Domestic Psychology

My Geoff says:

// June 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // me, parenting

1. Scoot back.
2. Brush.
3. Bathe.
4. Show me your homework.
5. Unplug now.
6. Clean up this mess.
7. I love you.

Dancing Evan

// June 26th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // children, flickr

Stormy sleeping

// June 24th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Family, flickr

This is how we have slept for the past three nights. If this week’s weather is the new normal, then I am going to add a twin bed to our bedroom. The children and dogs can twirl, kick and *pee in our bed. Doug and I will snuggle in the twin bed.

*There’s a very fine line between a hysterical weather dog and a Benadryl zonked dog.

storm cellar vs basement

// June 22nd, 2011 // No Comments » // weather

My mother’s parents lived in Natchez Trace Park, just outside of Parsons, TN. We spent many weekends at my grandparents’ house to “help” with the farm. Every summer, my brothers and I would spend an entire week there while my mother reorganized every square inch of our bedrooms without us at home to interrupt. The only drawback to being with grandparents who indulged our every whim and fed us what seemed like five meals a day, was the fear of storms. It wasn’t the storm itself that made even the bravest child silently wish they were at home where they cluelessly felt immune to danger. Storms at the grandparents’ house meant running to the storm cellar. If I made a horror movie based on my childhood fears, it would take place in a storm cellar.

Between my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ homes was a patch of purple phlox. Underneath those flowers, a small room was hidden. Getting to the room meant walking to the road and following it to an undersized door that looked like it was the entrance to a Hobbit’s tiny cottage. After moving the heavy block that kept the door closed, the room revealed itself to be… completely dark. Seeing inside that room in bright daylight required a flashlight or lantern, so running on the two lane, curvy road in pitch blackness, wind and sideways rain only to be rushed into a completely dark hole in the ground would have every person in the movie theater screaming, “Don’t go in there!”

The wall with the doorway was empty except for several old boards propped in a corner. The remaining three walls were lined with two by fours on cinder blocks. What my grandmother called dirt dobber nests, hung ominously from the holes in the cinder blocks that lined the walls and supported the benches. The nests that were hidden behind spider webs seemed only slightly less threatening. In another corner, a large bucket filled only with spiderwebs served as a motivator to make any thoughts about needing a potty to disappear completely. Wood crates filled with home canning jars covered in dust were tucked underneath the thigh splinter benches. I never knew what food was so plentiful in the garden that they sacrificed several dozen jars of it to the storm cellar demons but considered it life sustaining enough to eat while buried alive and awaiting certain death from blowing debris, mud slides, drowning and bugs. The botulism probably wouldn’t have time to take effect before unseen goblins picked us off, one by one.

When it storms now, we pile on our bed in the cool, quiet basement. Surrounded by pillows, blankets and snuggly children, the adults track the storms on social media while listening to the police scanner. The children play games, read books and munch on snacks that are fresh from the grocery. The dogs snore on beanbags and we take turns wearing the snake. If we lose power AND 3G at the same time, everyone whines and acts like it’s the zombie apocalypse.

Reading

// June 19th, 2011 // No Comments » // books

I don’t know what helped Tommy learn how to read. Since he had a ‘do worksheets or I’ll shrug’ teacher for Kindergarten, I know that he didn’t learn to read at school. At home, we did flashcard drills, watched a million hours of PBS, drew letters in shaving cream and wrote with chalk or crayons daily. I read out loud, taped words to everything in the house, made alphabet soup to play with our food and spent weeks talking in rhyme. Before he turned six, Tommy could read. Once he had a basic grasp of reading, he read anything and everything, improving so rapidly that he finished everything Tolkien before middle school.

Sarah learned to read because of and for praise from her Kindergarten teacher. Sarah’s teacher made every child in the classroom feel loved and in return, the students worked eagerly for the teacher they adored. After Kindergarten, Sarah continued to be a good student, but she didn’t read for pleasure until she discovered Harry Potter.

Noah learned to read from his big sister. Sarah forced Noah to spend hours playing school. She hovered over him with books so frequently that he began Kindergarten with basic reading abilities. His Kindergarten teacher refused to acknowledge this and spent most of her time forcing him to use his right hand and reprimanding his behavioral objections to using the wrong hand and sitting still. By the end of Kindergarten, Noah preferred being immersed in a book over doing anything else. Noah still loves to read. Right now, Noah is reading. He won’t stop until he finishes this novel. Then, he’ll find a new book and start reading again.

Amy’s Kindergarten teacher taught her to read. Amy improved her reading skills at the same speed as her peers until she discovered the Kindle. The Kindle was the spark that made Amy love reading. I regularly find her reading while hiding under a blanket far past her bedtime. Most of the time, I pretend not to catch her.

Evan had a wonderful Kindergarten teacher. He had (and still has) two parents and four siblings reading to him every night. We practiced his sight words until he didn’t even pause to read them. Amy bribes Evan to play school a few times a week. With all of that, I truly believe that the tipping point for Evan learning to read was texting. He started out sending gibberish messages on my Twitter account, then proceeded to texting family and friends with my phone. Now, Evan and Amy regularly chat with the text program on their DSiXLs.

All of this is a very long way of saying that every child learns differently. Their strengths, weaknesses, motivations and enthusiasm come in endless varieties of combinations. There is no assembly line formula for teaching children to read. Eliminating proven techniques for helping students learn to read is a recipe for failure. Failure for the neediest, highest risk students. The future for children who don’t learn to read is dismal. Allowing it to happen because it’s someone else’s child is a human tragedy. The money we save now is nothing compared to the cost of supporting and cleaning up the acts of desperation by those who didn’t learn.

Dog tales

// June 16th, 2011 // No Comments » // animals

When I sit down at my computer, the dogs consider it a challenge to become the objects of my attention. They sneak up and smack my mouse hand with their heads. They lick my elbows. They put their heads in my lap and make sad eyes. They lick my elbows. They toss their metal food bowls as though they didn’t eat an hour earlier. They lick my elbows. Depending on your position in the cats vs dogs competition, I either have the cleanest elbows in town or the nastiest.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

I walked in the vet’s office to pick up the dog who had been dropped off for her checkup earlier in the day by Doug. Two basset/beagle mix puppies were charming everyone in the building with their puppy howls, barks and kisses. After I loved on the puppies enough to guarantee looks of betrayal from my dogs, the puppies went to an exam room and the girl at the desk asked how they could help me.
“I’m here for the bad dog.”
In one movement, the girl picked up the phone, clicked a few buttons and spoke to someone in the kennel area.
“Dharma‘s mom is here.”

Friday night

// June 13th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // books, flickr

Still feral

// June 10th, 2011 // No Comments » // parenting

Amy: “Mom! Evan’s on the trampoline.”
Me: “Okay.”
Amy: “He’s *naked.”

Every window in the house is like a television whose channel can’t be changed, so I went to the trampoline channel/window. Tiny clothing was scattered on the ground in a pattern that could only be caused by tossing the clothing off of the trampoline. On the trampoline, a 6-y-o with a grin that was impossibly big, jumped on the trampoline. His feet touched the trampoline surface for a moment, then his body seemed to float weightlessly in the air before landing and taking off again. The child who prefers to be naked and loves to bounce on the trampoline discovered that the combination of two good sensory experiences combine to create bliss. At the very moment I realized how watching Evan’s joy made me feel calm and happy, his sister reached the trampoline. “Mom said you hafta put your pants on or come inside.”

I hate being the mean mom who makes children wear pants, bathe regularly and have bedtimes in the summer. No. I like clean, well-rested children. I love my little nudist.

*She pronounces it nekkid.

How to: dust houseplants

// June 6th, 2011 // No Comments » // me

1. While moving furniture to sweep, notice the dust on the leaves of a houseplant.
2. Spray furniture polish on an old shirt/new dust rag.
3. Beginning at the top of the plant, gently wipe the top surface of each leaf.
4. Discover dried splash of what appears to be the children’s gogurt.
5. Gently rub the glob for five minutes.
6. Snip off yogurt leaf.
7. Fail at attempt to explain to sassy teen why you are cleaning leaves.
8. Gently rub several leaves at once.
9. Carelessly swipe entire branches of leaves.
10. Run outside to rescue a child with a skinned knee.
11. Come back inside and declare plant “clean enough.”
12. Make mental note to begin step three in a different location every time in the hope that eventually the entire plant might actually be clean.

“Awesome!”

// June 5th, 2011 // No Comments » // children, video