parenting

Learning Conversation

By / November 20, 2013 / 2 Comments

Today I had the chance to sit down with my 16 year old son, Link, and talk about how conversations work. For a long time he’s felt like talking to people is something he is not good at, but he’s feeling an increased desire to connect with others through talking. This came to a crisis this week and resulted in us sitting down today to discuss how conversations work. Being good at talking to people is a set of skills that anyone can learn. We broke out some discrete skills that can be practiced, because practice in small chunks is the best way to learn skills. As a potentially useful reminder to Link and I, also because someone else may find this useful, I’m going to list the skills here. We have no intention of Link learning all of these things at once. Instead he’ll pick one and work on it for awhile before working on a different one.

Learn Names: When you know someone’s name, it indicates to them that you think they are important enough to remember. It is a small kindness you can offer to everyone from classmates to the grocery store clerk. You don’t have to remember names forever, but retaining it for an evening is doable. Link has a particular challenge here because he’s surrounded by classmates that he’s known for years, but whose names he’s never learned. I recommended that he ask someone else “hey, what’s that guy’s name?” This gives him a question to ask someone and it helps him start learning the names of people he’s going to see over and over again.

Ask Questions: Questions are the secret weapon of conversations. If you ask about someone else, you have to talk less. Also people like to hang around with people who are willing to listen to them and who are interested in what they have to say.

Your next question is hidden in their answer: When people answer your question, they usually provide you information that you can use for a follow up question. If they answer the question “How are you today?” with “Really stressed I’m going to fail my math test” you could ask: why does math stress you? How soon is the test? Do you need help studying? Which math teacher do you have? When is your test? Etc. Questions about unusual items of clothing are also good, because these items often have stories attached. You can also find questions in your shared context. A school friend can always be asked questions about classes, teachers, or homework.

Give compliments: It doesn’t take much to say “I like your shoes.” It doesn’t necessarily give you a long conversation, but it is a brief positive interaction you can have with another person. Also it is a kind gift to give other people.

Look people in the face and smile: You don’t have to look them in the face during the whole conversation. That gets uncomfortable. It is common for people to look away while they’re talking and then look directly at someone while they’re listening. But looking at someone’s face indicates interest in what they have to say. Smiling makes everyone feel happier.

When you’re invited to join a group at lunch or for group work, start by saying yes instead of looking for excuses to say no. The fact that they tendered the invitation means that you are welcome. Once you’re in the group, it is fine to only speak occasionally as you participate in the work. You’re still part of the group.

The more people there are in a group, the less you should talk. It is perfectly acceptable to be part of a group conversation by actively listening and only speaking very occasionally with a question or observation.

Some people dominate group conversations. This can be wonderful if the dominating person is entertaining and gracious. It can be seriously annoying if the dominating person is not attentive to the other people. If you’re in a big group and talking more than anyone else, particularly if you’re talking about yourself, try to turn the conversation over to someone else for awhile. Ask questions and then listen.(This is not going to be Link’s challenge, but it is good to know anyway.)

Group conversations tend to fracture and drift, this is normal and expected. Let them do it, even if you are sad that the conversation abandons a topic that interests you. If you try to control the conversation, you’ll likely end up with a dead conversation. Often group conversations will turn into three or four smaller conversations and back again. This is also normal. Let that happen.

When you reach a high level of conversational skill it is possible to lead and steer group conversations, but while learning these skills it is best to observe and learn how conversations go.

If there is a particular person you want to get to know better, try having many small conversations at different times rather than attempting to learn everything in one sitting. This is more pleasant for everyone.

Answering someone’s statement with “I know” is a conversation ender. If someone tells you a thing and you answer “I know,” there really isn’t anything else for them to say. Instead you need to indicate your prior knowledge while giving the conversation a path to continue “I’d heard that, but did you know…” or “I know, however…”

Ending a conversation is as important as beginning it. It is okay to keep conversations short, because they can be exhausting while you’re learning the skills. The key is to depart the conversation in a way that lets the other person know that you’d like to talk again sometime. The format is usually an excuse for ending the conversation followed by an indication that conversation was fun or that you’d like to talk again. “I’ve got to go study for my math quiz now, it was nice talking to you.” or “I’ve got to go now, see you tomorrow?”

Prayer can help you find the words. It never hurts to send a two second prayer heavenward that you’ll be able to find the words to mean what you want to say. We are promised in scripture that God can give us the exact right words in the moment that we need them.

I can testify to the truth of that last one, because my entire conversation with Link was full of moments where I had exactly the right words. It was wonderful to see my son listening and absorbing these concepts about conversation. I hope that this next week will be better for him than the last months have been. I think it will, because he has some clear small steps to take instead of feeling like all conversation is this huge, complex, insoluble problem.

Making Things Worse

By / November 14, 2013

“Mom, you’re not helping.” he cried out in sadness.
“I’m definitely not making things any easier right now.” I said.
I hadn’t, because my child was sad, and lying to himself about why. So, I pulled the real reason out where he had to see it. Which made him even more sad. But if he can see the real source of the sadness, he has the chance to heal from it.
I am helping. Though it doesn’t feel like it. Not to him. Not to me.

One of the hardest parts of parenting is listening to a child cry and knowing that the very best thing I can do is to let that child fully experience and work through the emotions without intervention. My instinct is to soothe, to make it better. Sometimes that is exactly what is needed. Other times it is exactly what is not. I wish the different times came clearly labeled so that I could choose my actions with confidence. Instead it is all stumbling around in the dark and hoping that this space in the underbrush is actually a trail that goes somewhere less dark.

At The Therapist’s Office

By / December 29, 2014 / 1 Comment

I sat in the waiting room of the therapist’s office while she escorted Gleek back to get set up. For a moment it was just me, a pair of couches, and a television which was off. The emptiness of the space felt peaceful to me, but in a moment the therapist would be back to ask me how things are going. She likes to check in with me before spending the bulk of the hour with Gleek. I wasn’t sure what to tell her because my head felt like a storage unit packed full of furniture. I knew there were thoughts about Gleek in there somewhere, but I was going to have to pull some other stuff out before I could get at them.

I ended up speaking a lot more about Link than about Gleek, because thoughts of Link were in the front of my brain. He was the one who’d just finished a really rough week. I know it could have been much worse, but I still felt a little heartsick and helpless at times. That is part of the experience of parenting. There are times when I want to help, but I can’t or I shouldn’t. Sometimes it takes all my strength to not interfere. I met with a school administrator about Link last week. She asked how he’s doing academically. Glancing at his grades, he’s fine, better than he has been in years. Only, I’m having to work really hard at making sure that he’s tracking all his things and I feel like I’m always telling him to do things he’d rather ignore. This too is part of parenting.

The therapist was kind and listened to all the things I had to say, which is her job. Some other trip I’ll have thoughts about Gleek to share. Right now we’re all still getting to know each other, the therapist and I. Perhaps listening to me talk about a different child is actually helpful for her to form a picture of how our family works. Even if it is not helpful to her, it was helpful to me. I could have rattled on for a lot longer. I didn’t though, because I felt wary of using up time that belonged to Gleek. These are her therapy sessions, not mine. Gleek likes this therapist. The office has a sand table and a room full of story props, so Gleek can tell stories. The therapist learns something from these stories, because after this session she sent Gleek home with some things to work on. Mostly being calmer and slower. Over time we’ll establish a familiarity with therapy and hopefully Gleek will gather tools she can use for the rest of her life.

The waiting room was empty while I waited for Gleek. No other clients came in while we were there, so I was spared from looking at some other child and pondering why this young one was so troubled as to need therapeutic intervention. There was no other parent there to look at my daughter and wonder the same thing. Years ago I wrote in a blog entry that I never wanted to be the reason that Gleek needed therapy. Now I drive her to her appointments. The fact that I’m not the right person to help her untangle some emotional things does not mean that I caused those things. It is not my fault even though Freud instilled the field of psychology with a strong impulse to look to the parents, particularly the mother, when a child is struggling. I tell myself these things, trying to make peace, trying to make all of this routine–just a thing we do. But the truth is that sometimes I blame me. Deep in my heart I count the things I could have done differently. I map the paths I maybe should have chosen. I know the things I feel I ought to have handled better. Taking my child to a therapist forces me to confront all of that and deal with it. Which is also a good thing. Good is not the same as easy.

Things are good right now, and they’re aimed at better.

Troubleshooting Sibling Disharmony: Arguing over the Computer

By / November 9, 2013 / 3 Comments

The Problem: We have one computer that the kids share. Every time one kid is on the machine and another asks for a turn, there is an argument. Usually this requires parental intervention. All of them are nit-picking over a limited resource and none of them are extending each other the benefit of the doubt.

Previous solutions which have not worked: Mediating individual arguments. Scolding kids and telling them to be nicer. Threatening to not let anyone use the computer if there is an argument about it changing hands.

New Plan and reasoning behind it:
1. I need to be better about limiting individual computer time. Kids tend to stay on the machine until someone tells them to get off, which leads to significant territorial behavior. No one wants to give up their turn because they know that getting back on will almost certainly require negotiation or argument. Limiting turns will make the computer seem more available. It will also force them to find other things to do, which will remind them that the world is full of fun things and not having the computer is not the end of the world.

2. On Sunday afternoons every person in the house is required to play a game with someone else who lives in our house. It can all be one big game, it can be a video game. The point is that we often disappear into our various electronic worlds and we need more times when we have fun together.

3. When we have family prayer the person who is doing the praying should take time to pray for something specific for each individual in our family. This means we’ll each have a turn being conscious of what the other people in our family need and what they are struggling with.

The best part is that these are only minor shifts. Granted, they will require an exertion of will, primarily from me, but they are small exertions. Even better, the only part of this plan likely to meet with resistance is the computer turn limiting. That one is going to be hard. I’m not good at remembering. Hopefully I’ll find a good software solution.

The experiment begins.

Allowing Children to Venture Forth

By / November 6, 2013 / 1 Comment

I remember the day when Kiki came home from kindergarten with the phone number of a friend I’d never met. She was so excited, she and NewFriend had big plans to go play at NewFriend’s house. I stared at that phone number and confronted the fact that, at some point, I had to let my child go out into the world among people I did not know. Sure I could say no in Kindergarten. I could probably say it through most of grade school, but eventually my child would defy me and go anyway. Also, she would enter her teen and adult years completely unprepared to discern which people were trustworthy and which she should avoid. I took a deep breath and we called NewFriend’s phone number. I went with her to NewFriend’s house. I met NewFriend’s parents. I looked around at their front room and yard, and I made a judgement call. Kiki got to stay and play with her friend. That Kindergarten friend was one of her best friends for the next five years. NewFriend’s mother is one of my friends to this day. I am very glad that I was willing to step into a new and scary world.

I approach my kid’s online lives the same way. Any time there is an online place that they want to go and play, I take a look. I evaluate. I express caution, but most of the time I let them play. Kiki found an online home at DeviantArt. Link is part of an online game community. Gleek and Patch are spending lots of time playing with others on game servers. They play and they know that I will wander by and look at what is on the screen. If I see anything of concern, I’ll point it out and talk it over. Or I’ll revoke computer privileges until we’ve had a thorough discussion and agreement about whatever it was. Gleek in particular has grown quite savvy. She has a particular server where she has played a lot. She’s been granted moderator powers there by the guy who owns the server. This responsibility is quite important to her. She makes sure that unpleasant people are bounced and that newbies are helped. In that online place, Gleek has respect and a job to do. I can see her growing from them. I listen to her talk about the adventures there and I realize that she is learning to be safer online through her interactions. Being online has been good for my kids and I’m carefully monitoring them and teaching them, just as I once taught them how to cross a parking lot safely.

The thing we’re working on most right now is life balance. The online games are very compelling and my kids would be happy to play them all day. I am the one who has to tap them on the shoulder and say “go do something else now.” This is important for several reasons. My kids need to have connections with friends that they can see in person. If they spend all their time online, the in-person friendships suffer. People who don’t have in-person friendships are more vulnerable online because the online interactions have a greater importance in their lives. The kids also benefit from fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, just like any other human being. It is also really important for my kids to have time to be bored. Boredom is where creativity comes from. Boredom drives people to learn new skills just to find something to do. I make sure that the kids spend time away from screens so that they remember that they love drawing, crafts, riding bikes, and a host of other activities.

Unfortunately I’ve never been good at enforcing time limits on kids computer time. When they’re on the computer the house is quiet, and quiet house is very helpful when I’m trying to accomplish a million projects. Fortunately someone pointed out to me that the parental settings let me set hours when my kids are allowed to log on. When they hit the time limit, they’re automatically logged off. No intervention from me necessary. Shortly after I implemented this setting, a magical thing happened. The kids started watching the clock so they could save and quit before the automatic log off. This feature only lets me block off hours. I wish there were a setting that would say “this account only gets two hours of logged in time today.” But I’ll take what I can get.

The online world is still scary. I’m constantly adjusting how we approach it, and my kids can tell you that my first reaction to any new online thing is to tell them no until I’ve had a chance to think it through from all angles. Then, because I’m busy, I often never get around to looking at things until they’ve pestered me for weeks. I tell myself that I’m measuring the importance of the new thing by waiting to see if it is important enough that they keep asking. Right now I think we’ve found a reasonable balance, though I still need to nudge it toward more offline time. In a few months the kids will change and there will be new internet things and I’ll have to figure it out all over again.

Interviews with James Yee and Jim C. Hines

By / November 6, 2013

My head is full of thoughts about warehouses, the joys of setting up shop in a commercial building, calendar design, monitoring kids’ online socializing, and whether I’m helping too much with homework. I intend to shape some of those thoughts into words later today. For now I give you two interviews.

Doing interviews is really interesting because the shapes of the questions give me a peek into other creators and their audiences. Yes interviewers are creators. It takes skill to craft a good interview. James Yee’s interviews speak to people who are really invested in Kickstarter and want to know details about how to use it as a tool to create things. His questions reflect that, and I had fun exploring that aspect of the project.

You can read my interview with James Yee over on Kickstarter Conversations.

Jim Hines has been a friend of mine for quite a while now. His blog writing won him a Hugo award for best fan writer. Jim often addresses issues of personal safety, equality, and acceptance, particularly as expressed in the Geek community. But usually when Jim and I are together we talk about parenting because we have kids with similar sorts of challenges. This interview was a lot like sitting down and chatting with my friend Jim, which made it lots of fun. I don’t get to visit with Jim nearly often enough.

You can find Jim Hines’ post over on the Jim C. Hines Blog. While you’re there, you might want to take a glance around. Jim talks about lots of important and interesting things.

Things Falling Into Place and Psychology

By / October 24, 2013

It has been two weeks of things falling into place. The first warehouse I toured turned out to be the one we needed. The lease was signed two days later. Business insurance looked to be complicated, but then it wasn’t. An appointment got cancelled in the middle of a busy day. I thought I’d have to spend time waiting around for a delivery truck, but the shipment of Tub of Happiness got held up in LA and won’t arrive until next week, which is far more convenient. The psychiatrist’s office had to reschedule Gleek’s appointment for several weeks later, which gave just enough time for the school year to settle in more. We have things to discuss. Then at church a conversation with Gleek’s youth leaders led to a recommendation for a therapist who does art therapy. Gleek’s first appointment is next week. I could continue the list. Last Spring was full of turmoil, road blocks, and struggles. During those struggles we laid lots of ground work and things are falling in to place now.

Today was the meeting with Gleek’s psychiatrist and next week is her first session with a new therapist. I feel very ambivalent about both of those things. There is a part of my brain that wants to argue about expense and effort. She’s doing really well right now. She’s mostly happy. She’s got straight As in school. Okay, I’d like to see her socializing more with people face to face instead of online, but surely we don’t need a therapist for that. These thoughts burble in my brain, trying to get traction. Yet I know that Gleek has lots of things to learn about how to handle her stresses and emotions. Things are good now because she’s not being challenged. She is not under stress. This means that now is the time to be working on things so that when the next stressful time hits, she has skills to manage it. It is logical. I’m pretty sure this is the right course, but I don’t want to do it. Therapy is hard. We have to face things instead of letting them slide. Surely I have enough projects going on without adding another one. Yet I can’t but think that so many of the other things are going so smoothly to make space for this and for things like this.

Gleek is not the only one with things to work through. Her struggles last Spring significantly undermined my confidence in my parenting. The attendant therapy sessions did not fix that, because over and over I was shown how things I was doing fed into and exacerbated Gleek’s stress. The biggest change that took place was in me. I shifted my management of things, set some new boundaries, and rearranged schedules. Then the troubles evaporated, which is good, but I wish I could feel like they went away because Gleek learned something rather than because I did. Of course if I was the one creating the problem, then maybe it isn’t laying in wait to ambush us. Maybe it is actually solved. Any time a child is in crisis, psychological experts look to parents as part of the solution. Unfortunately finding solutions also creates guilt, because I didn’t figure it out sooner. If only I’d been better. If only I was able to be consistent instead of letting the rules go blurry and putting them back later. If only, if only, if only. Those “if onlys” don’t help, but I have to see them and work through them in order to get rid of them.

The take away from the consultations this week is that Gleek needs more stress in her life. She needs the good kind of stress where she goes to an activity, tries new things, and meets new people. Gleek is happy about this prescription because she wants to take a gymnastics class. So I’ll add that to my list of things to set up. She’ll be less happy about the second half of the prescription, which is to limit her time spent in electronic worlds on the computer. She needs time to be bored and to find good ways to stop being bored. Fortunately adding fun activities will cause the second to happen very naturally.

The good news is that I don’t have to create an extensive plan and execute on it. I just need to figure out what comes next and do that. For tonight, it means putting kids to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be spending my morning work hours setting up utilities for the warehouse. After that I’ll be crafting the Kickstarter information or pounding my way through some book layout. The good news is that tomorrow is both Friday and the end of term, so the kids are all pretty much homework free for the weekend. Step by step we do all the things, working and guiding things so that they fall into place.

Patch’s High Intensity Schooling

By / October 22, 2013 / 7 Comments

I chose the school program that Patch is in with my eyes open. It is a gifted program, academically accelerated. Since it is an opt-in program the teachers ask a lot of parents in the way of support. In making the choice to put Patch and Gleek into the program two years ago, we weighed a lot of factors and ultimately decided that this was the best possible one. Even though it would sometimes be hard and other times it would be harder. So I choose this. I’m not sorry I did it. I know that it is still the right choice for our family. But I’m still going to complain a little.

Monday an explorer story was due. In order to write this story, Patch had to read a biography about the assigned person, include three try-fail cycles, have at least two characters, one character required to be native, and feature the major geographical landform for which the explorer was famous. Pretty exacting, but doable. Particularly since we’ve known about it all month. Patch was assigned Louis Hennepin, about whom no one has ever written a biography. Hennepin is usually a footnote or paragraph in books about La Salle. So we checked out an encyclopedia of explorers where Hennepin was mentioned more than once. Patch wrote a two page story.

Tomorrow the explorer game is due. This is a board game based on the story. It must have a map, the major landform, give information about the landform, and information about the explorer. Playable by 2-4 kids. Patch likes this sort of assignment, which means I did not have to do nearly as much work as I expected. Mostly I helped make sure all the information things went into the game.

Two projects in a month is fairly standard for this class. Usually there is a lighter one in the first half an a bigger one for the second.

Next week Booko is due. This is bingo filled out with books that Patch has read. Since he enjoys reading, all we have to do is make sure he can get five in a row. This month was Mystery, poetry, 900s book, Beehive award book, and Story collection. Then there is a book report on the genre of the month. These book reports can be anything from shooting a video commercial to bringing in treats based on the book. It isn’t hard, it is just a project we need to remember to get done.

Next week is also Halloween. The kids are requested to wear costumes based on characters from books. This is one way for the teacher to acknowledge that Halloween has become tricky ground for 5th graders and to give them all a socially acceptable excuse to still dress up. But, putting together a costume is an additional project.

Then there are the regular rounds of spelling, math, writing etc. Most of which Patch can accomplish in 20 minutes or less on a daily basis. If Patch pays attention to homework and projects for an hour per day, he can definitely keep up. No problem. In fact he has enough hours to spare that I sometimes feel guilty over the quantity of time he plays video games.

Guess who has to make sure that hour per day happens every single day? Most days I’m fine with that. All I have to do is nudge and Patch goes and gets his work done. The projects require more focused attention. Which is hard to come by on a day like today when I’ve spent all of my energy making sure all of my own projects are being moved forward. Add to that the impending end of term on Friday, which means making sure that Link and Gleek are on track. Which they are, but Link also has about an hour of homework each day and half the time he needs me to participate in some way. I suspect that I’ll be able to back off as the year progresses, but for now, this is how it is.

It is a lot, all of this school support. Yet when I think about what my kids get to do, I know I’ve chosen right. Patch got to make a game. He got to write a story. Later in the year he’ll participate in writing a declaration of independence, write and perform an opera, and a hundred other amazing things. Those things would not happen for him without this high intensity program. The idea of doing such things on our own is attractive, no grades, no pressure, but the truth is I would never get them done. I am far too pressed by projects to voluntarily pick up more. I have as evidence the past few summers when my children did almost nothing academic because I was too busy with business things and with being so very glad to rest a little bit.

So, the abundance of projects is driving me a little crazy this week. Next week will be better. By the week after that, many of the projects will have begun to clear. Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean it is the wrong choice.

Vacation Planning

By / October 13, 2013 / 5 Comments

Staying in a condo feels like playing house. We still have to do things like cook and do dishes, but they’re different dishes and there aren’t that many of them. As with playing house, there are some inconveniences. We don’t have the cooking tools we’re accustomed to and there is always some item which we’ve forgotten at home or lost somewhere in transit. Yet somehow staying in a condo feels vacationy while doing the same things at home does not.

I’m pleased that we’ve arrived at a stage where vacation trips can actually be relaxing instead of differently stressful. Babies and toddlers are very expressive when their routines are disrupted and that usually manifests as meltdowns any time of day or as wakefulness when everyone else wants to be sleeping. Being away from home means that parents have left behind some of their usual coping strategies for managing their kids. I suppose that some young kids are easy travelers. Mine loved taking trips and going new places, but when we did I had to increase my level of parental oversight. New places meant new ideas in young heads and not all of those new ideas were safe. Heads full of new ideas did not go to sleep easily. New surroundings also meant that sibling frictions busted out in aggravating ways and required mediation. During most of my years of parenting “vacation” meant being short on sleep and exhausted from extra supervision. It also meant visiting with loved ones, interesting new experiences, and growing knowledge for my kids. (As an example: Why I Love Jellyfish.) The trips we took were worth it, but they were in no way relaxing.

Things are different now. Some of this is the result of my kids getting older, but much of it is us finally learning how to structure our vacations in ways that work for our family. Then we repeated that structure often enough that we all know what to expect. Instead of vacation being a disruption to all of our patterns, we just fall into our vacation patterns instead of our at home patterns. I suspect the same could be accomplished for younger children, but there is the added difficulty that babies and toddlers hit developmental milestones so very quickly. Trips taken six months apart will be different experiences because the child has changed so much.

We take our family trips to places we can reach by driving in five hours or less. At some point we may venture into family travel by air, but it is cost prohibitive for six people. Also, airports are inherently stressful. For us traveling to go stay with other people at their house is stressful, even when we love the people. Staying in a hotel room is similarly stressful because we’re all on top of each other constantly. Renting a condo or staying at a cabin has made it possible for vacation to be relaxing. So we pick a condo where we can go do interesting things for half or all of the days and where we can come back and relax in the evenings. I’ve learned that bringing along some of our usual things like mobile devices means that we are able to play familiar games along with new ones.

Someday we’ll be more adventuresome. We’ll pick a vacation trip that is less focused on optimizing relaxation and more focused on going new places and stretching ourselves. But right now what we need from our vacations is being together outside our regular round of things. Playing house in a condo accomplishes that nicely.

School Culture Matters

By / October 11, 2013

“I really thought I would be bullied more.” Patch told me as we were curled up for his bedtime snuggle one night. “Being in the A.L.L. program for smart kids, I thought I would get bullied, but I haven’t. I wonder why that is.” Patch’s voice was mildly puzzled as he mused on this topic. I curled my arm around him a little tighter and thought how grateful I am that this has been his experience. I could have said that, and it would probably have been the end of the conversation, but I’ve been trying to do a better job of helping Patch pull his thoughts and emotions out where we can both see them, so instead I asked.
“What do you think it could be?”
“Well, It could be that my school is a good school and doesn’t have bullies. Or it could be that all the bullies have other people they pick on that are not me. Or maybe I just don’t act like a smart kid.” Patch paused a moment for thinking. “I think my school is a good one.”
I nodded my head in the dark. “I agree. What do you think makes your school be a good one?”
“I don’t know.” Patch answered.
It was important for Patch to see the whys of how his school has few troubles with bullying. It all has to do with the culture that has been consciously created at his school.

The importance of school culture became apparent to me when Patch and Gleek attended a previous school. It was a good school, close to home, and full of caring and attentive staff. Then the long-time principal left and took half a dozen of the best teachers with him. The new principal meant well, I could tell that he did, but over time it became apparent that he did not understand behavior modification and sociology. Every policy change and every letter sent home pounded out the importance of safety, rules, and good citizenship. He instituted reward programs for good behavior which then necessitated clearly defining “good behavior” in a series of rules lectures. His policies also emphasized the consequences for those who were not being good citizens of his school. The net effect was to teach the kids to police each other and to watch for infractions. All of this occurred at a time when Gleek was struggling with impulsive behaviors. She knew the rules, she wanted to follow the rules and be rewarded with good citizen slips, but in a fraction of a second she would choose wrong and suddenly discover that she was in trouble. As the new culture solidified, I could tell that it was increasingly hostile to Gleek.

Fortunately we had the option to test our kids for a gifted program, A.L.L, that would transfer them to a new school. Gifted programs have problems of their own. Many times the culture in such a program is one of high expectation and pressure to perform adequately. I approached cautiously, but then I did some research into the school where my kids would attend. I looked at a letter to parents from each of the principals. The old school principal’s letter outlined some new rules and clarified programs designed to manage problem behaviors. The letter from the new school talked about a reading program and was focused on learning. The new school hosted not just a gifted program, but also several classes for autistic kids. The “Life Skills” classes were as integrated into the school activities as possible. This meant that the teachers and staff were teaching tolerance of differences on a daily basis. Older classes had weekly reading buddy sessions with younger classes. We decided to make the switch, not realizing what a godsend it would prove to be.

In Gleek’s sixth grade year, anxiety overcame her. Her impulsive behavior turned inward, to be a constant fear she would do things wrong. It is probable that the high intensity of the academic program was a contributing factor, but the largest reason for it was the hormonal surges of puberty. She began having panic attacks at school, to the point where she would curl up into a non-responsive ball on her classroom floor. Sixth grade is a rough age, kids are changing and generally react by ridicule and avoidance of things that make them uncomfortable. But Gleek’s class was reading buddies with severely autistic kids. They had been taught how to understand and deal with odd behavior. I still remember walking with Gleek to her classroom after she had been out for several days due to anxiety. We were greeted, by kids, with smiles and statements like “we miss you Gleek, when will you be back?” Because of that accepting classroom full of peers, Gleek was able to come back instead of feeling like her anxiety had destroyed all hope of social connection.

The culture of a school matters. It permeates classrooms and the lives of children in them. We were very fortunate that we were able to switch from an (unintentionally) hostile atmosphere to one that was exactly what we needed. We survived the year before I was able to switch by paying close attention to what the school culture was teaching my kids and acting to alleviate it. I’m afraid we deliberately undermined the citizen slip program, teaching our kids that we cared about them being good people, not about them bringing home prizes. I made private deals with teachers about how to handle Gleek’s impulsive behaviors. Even in the much better culture of the second school, I still paid attention. Many of the lessons of public school are taught in the hallways, lunchrooms, and on the playgrounds. How the staff handles those situations makes a world of difference. Thus my panic attack girl was not ostracized, and my gifted program son has not experienced bullying in his elementary school. I wish more school administrators had a full comprehension of how to build such healthy school cultures.

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