Wonder love

Keeping Time

This post was originally written for the Opal School Blog, but as a personal reflection, it made sense to post it here as well.

My desk these days is filled with calendars, lists, agendas, new files and binders. Somehow attempting to give form to the enthusiasm and the anticipation of all a new school year will bring.Trying to contain it. Organize it.

On Fresh Air last night, Terry Gross interviewed neuroscientist David Eagleman about his book Incognito. "All of our lives — our cognition, our thoughts, our beliefs — all of these are underpinned by these massive lightning storms of [electrical] activity [in our brains,] and yet we don't have any awareness of it," Eagleman says. "What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time."

One of the most interesting snippets had to do with the relationship between time and memory. He described research that has been done on thousands of subjects willing to encounter a free fall of 150 feet, backwards into a net. What goes on in their minds while they are falling? Time slows. The brain floods with memories, moments, and the participants consistently marveled over how a second-long fall could feel like minutes.

Waiting for the school year to begin is a free fall of sorts. Memories, experiences, hopes and dreams all causing colossal action in our brains, and how we move to start just the tip of the conscious iceberg. 

But what happens for children? Children experience time like the numbers on a digital clock-- out of context with the winding hands of the analog. How do we support them with a sense of belonging to our adult world that can see the relationships of past to future? How do we develop enough wisdom ourselves to recognize the experience that has framed our cognition, our beliefs, our thoughts -- that the lightning storms firing in our brains are not the same that fire in our children's? How do we learn to value the wisdom in their experience while keeping them safe, keeping them engaged, keeping them on time?

This summer, my family worked with a wonderful specialist named Mary Dee Sklar, who has written a course called, Seeing What I Need To Do. She helped us learn to make abstract concepts of time visible and even tangible so that all of us can see and feel together what it means to move cooperatively through time.

Hours and minutes and days are the blocks we use to build our lives together. Tools such as analog clocks, wall calendars, visual schedules, and timers can become ways that we hold those blocks in our hands to play with our children so that they can learn to build with us and understand how to fit their needs and the needs of the lives of others together with beauty and mastery. In coming weeks, we'll share some of the strategies we are using. And we hope you will share as well the tools and routines you use.

When we pave this pathway of belonging for our children towards the world of adulthood, we alter the patterns of those lightning storms in their brains forever. And we leave a lasting trace on the hours and minutes and days that continue to build the lives of our loved ones long after we are gone.

How to Teach Reading and Writing (and a little math and science, too)

Stella loves to lay in the hammock. I'd say it is her favorite summer pastime this year. I spent about an hour laying in it with her one morning this week, and I taught her to read and write. Here's how:

1. As we were swinging gently back and forth, I looked up into the tree and saw that a spider had made a web and the sun was catching it just so we could see every line. Having finished reading Charlotte's Web the night before, I asked Stella if she imagined that Charlotte's webs looked that way? Could she see the orb lines and the radial lines? 
2. I reached for the drawing paper and pens that were available in our little outdoor studio space and invited Stella to draw the web she saw. This is a difficult task, but she gave it a try. 
3. When she finished, she wanted to write, "From Stella" on the bottom of the paper. She asked me how to write "From". So I told her the letters and she wrote them down.
4. Then she wanted to write "I love you". So we started with "I". She wanted more letters so I explained to her that was the whole word. 
5. She asked if she could write a heart and I said yes but that wouldn't be the word. She would need letters to make the word "love". So she asked for the letters.
6. This time, I made the sound /l/ because I knew it was a sound she had in her name. I told her it was the sound in Ste -- ll --and she blurted out happily, "l"! And then she was tired out, so she decided to stop the writing.
7. We laid back in the hammock for a little more snuggling and swinging. A squirrel hopped along the top of the fence but got startled when it saw us and ran away.
8. We checked on the web again and Stella noticed a tiny moth flying around it. She wondered if it would get caught and the spider would eat it. We considered the patience it takes to be a spider. 
9. I looked up on the tree and noticed a bit of sap running from a knot hole. I remembered that Stella had asked about making syrup very recently, and took a moment to make the connection for her.
10. She hopped up and cleaned the raspberry bushes of berries, then hopped back in.
11. We noticed that the spider's web had broken. And we took a little more time to consider the patience and feelings of spiders. Stella spent a few moments trying to talk to the spider in spider language, which I, like Fern's mother, could not understand.
12. Stella decided to add the spider to her drawing. She asked me how many legs it had and I told her. Stella's spider got 8 legs counted carefully -- on each side of the spider's body.
13. We noticed a second spider building a web behind the first, and we were reminded of Charlotte's babies.

Okay, so Stella doesn't yet read and write independently. But an hour spent like this, in the context of good books and materials at hand and making conversation in the wide world -- an hour spent snuggling and connecting and considering the feelings of spiders and squirrels -- an hour spent noticing and wondering and making meaningful marks on the page -- this is how she will learn. Experience offers her a chance to find her place in the family of things. She, like all human beings, wants a way to participate.

And it is oh, so much more fun than flashcards.

Get away

Oh! It's just the thing to do sometimes... the pictures can tell the story.

 

Slow Down

It has been a long winter. Lots and lots of working overtime and Sophie in a (semi-)professional theater production which means she gets paid and I drive and a new puppy and soccer practices and various lessons and all the usual (laundry and such) and the sophisticated mathematical problem solving that allowed us around the family dinner table at least once in a while complicated by picky eaters and school and homework and applying to high school (!) and middle school (!!). And now it is Spring.

Almost 5 year old Stella has become more than a handful. And all this grand thinking about competent children and being mindful of our relationships with them can feel a little suspect when parenting a handful. Sometimes the choices these competent little ones make just are not okay. Their behavior just needs to STOP. Like when you are riding in the car, for instance. When a child makes the exciting transition to a booster seat, the child simply has got to SIT STILL in the car. She cannot twirl around and upside down and explore the variety of ways she can weave her limbs through the belt while turning around to reach what's behind her and taking off her jacket. And putting it back on. She simply can't.

And so I warned her. I warned her that she was going to lose her right to sit in the big kids' car seat. And she blew it, so I told her she was going to have to sit in the old car seat for another day. Oh, and she cried then. She sobbed.

I've been reading Brene Brown's book about shame recently. And as Stella cried, I wondered, what have I done recently to let this not quite 5-year-old girl know how worthy she is? As I manage the world around her moving at mach speed, what have I done to support her to understand that she is not to be ashamed of her 4-year-oldness. The world tilted on me and I realized it was me that needed to STOP -- right about the time we parked, finally at home for the day.

Stella and I sat down together later that afternoon and we created a list: The Rules for Riding in Big Kid Car Seats. It turns out that Stella knew them all. I drew a picture (critiqued by 11-year-old Max) of what she should look like while riding, and wrote the words we created together. Then Stella asked for the pen. And she added her own rule. One I hadn't considered at all.

 

Don't let your ponytails touch the ceiling.

Brilliant. Competent. Not quite 5.

At not quite 45, I have a lot of catching up to do. Clearly, I will need to slow down in order to do it.

Here she is this morning, riding to school, reading the list we made -- which she chose to carry with her in the car. Look at her expert form! About half-way to school she said, "Hey, Mommy! I'm doing all the things!" Worthy of my time and love and attention. More powerful than shame any day. 

2011 Top Ten

Well, I really did try to choose just 10 images of 2011 moments that would capture it's spirit. Offer a nod of gratitude. Leave a trace. But that inspired a different way of thinking about it. It's really about reflecting on this year's top 10 treasured values that are always the lens and frame of an image I shoot and collect. Those that are favorites at the end of a year all got to be on that list because they snapped those values to life in the first place. My eye seeks what my heart wants to know and remember. 

Here are the things my heart wanted to know and remember this year:

1) Such amazing tiny hands and feet

2) Sustained curiosity

3) Surprise and Delight

4) Beauty

5) Testing limits

6) Early Literacy

7) Togetherness

8) Exploration

9) Making use of inspiration

10) Play

Oh, what a good way that was not to have to choose 10! If you were to try and choose your own -- whether from family, travel, classroom, where ever 2011 may have taken you and your camera -- what would they show you you cared most about?

Here's to a happy, healthy, playful 2012!

Thanks

As I was driving today my eye caught the briefest glimpse of a bird poking around in the yellow leaves piled at the edge of the road. And I wondered just for the briefest second about how many birds there might be under those leaves, poking around for bugs and worms -- at tremendous risk of being run down by speeding tires, any of the hundreds whizzing past. And yet there they were. A quick shift of focus and there they were.

Sophie's class took a field trip to the city's waste water treatment facility today. It was a sensory experience that will remain ripe in her imagination, invisible to most of us. Maybe happily so. But it made me think, for another brief moment, about on how much we rely that we don't see. There is a magic in that shift in focus.

I woke up so tired today. There is a new personality to attend to in this household:

Her name is Lucy.

When Stella woke up with a sore throat and wanting to stay home, it was easy to say yes. But I had a headache and I had a meeting that couldn't be missed, and Sophie and Max still had to go to school, and oh! the driving! I am sure I drove the equivalent of a trip to Idaho and back today. And the rain. A mudpit of a backyard and a puppy. oh! the laundry! and the mopping...does muddy laundry water count as waste water? I kind of hope so.

Those little birds just refused to stay out of sight to me today, though. I'm not sure why. It may have been the confidence I picked up in the few paragraphs I read of Madeline Levine's The Price of Privilege -- where she assured me that being a working mother wasn't damaging my children. Or this quote I'd read, quite early in the morning, from Edith Cobb's The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood:

...wonder permits a response of the nervous system to the universe that incites the mind to organize novelty of pattern and form out of incoming information.

And so it was the absurdity of Max and Sophie pretending to be my sister's dogs invited by Stella to the family tea party that made me laugh. And the fact that they played their parts for her with mostly straight faces and cooperative barks.

And it was Stella's determination to prepare and clean the lettuce for dinner's salad that made me so proud. And the fact that she noticed how much everyone enjoyed eating it.

And it was Max's enthusiasm for sharing his careful work putting together and painting his tiny army guy models and watching him lost in his play with them not long after that filled me with love and awe for this big little boy. 

And it was reading picture books with three children crowded so close we could barely breathe to read and Stella giving voice to the silly parts while Bob and I reached for each other with our toes that I felt so happy. 

And it was Sophie's face, crushed with disappointment over having halved all but the milk in the soup recipe she made for dinner and her relief in finding that it tasted delicious anyway that made me feel thankful.

Thankful that all those little birds are there to find in every moment. Thankful for my own sweet little birds and their dad and those that came before us. Thankful that I can choose the form that I make of the incoming information I encounter in any moment. Thankful for all these moments.

And those to come. Always at risk of being run over by the speeding tires that can't perceive them. But there nonetheless. Visible to me when I choose to see.

Faces for Six Pumpkins

It is a good idea, it turns out, to plan the faces for your extra pumpkins while you are waiting patiently for the seeds... those endless seeds all tangled up in orange goo... to find their way out of the way of the carving knife.

I began my day having stumbled upon this lovely post over on Let's Explore. It caused me to stop and wonder about the way I would choose to take my time on this precious sunny Saturday. What agenda was I harboring? How much space did I have to follow the desires of my children? How open was I going to be to listening? 

Stella and I had our first fallout of the day over Shrinky-Dinks. It was a classic breakdown between adult and young child trying to negotiate the constraints of a craft kit. In the realm of consciousness it was a battle between her lantern and my spotlight. She could see more possibilities than I could and I didn't want her to get burned on hot cookie sheet or melted plastic. She soon tired of me being so uptight and went to find someone or something to do that was more interesting.

By 9 am, we knew that it would be pumpkin patch day. It was this day or not at all, of course, this close to Halloween. 11-year-old Max, having heard that there are corn mazes around town in which you can be chased by people holding real chain saws, thought the G-rated version where we had arrived was lame. But after being convinced that visiting an actual scary maze was not something we were going to follow his lead on, he grabbed Stella's hand and they enjoyed themselves anyway.

I was really terrible with the pumpkins. Why is it that the pumpkins are all already picked, lying around in the muddy field? Why is it that they cost the same, those muddy pumpkins in the muddy field, and the clean ones in the bins at the farm stand? There was just no romance in it for me today-- the pumpkins in the mud. Stella wanted to pick one from the field and the good news, I guess, is that we let her. I do wish that having gone through all that mud, though, she would have at least had some sense of how those pumpkins actually grow. When did picking pumpkins come to mean only selecting?

She found a few she liked. 

And we took them home.

The annual ritual of the carving, the seed toasting, the face-making was something we all could gather around together. It's Stella's fourth time now, and she knows how to play. Finally there was a lead she could take that we all could contentedly follow. She brought the pumpkins to life.

And I will be thinking some more tomorrow about how much I lead, how much I follow, how much I whine, and working on developing a deeper sensitivity for the moments when we are really connected and together. 

Time

I happened upon a few old pictures today. This one just slayed me:

The snaggle-toothed seven-year old Sophie. And this one:

Such sweetness and little wide-eyed faces. I miss those babies. I can't help it. And it's not because now they tell me so bluntly that I talk too much and my taste in music is bad. And it's not that their taste in music is bad or even the fact that they organize their limited weekly screen time around opportunities to watch The Simpsons. It's just that this time goes by too damn fast.

In small snippets I am reading Amanda Soule's new book about the Rhythm of Family. Luckily it's formatted that way -- and whether that's because she's a blog writer or because she knows that no matter how much we talk about slowing down and living deeply in every moment, we still only have the here and there kind of time to think about anything else -- I'll never know. But she's put the passing of time heavily on my mind this week. 

Soule writes about the dreamy moments of baking with a child while a littler one zooms through the kitchen on his wooden trike and an older one threatens to run through the house before removing muddy soccer cleats. And those moments full of noisy love resonate with such meaning I begin to fear the day they end. Worse, I fear the other kind of noise in the house. The kind that is full of discord and unhappiness. Slammed doors. Eye-rolls. I fear that time squeezing out the other. In real time, but maybe in memory, too. What do we make of this time we have? 

While orthodontists unsnaggle teeth and dermatologists prescribe potions to keep faces sweet, wonder shifts to who we are together-- bigger, older, and still together. Trying not to grieve the moments gone, but to be here with them now in all the days we have. 

I sat on the floor today with Stella, painting with shades of gray.

While Sophie and Bob cooked dinner together.

And Max played with a friend.

It was that kind of dreamy. I felt all the beauty and the warmth and the slowness of the moment. And I asked Stella what the paint made her think of. Did she think of a story? A feeling? Stella, does it remind you of anything? And without the slightest hint of silliness while she kept on painting she said, emphatically,

Bird poop. 

She was right. Time marches on.

Before furnishing

Tonight is the school picnic!

Stella: You mean it's tomorrow now?

Yes.

Stella: Oh! So that means that M is going to be at school!

Yes she is!

Stella: Every single tomorrow M is going to be in my class. But not every single today!

What's a 4 year old to do with concepts contained in words like today and tomorrow? How is Stella supposed to make sense of the fact that her dear friend, M, was not in school on the first day she arrived this year? Clearly, she will work at it until she has a theory that can suffice to explain it all.

Isn't this just what we all do-- no matter how old we are?

I am reading Alison Gopnik's beautiful book, The Philosophical Baby right now. Devouring it is more apt. In it, she ties childhood and adulthood together. She argues the importance of childhood to adulthood, but also the parallels of process and reason. For example, children create wild pretend scenarios using elements of everything and anything they have discovered and encountered so that they can make sense of it, mix it up, and understand it even more. Adults create and consume fiction for the same reasons. How many of us have developed an understanding of some element of the human condition with more depth and empathy through fiction than through any other means? The differences between childhood and adulthood amount to experience, responsibility, and perceptions of reality.

Our young selves get to freely explore both this world, and all the possible...worlds, without worrying about which of those worlds will actually turn out to be inhabitable. We adults are the ones who have to figure out whether we want to move into one of those possible worlds, and how to drag all our furniture in there too.

Alison Gopnik

So what kind of elements of possiblity do we want to provide children with, so they have as much practice as possible with developing worlds before furniture begins to accumulate and need storage space? 

Family Dinner

Sophie (she's 14 now!) had me call her when I was just a very precise number of blocks from home last night so she could time the slicing of these peaches just so. So when they arrived on the table, they would be still glistening and bright yellow. So enticing that Stella (she's 4 now!) just couldn't wait a moment to dive in.

We have been enjoying the beginnings of a little friendly competition over here. It is a family dinner competition that, as you can see, only a couple of weeks in, has inspired the best. 

And I think it may inspire the energy in my voice, ready to do some writing again. 

More on the dinners... and the family that makes them, to come...