I recently checked out Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This book is approximately two-thirds diatribe about the various evils of modern centralized food production and distribution in the United States and one-third redeemingly endearing (and sometimes hilarious) anecdotes from the year Kingsolver's family spent living on a farm in the Appalachians, squeezing in a lot of gardening around their more "normal" paying jobs and eating only locally-produced food (with a few exceptions; they allowed themselves one non-local "cheat" food a piece (coffee, hot chocolate, etc.), kept their spices (which are generally light and used in small quantity anyway, and thus of only slight and mitigated evil), and were willing to get their flour from slightly farther afield than their vegetables and meat). My father-in-law and stepmother-in-law describe this experience as one they "wish they could have without actually having to do it," and heartily recommended the book to me. They especially thought D would appreciate the chicken-raising experiences of Kingsolver's 9yo daughter Lily. So I got it, I've read most of it, and I've started reading it out loud to the kids.

We haven't gotten to the chicken-raising experiences yet. In fact, we've only barely introduced the family's goal and their arrival in, I think, Virginia. I fully intend to skip most of the diatribes -- which will not really gut the book of its "local is better" message (or, alternately, its "large-scale corporate agriculture and its various outgrowths are EVIL!!!" message), because that message is entirely too pervasive in the book to be excised without a complete rewrite. But D is already completely enthralled and asking for more. This is definitely not a kid book -- the writing has a slightly biting and ironic humor to it in places that you just don't find in the children's section, along with a bit of subtlety that leaves D chuckling and T looking confused -- but D is totally loving it. I hadn't realized she was so thoroughly ready for this; I really need to coax her out of the American Girl books and into more substantive things. I'm not sure I'm ready to hand her the entire diatribe-ridden book, though, and turning her loose in the adult section would probably be overwhelming to her and thus counterproductive; maybe it's time to find the book on Guiding Gifted Readers again and prioritize its reading.

Of course, suggestions from you all would be much appreciated here, too. :) She's very interested in farming, agriculture, historical literature (especially if it's set in a pioneer setting, a la Laura Ingalls Wilder), and mysteries; she's read a fair bit of Nancy Drew and perked up her ears at Sherlock Holmes when an episode of Star Trek: TNG prompted us to describe him to her, but what little we knew of Holmes's character led us to think that there might be a bit too much emotional complexity and darkness there for her to deal with. Having T for a brother and us for parents is dragging her into a reluctant admission of the worth of some fantasy -- she'll admit to liking The Hobbit and the Narnia books -- but I think her brother's endless discussions of dragons may be as much fantasy as she can otherwise stand.

Newt

I stepped away from the supper table tonight to call Chris, who is currently at a client site for the second week in a row (but also for the second week this year, which given that it's almost June already, has us feeling very blessed with lots of at-home time so far this year, so I'm not complaining). It doesn't take me long to call Chris; three or four button pushes are generally all it takes. Yet somehow, in the time it took me to dial him and hear him answer, the kids managed to have a totally cool conversation.

It all concerned dragons and eye placements. I missed how this topic of conversation came up; the dragons, I'm sure, were introduced by T, resident dragon expert, who is starting to stretch the inventiveness of our local children's librarians with his constant requests for books about dragons.+ The conversation caught my ear when D started questioning T on the eating habits of dragons -- "Are they carnivorous? Omnivores? You know, do they eat things that aren't meat?" -- and trying to remember whether it was carnivores or omnivores that tended most strongly towards having eyes in the front of their heads. Various examples were brought up as evidence, humans being the obvious choice for omnivores, but I think a few carnivorous examples were also mentioned. D was, I think, trying to argue that eyes on the sides of a dragon's head didn't make any biological sense. T got there first and headed her off, though, by pointing out that dragons "have a magical nature" (direct quote) and therefore could hypothetically move their eyes at need or otherwise compensate for eye placement slightly at odds with their preferred methods of obtaining food. D had to grant that point, and the conversation drifted to other things.

Upon reflection, I think tomorrow I'm going to have to point out dolphins, which clearly hunt other animals for their food and yet clearly have their eyes on the sides of their heads. But for a brief, two-minute conversation, they managed to cover an impressive amount of information and reasonable arguments.

Newt

* 562 is T's Favorite Number of the ArbitraryTimePeriod. I'm not quite sure why, although from the way he says it, I think he may just like the way it rolls off the tongue. Most of the time, I can be amused by this quirky bit of T; of course, true to the quirky person T is, he doesn't often recognize when his favorite number should not be substituted for the real answer to the question at hand. Free advice, which I think T has now learned: When a woman is trying to simultaneously herd a self-propelled two-year-old across a parking lot, make sure that the four-year-old is still following a safe and fairly direct route (as opposed to choosing a crack in the pavement and declaring it to be his "track" (because of course, he's always an engine, though which engine from the Thomas universe he claims to be varies from one minute to the next)), and determine the number of inches of Subway sandwich necessary to feed her family that evening, it is not the right time to come back with an irrelevant answer, especially at the top of one's lungs.

+ In recent weeks, T's favorite librarian has taken to handing T books about dragons written at a reading level clearly below what T would prefer, and handing me books about dragons from the Young Adult section for me to skim for appropriateness before handing over. Given that T is still only 7, I appreciate this discretion. If you know of any emotionally appropriate books that touch on dragons in any way and are written at an upper elementary school (or even middle school!) reading level, I would totally love recommendations -- and at this point, I think the librarian would, too. (Honestly, as long as it's not too high a reading level, higher is probably better than lower, as long as the emotional aspects of the story remain fairly simple; harder-to-read books keep him busy longer and so delay the moment when we have to find another story about dragons.)

We have a 300-disc CD changer, sometimes referred to as a juke box. It's a bit of an anachronism now, I realize, in this world of MP3s and iPods, but it was either a graduation present to Chris or a wedding present to us (those events blurred together a bit in the gift department), and it still works just fine, so we have it. Seeing as how it is rather large, finding a piece of furniture that will support it has been a bit of a challenge over the years; currently, it sits on top of one of the speakers -- for those of you who knew Chris in college, yes, one of the speakers he built and had back then. R has recently discovered that, when standing on her tiptoes, she can reach the play/pause button, and she thinks it terribly clever that she can start and stop the music at will (provided that the amp is already set up to play CD music). Stupid manufacturer put all the important buttons on the bottom of the dang thing.

J is obsessive in his search for all things Thomas the Train-related; every trip to the library finds me canvassing all four (yes, four) locations where Thomas books might be hiding, and almost every trip prompts the DVD vs. Netflix discussion.* One of the most reliable places to find Thomas books is in the "book with CD" section, where books and their corresponding CDs are carefully packaged in those little library bags with the handles that hang on rods, and so we end up with these bags and CDs coming along with our Thomas books, which must be kept track of and can only be checked out for half as long as the other Thomas books. I really wish they'd expand their collection of Thomas books, but anyway. J is pretty responsible with these things, and enjoys sitting and listening to the CD, turning the page at all the appropriate moments and putting everything back when he's done (or at least remembering where he left it).

R shares J's obsession, but not his responsibility.

Trouble. Chaos. Mayhem. Headaches and calamities and problems, oh my.

Yesterday, R handed me the CD from "A Better View for Gordon" (coincidentally, she can say "Gordon," as well as "Percy" and "James," but not any of the names of her siblings yet; what's up with that?!) and asked me to play the "T movie." Because it was a CD, I stupidly put it into the CD changer, not thinking about the fact that it could just as easily be played by the DVD player. R, upset by the lack of picture, refused to listen to it. In the process of calming her down and distracting her, I did not immediately remove the CD from the CD changer. In fact, I entirely forgot that it was in there, let alone where in there I'd put it, and even Chris playing music from the CD player later in the evening did not remind me.

My mistakes in that last paragraph are aboundingly numerous.

I was forcibly informed of all of them this morning when R opened the CD changer and started rumaging through the CDs therein, looking for her "T movie." The mitigating mercy in all this is that nothing seems to have been damaged; I only lost half an hour to a painstaking search through the CD player to find that dang disc. But the cat is out of the bag now, she knows how to get to the shinies, and who knows what consequences may ultimately come from this.

Newt

* The library has a small collection of Thomas books, most or all of which are generally checked out at any one time -- this is the one area in which we're truly able to make a dent in their collection without half trying -- but an extensive collection of Thomas movies, such that there's always almost a full shelf of them waiting to be checked out. But because these are DVDs being checked out by toddlers, about half of them are too scratched to play all the way through, in spite of the big yellow "DVDs are fragile and NOT TOYS!" stickers on the front of each case. An inexaustable supply of Thomas episodes exists on Netflix streaming, which we already pay for. So why should we deal with the hassle of checking out a Thomas movie from the library? Apparently, because having checked it out makes J happy. I don't get it, but sometimes I go along with it, as long as he follows my draconian You Will Always Put It Back Where I Can Find It policy.

I knew from Kate Seredy's The Singing Tree that feudalism in Hungary ended in 1848; I knew from high school history classes that this was rather a bit after feudalism's end in much of the rest of Europe. But it took Will Durant's The Reformation to tell me why, in all the ( exceedingly gory details -- do not read if you do not have a strong stomach ).

Newt

PS I do not doubt that there were other details and events in the intervening years that kept feudalism alive and well after it had died out elsewhere. For one thing, the Turks conquered Hungary twelve years later, which must have brought with it any number of legal changes. But this sort of gruesome event stays in the cultural memory far longer than invaders stay in power.

Getting back from the park, we were hot, dusty, cranky, and thirsty. (One quart of ice water is not enough for five people, especially when the youngest person spills about a cup of it on the ground. Lesson learned.) We put the bikes away, dealt with a bit of controversy that had developed on the way home, and made a pitcher of ice water for everyone to share.

R is, apparently, no longer thirsty. I infer this from her transition from drinking to water play; she is dropping small items into her cup, fishing them out, dipping her hands in the water, and rubbing the resulting wetness all over the tabletop. All of this is accompanied with much chortling and a persistent smile, yet her answer to the question "Is water fun?" is a decided "No." Maybe she's working too hard for it to be fun?

Newt

It's always good, when sick, to have a large supply of reading material ready to hand, and a new time-wasting low-energy timesuck to explore. With this in mind, I've joined Pinterest this week and have been reading blog post after blog post over at Easy to Love but Hard to Raise, a blog whose title I immediately sympathized with. (Actually, since I started with the most recent and am going back in time as I read, am I reading blog post before blog post? *grin* Modern technologies, ancient languages....)

Reading through this blog at high speed like this (I'm back to September of last year so far) has given me a good familiarity with the children and stories of the contributors, a chuckle or two, a few sympathetic tears, and the occasional helpful hint. I've linked to posts from there on both Pinterest and Facebook, as warranted. But I've finally come across a post that's made me stop and think, and type for longer than either of those places will tolerate.

Are we mothers, or martyrs?

The post is all about medication decisions, mostly in the context of ADHD. Most parents who medicate their children for ADHD, it seems, do so while their kids are in school; many do not medicate for the time their children are at home, choosing instead to allow the medications to wear off and simply deal with the resulting increase in stressful issues, even through homework time. I've seen first-hand the effects of medication on one particular child, a cousin of Chris's, some years ago; I've discussed it with another cousin of his; I understand some of the tradeoffs these children and their parents have to accept for the benefits the drugs offer, and so I see why the parents might be reluctant to medicate for more than part of the day, and so give the drugs only for the academically and structurally most demanding portion of the day, leaving themselves to deal with the child at his/her most difficult. I see how this happens.

And I see how the question comes up: Are we mothers, or martyrs? Are we putting ourselves through this because it is best for our children, or because we somehow still feel guilty about the medication decision and feel that we deserve to have to deal with the difficulties entailed in parenting a child who needs medication and doesn't have it? If our children benefit from medication while in the classroom, would they also benefit from medication while in the home? Is it only the teacher that benefits, or does the child benefit as well? How most parents choose to answer these questions right now is not necessarily how most children would most benefit from having these questions answered. Additionally, the question of how to balance the needs of the child with the needs of the parents, siblings, and family as a whole is a very real question, and one that every parent of a difficult child has struggled with to some degree. If we medicate in part because it makes the classroom a more peaceful place where everyone can more easily learn, can we not also medicate because it makes the family a more peaceful place where everyone can more easily connect, relax, refuel, and otherwise function wholesomely?

My participation in this "we" is largely theoretical, hypothetical even; there are, it seems, no appropriate medications for T, or at least none that anyone is suggesting to us. (Of course, the last time we talked to a psychiatrist who believed us, he was four and a half. I do sometimes wonder what might have changed in the intervening three years; certainly, plenty has changed in the realm of what sorts of problems he manifests, or maybe we've just become better at pinpointing his problems. But whatever.) But there are parallels with the therapies we are pursuing, especially with the "animal walks" (sensory-rich movement exercises that help him focus, wrapped in a name designed for child-appeal) given us by the occupational therapist. We do them at the start of every morning of educational activities; why not at the start of the day, to help him through breakfast and getting dressed? He certainly has trouble focusing then, too. I've seen the effectiveness of them, seen him go from whining, complaining certainty that he can't possibly do the assigned task to matter-of-fact, efficient task completion with one round of animal walks. So why do I continue to struggle along with the traditional (and ineffective) blandishments and appeals to try harder and do better when chore time comes around? Why is it so hard to realize that truly, his brain just needs this sensory input, that we are all happier and all have an easier time of it -- that he is also happier and also has an easier time of it -- when we remember to have him do animal walks? Is it because he grumbles and complains about being asked to do them? Is it because I have to watch him to make sure that he makes his frog hops high enough to do any good? Or is it simply that I dislike making him go through these motions that mark him as definitively different from any of our other children? I really don't know.

I'm pretty sure, however, that life would be more peaceful around here if T did his animal walks more often, and that all of us would benefit from the increased peace. It's time, therefore, to get over whatever issues I may have with them, deep in my brain, and make them a part of his wakeup routine, a part of his lunchtime routine, a part of our response to anytime he seemingly can't (or even, seemingly won't) do what is asked. Like medication, the animal walks have side effects: time taken, grumbles inflicted, differences made clearer. But like any medication or therapy, you use it when the benefits outweigh the costs -- and with side effects far milder than any pharmaceutical drug on the market, for this, the benefits will almost always outweigh the costs.

Backing up from the personal to the broader question again, I find the medication patterns of most children with ADHD to be very interesting. We sought out help for T in large part because of the impact his behavior was having on his family. If a child's problems are only at school, then certainly, medicating only at school makes sense. But if there are also problems at home, and if medication helps with those problems as well, then the cost/benefit analysis comes into play. Maybe some children really do need or benefit from time off medication. But there's so much more that's worth focusing on than just the hours spent in a school building; if medication helps a child focus, complete chores, hear parents, participate in dinner conversations, attend restaurants, and generally live life to the full, then why do we as a culture think that only school merits that sort of effort and intervention? Or is it more that we as a culture have grudgingly acknowledged that children with ADHD genuinely can't function without help in school, but still expect that they should be able to overcome their ADHD in other areas if they just "try hard enough?" Why do I, based on my own actions, arguably believe the same for my son? Sure, the OT specifically suggested the animal walks for educational time; why has it taken me so long to say that we need to generalize their application? If we seek help for our children for reasons beyond making the school happy, we seek help because we want our children to be able to live full, happy, healthy lives -- in all areas of life. Let us therefore apply the available helps and solutions wherever they help, and not artificially limit them.

Newt

Originally posted by beth_leonard at End Daylight Savings Time Changes

R has developed a number of words that are distinctly hers. She's the first of our children to do this, although whether this has anything to do with her talking earlier than the others did isn't clear; she's not that much earlier than T, and I don't remember him doing this at all. "Fire" for "water" has mostly disappeared -- that one, seemingly, was an actual mispronunciation (as seen in the progression from "water" to "fwayer" to "fire"), and so fixed itself as her pronunciation improved. "Heavy" for "elephant" seems to be here to stay for a while, however; she recently started pluralizing it appropriately and remarks excitedly on any elephants she sees: "Heavy!" We made the switch back to cloth diapers with the help of some used waterproof covers from a cousin, many of which have "heavies" on them; these get chosen preferrentially (when she has any role in the selection process), and we know it's time to wash diapers when she goes to get one and comes back crying over a lack of "Heavies! Heavies, Mommy! Heavies no!" I used to think that "uppease" meant "open please," but now that she's adding "please" to various requests, it has become obvious that "uppease" does not include the "please" concept: "Mommy, uppease pease?" New this week, lids are "fee." Her rudest vocabulary substitution gets pulled out when she wants someone or something moved; it is as if she is immitating the more polite "excuse me," but has translated the pronoun: "'Suze oo. 'Suze oo, Mommy!" This is usually accompanied by shooing motions in the vicinity of the object to be moved; the meaning, the demand, is generally abundantly clear. (Maybe I can start insisting on the addition of "please" to the end of this? I can just see her, in a year or two, terrorizing the playground: "Excuse you.... please!")

But by far the most confusing of her word substitutions -- and the most disturbing to the listener -- is the use of the word "poop" to mean "bear." It seems to have started with Pooh, as in Winnie The, except that she'd encountered the word "poop" first and couldn't seem to take the final "p" off it. (This was particularly amusing to us, at first, in light of all the speech therapy we're taking J to so that he can put the final consonant on words where appropriate.) But now, instead of learning to drop that final "p," she seems to have embraced its presence there and generalized from Winnie The Pooh to all bears. This morning, D entertained R by inviting her into her (D's) room to play dolls; when R emerged, she had her babydoll from Christmas tied onto her back and a small bright purple bear tied on in front, both secured with the same piece of cloth. This pair continued to be R's companion throughout the day; we persuaded her (with difficulty) to let them "nap" in the car during art class, they accompanied us through Walmart and the grocery store, and it was with difficulty and diplomacy that I removed them from the supper table so we could eat without endangering them. Close to bedtime, she tossed the bear into the air such that he landed in a dishpan with some water in the bottom of it, so he had to be rinsed and set to dry; many tears were shed over this dreadful parting of friends.

In an attempt to distract her from something else (or perhaps from the same grief, recurring; I no longer recall), I spied the cloth from this morning and her babydoll and offered to tie babydoll onto her back. She readily agreed, but this setup, necessarily minus the bear, served only to remind her of his absence. She passed the time from then until a hastily-prepared bedtime patting her chest and bemoaning the bear's absence: "Poop! Poop! Mommy, Poop!"

Newt

I have recently been teaching R to use words when asking to nurse -- it's much more comfortable than being poked in the chest, and a little bit subtler. We settled on "nana" for a nursing word, it being a word I discovered she could and would say on request that had no other assigned meaning. This morning, being sick and lazy and tired of nursing (after doing so all night -- I suspect she's trying to stock up on antibodies so as to avoid my bug), I tried to offer a variety of alternatives.

It appears that nana ranks above cheese, eggs, and beverages, but below strawberries.

Newt

Years ago, I chose to potty train D when she was youngish. This was a decision reached with much mental anguish. I'd always known that I would breastfeed on demand, so I'd never had a decision to make there; with potty training, I'd read various books and recommendations, and reconciling their widely varied rules and guidelines was difficult in the extreme. "If you don't start by 18 months, you've missed your window of opportunity and doomed yourself to needless extra months of diapers and willpower struggles as you try to train an older child with a more independent will!" "If you start before your child is 23 months old, you're just setting both of you up for needless frustration!" Gah! For all the vitriolic rhetoric that goes into infant feeding discussions, everyone at least agrees that the baby must be fed something; even that minimal agreement seems to be missing in the potty training arena. But I tried to look at my child and guage her readiness, and at 2 and a bit, I thought she was ready. The process was long, arduous, and messy (both literally and metaphorically), but today, she is fully potty trained and has been for a few years. (She's 9.)

Taking into account T's slower maturation and the fact that boys generally aren't ready as early (according to many "experts"), I waited a bit longer with him -- I think until he was close to 3, or maybe even after his third birthday. He didn't have the same emotional issues with potty training that D had had; instead, he had a different set. Potty training was, once again, long, arduous, and messy. As of today, I think he is finally fully potty trained, but he could always surprise me tomorrow. (He's 7. There seem to be some physical issues contributing to the extended nature of his potty training; fiber tablets have been integral in making the last little bit of progress.)

With J, I waited -- a good long while. Between R's birth, house hunting, his surgery, and moving, there was always a good excuse not to. (It's hard enough to find bathrooms when you need them for yourself while house hunting; finding them frequently enough for a still-training child would have been excrutiating.) But finally, with his fourth birthday staring me in the face, we ditched the diapers. His potty training has been the easiest ever; now, as long as I remember to send him to the bathroom after meals and at a few other times through the day, everything is fine, and he's starting to take himself as needed (although not reliably yet). I thought I'd found the secret to an easy potty training experience; I resolved to wait a while with R.

I should have known that any impression I had that I had this parenting thing figured out would prove to be purely illusory.

R has been intrigued with J's potty training process from the beginning; after all, in the early stages, it involves that magical food of the angels: M&Ms! When we got a little potty seat for those times when J can't wait and someone else is already going, she took to sitting on it with a book to keep other family members company in the bathroom. She's learned the general routine of potty use, and likes to go through all the steps on occasion, a whimsy I accomodate when convenient (either clothed or, right before baths, naked), but she's never actually put anything in the potty.

And then last night, she pointed at the potty and said, "Poop!" very insistently, until I put her on the potty. Since I'd just changed her diaper, I didn't bother taking it off. A minute or two later, she was pulling on her diaper and asking me to take it "Off! Twash!" And sure enough, she'd pooped in her diaper while sitting on the toilet; if I'd just believed her and taken her diaper off at the start, we'd have saved one diaper.

Conclusion: My daughter is potty training herself, whether I like it or not.

Further conclusion: I still know nothing about when a child should be potty trained, although I'm starting to suspect that everyone who gives you a rule on this should be ignored.

Even further conclusion: The use of absolutes in child-rearing advice is highly suspect. Even my titular reference to the rule book should be taken only as a guideline. Parenting "experts" who are excessively fond of absolutes, however, might benefit from being hit on the head by their own rule books.

Newt