, “The not monster is back!”. After looking over the newly unpacked things, it turned out the not monster was the whisper of a second hand on a tiny clock. This hyper hearing affected her in school, since she would focus her hearing attention equally on the teacher, the kids, the fly on the window, the rustle of papers, and the kids playing at recess outside. Other sensory issues that made it hard for her to be in a classroom: flickering fluorescent lights, sitting upright in a chair, and moving from task to task on a set schedule. Taking her out of school quickly solved so many daily overloads she was having at the time. She also had huge sleep issues which were resolved miraculously by a lava lamp. She also sleeps in a hammock now. For a long time, I felt like I had to walk on eggshells around her, in order to prevent a huge emotional vent. But now that she’s 14, I honestly can barely remember those days. Being informed + her getting older = sensory overload free days! Now she can tell me what’s bothering her way before it gets overwhelming.
Golfer has a problem with sudden and loud noises. It started after one bad thunderstorm when he was 4 or 5. He began obsessing over the weather…if it looked stormy or windy outside he wouldn’t leave the house, and would place his hands over his ears in anticipation of a loud thunderclap that usually would never happen. He would lay on the floor unable to move out of fear of thunder, only able to cry and scream. Movies with sudden loud sound effects are right out. Loud crowds or music…right out. When we went to the airshow last week, even though he was so excited to see all his favorite planes there, he was unable to focus because of the noise when the jets would fly overhead. He was constantly on guard against having the loud noises return unexpectedly, and turned into a ball of stress. Then we got him the earphones or whatever the noise blockers are called, and it was like a new kid! I wish I’d thought of this sooner. I would have gotten a pair of these when he was 4 and 5. In fact, when I posted the pics I realized that lots of my facebook friends have them for their kids. I have such smart facebook friends!
And Sassy. Well. Sassy doesn’t like to wear pants. Or socks. Or shoes. She doesn’t like the feel of any of them. She does like flip flops, so moving to warm So. Cal. has helped because she can wear them anytime, unlike in the winter in Colorado. Socks are negotiable. Pants are non-negotiable. I mean, she doesn’t ever wear them around the house, but going out it’s important to have some on. I’ve tried skirts, dresses, shorts…no no no. But now, thanks to Lindsay Lohan, jeggings are everywhere! the look of pants, the feel of soft leggings/sweats. She keeps them on a lot easier. Another thing Sassy has a hard time with…touching messy stuff. She’s never been a big fan of playdoh or finger painting or eating with her hands. In fact, even sandwiches bother her because sometimes the messy middle dribbles out and forces her to touch it. Today I had an aha moment after remembering the cool way we’d eat hot dogs while in Germany. They would take a roll, impale it on a hot poker (making both a hot roll and a space for the hot dog), put some condiments in the hole then shove a hot dog into it. I never got messy eating one of those! I could hold the bread without anything leaking onto my hands. So I recreated it with some roast beef. I got a little roll, shoved my finger inside and made a space for some rolled up cheese and roast beef, dribbled in some mustard…and look! Non messy roast beef sandwich! I’ll have to try this again with PB&J!
Do you have any other tips for helping kids not get overstimulated?
Share Tweet2e Tuesday::Dyslexia isn’t a four letter word.
I’ve shared here many times our journey with dyslexia because Naturalist is dyslexic. Here’s a long list of old posts that mention it! It’s the reason we started homeschooling when she was 9. It’s the reason we then moved in to unschooling when she was 11. Dyslexia is specifically a condition that affects the reading process, as well as writing and hearing. She struggles to translate letters and symbols into meaning, she struggles to hear the order of spoken words/sounds correctly, she struggles to write her visual thoughts down using letters and symbols. Here’s the link to a good basic overview of what Dyslexia is.
Most people consider Dyslexia to be a learning disability. In school, it totally is. In life, it totally is not. Yes, it affects reading. But it’s so much more. It stems from a general difference in thinking and processing. It’s not just about learning to read, it’s about people who view the world and life in a completely unique way. Ron Davis, a dyslexic, has written a book about his experiences:
Ron Davis describes dyslexia as “The Mother of Learning Disabilities.” He explains why many other conditions have the same root cause as dyslexia. These include Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD), Autism, Dyscalculia/Acalculia, Dysgraphia/Agraphia, and Hyperactivity. Ron Davis shows how the learning disability of dyslexia is caused by the successful use of visual thinking skills at an early age. This “gift” works well for recognizing real life objects, but not printed symbols such as alphabet letters and words. Disorientation is turned on by confusion, so the stress and invalidation typically encountered during the early school years compound the problem. Mental tricks are adopted to give the appearance of learning. Loss of self-esteem causes many dyslexics to adopt ingenious methods to hide their learning disability.
Dyslexics also tend to be more curious, creative, and intuitive than average. They tend to be highly aware of the environment, inventive, and good at real world tasks. Their special mode of thought also produces the gift of mastery: once they have learned something experientially, they understand it on such a deep level that they know how to do things intuitively without thinking about how.
I recently got a comment from a blog friend who just found out her 6 year old has dyslexia. And while I remember the absolute frustration and worry I felt when someone told me that Naturalist had it, I’m so far removed from that place right now–after watching her thrive and learn phenomenally in the right learning environment. So I looked back at some of my old blogs to create a little highlight of my advice and experience with my daughter’s dyslexia.
In public school she is labeled with a disability. Here at home, she is simply herself…a creator. If she has to have a label, I prefer that one.
If it’s a question between expressing thought and feeling, or proper technical writing, always err on the side of expression. Whether in public school, homeschool, or whatever, protect your child’s freedom of expression. Work with the teacher or with yourself to give grades that can allow the technical, tricky parts not to count. It is a shame when these kids are silenced from sharing their own beautiful dance with words because rules, forms and conventions get in the way.
The Lesson of the Rock::Protect the Magic.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” –Albert Einstein
There’s something particularly magical about childhood, for so many reasons. But one of my favorite things about kids is how many open and endless possibilities there are in the world. I have an old video from when Sassy was 2, way back in 2006. She was tinier, with longer hair, but every bit as sassy with a strong personality that let me know how we were going to throw rocks off a pier at Big Stone Lake in Minnesota. She tells me to throw mine slowly. Then she says she likes to throw hers “fast and fast!”, and when she tosses it up into the air she turns to the camera and says with wonder in her voice, “It went to the CLOUDS, mom!”
I have seen many parents take these magic moments and squelch them. Before unschooling, I was one of those parents.
Obviously, the rock didn’t go to the clouds. Obviously, no one can throw rocks up into the clouds. Obviously, she was wrong.
Often, a magical moment of childhood is ruined by a well meaning adult correcting or pointing out the reality or the obvious. Our current society places a high premium on teaching kids ‘the facts’ and creating ubersupersmarties…kids who have Mandarin Chinese piped into the womb before they’re born and who go to pre-pre-school. Magical creativity and open possibilities are sacrificed for static facts and cold hard reality as soon as kids are corrected about what they imagine to be true.
I’ve watched many similar instances where a child will make a statement like, “I threw it to the clouds!” and the parent will correct them and try to teach them all about gravity, force, and the impossible nature of the claim. The child learns something, but not what the corrector is hoping. What the child learns is to not trust the magic. Unfortunately, that creative magic is in short supply at a time when we need divergent free thinkers to solve problems like:
the challenges of global poverty, disease, and war, and the need for alternative energy sources. In fact every facet of our future depends on creative minds. It’s imperative that we educate our children to develop their creative potential.
I love to watch my kids learn, I value facts and information and knowledge gathering! But I hate corrections. I hate squelching their imaginative (if not often incorrect) ‘reality’ with a statement that hey, you’re wrong and here let me tell you what’s right. The beauty of learning is watching the process unfold. One day Sassy thought she could throw rocks to the clouds…but over the course of time she became more aware of how high the rocks actually go, and wondered why they didn’t go higher, and asked questions and observed until she self corrected and learned a whole lot about gravity and force in the process. This is how we ALL learn the best. And even though we don’t think our rocks go to the clouds, we are continually making judgment calls about the world around us and hopefully continually reevaluating and readjusting as we learn more. There is no part of this process that should include feeling ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb’, and yet in school with heavy standardization and tests that is exactly what happens.
Our current public school system replaces the magic and discovery of the learning process (which takes time and isn’t standardized at all but very individualized) with the short circuited and short sighted idea that facts are to be given as answers before kids even learn to ask the question.
True creativity comes from internal motivation to express ideas and feelings. Time to generate ideas, and encouragement to generate ideas, are also crucial to developing children’s creative thinking skills. Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist and peace activist, said “The best way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas, and throw away the bad ones.” Unfortunately, in our schools children are often rewarded for getting one usable idea quickly, rather than using their imaginations to think of many ideas. Children need to be encouraged to come up with lots of ideas, both individually and in groups. This takes time, patience, and respect for each student’s point of view.
There is a fascinating concept about creativity and divergent thinking. Unlike most developmental concepts in math, science, and reading, (which all grow over time) creativity is something that can be lost. LOST! How sad is that?! It all starts out well enough:
Every child is creative, but too many children lose some or most of their creativity as they grow to adulthood. In fact, a landmark study by pioneering creativity researcher Dr. George Land found that out of 1,600 children aged three to five, 98% showed divergent thinking, or the ability to generate multiple responses to a single question (a key component of creativity at a genius level).
and then. Oh, the humanity!!!
By the time they were aged eight to 10, only 32% could think divergently. And when the test was used with 200,000 25-year-olds, only 2% showed divergent thinking (Land and Jarman, 1993). In May of 2010, a study at the College of William & Mary confirmed that American children’s creativity is decreasing. The researcher, Kyung Hee Kim, noted that “it is the …younger children in America — from kindergarten through sixth grade — for whom the decline is ‘most serious.’”
This epidemic of lost creativity weighs heavily on my mind. I don’t call my blog ‘freeplaylife’ for nothing! I have this mental image of millions of kids holding their childhood magic like little candles, glowing and showing the way for all of us without our own candles (because, you know, we’ve outgrown childish magic in favor of bill paying and fact gathering…). Instead of using their lights to spark our own and light up the world, we are trying to make them just like us and blowing out their candlelight in the process. This really bothers me. There is a way to foster learning without snuffing out any light. In fact, there is a way to encourage learning and growth all the while protecting the magic of our kids.
It doesn’t include testing, constant correction, evaluating, penalizing, or teaching.
It does include talking, brainstorming, valuing more than one answer, letting the child self correct over time, having patience for the process, encouraging, and mentoring.
When it comes to creative thinking, our culture of evaluation is dangerous. When children expect their creative work to be evaluated, they become fearful and hesitant and their creative thinking decreases. Even praise, or positive evaluation, decreases creative thinking by focusing students on external motivation. As Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards, states, praise “motivates children to get (more) praise… often at the expense of commitment to whatever they were doing that prompted the praise… They become less likely to take risks — a prerequisite for creativity — once they start thinking about how to keep those positive comments coming”
Refrain from saying anything evaluative or judgmental.
Just say, “Okay, thank you” or nod and then ask another child for her idea. This non-evaluative response seems to improve the children’s respect for each other — I’ve never heard any child say that a classmate’s idea was bad or stupid.
Taking time each day to share a relaxed, fun idea-generating activity, in which ideas are accepted without evaluation, can greatly increase students’ creative thinking skills, as well as their confidence in sharing their ideas with others.
Practically speaking, valuing, protecting, and instilling creativity in our kids will contribute more to their well being and future success than memorizing times tables in 3rd grade. The ability to problem solve, collaborate, adjust to change, create change, foster innovation, and continually discover things in a new way all contribute to happiness and growth…not just of the creative person but for everyone that they come in to contact with or influence.
It’s important not to blow out the creative spark in kids before it ever fully develops. It’s also important to be on our guard for other influences in society that try to take this spark away from them. It’s not the most popular thing to stand up for your kid during parent/teacher conferences and advocate for their need to create and play rather than finish homework or get A’s on tests. It’s tough to not compare your child’s totally self directed art project (which may or may not have either form or function!) to another child’s project that is technically perfect but with lots of outside help. It’s hard to back off and let kids have a high degree of self expression and free play in our world of uber control and anxiety about what’s ‘out there’. But the end result…and complete and creative adult…makes it all more than worthwhile!
Resources:
Help Kids Stay Creative!
Increase Creativity!
How To Encourage Creativity!
Instill Creativity In Kids As Part Of A Meaningful Life!
Thanks For Sharing!