This morning while eating his breakfast Howard looked up at me and said:
“We need to rent Fiddler on the Roof so that we can yell ‘The Gripping Hand!’ at Reb Tevya.”
“What?”
“In the movie Reb Tevya says ‘on one hand, on the other hand, on the other hand’ we need to yell ‘The Gripping Hand’ at him.”
Howard’s train of thought runs through some very odd places.
I chased a purple rabbit through a hole in my backyard hedge this morning. It was an odd experience because my backyard has never before had a hedge and usually the only signs of wildlife are deposits left by the neighbor’s dog. Yet this morning both the rabbit and the hedge were there.
Beyond the hedge was a world filled with fairies, unicorns, centaurs, children lost on islands, and a secret valley full of bird-winged people. The very landscape was strange; lush valleys sat high atop volcanos, and a river ran with liquid rubies. It was completely unearthly … and totally familiar. I used to live in such places before my mind filled with grades and SATs and mortgages and diapers and laundry.
I’d come home to a place I thought no longer existed. All the strange and beautiful residents of those lands looked at me. Eyes of every shade and shape studied me; asked me where I have been; wondered why I had abandoned them.
The answers I have to give are solid, reasonable. They sit heavy in my hands, and their very solidity fades the worlds and people, who attenuate so far that the merest whisper of wind could blow them away. Quickly I shift my solid reasons to one hand and reach out with the other to grasp at the mist. I realize now that I need both. I need to be able to fly on the wings of story and I need a solid place to land. I’d forgotten, but as he did so long ago for my six-year-old self, that purple rabbit has led me through the hedge and taught me to fly.
Today is Lewis Carrol’s birthday, so many people are journaling Down the Rabbit Hole. I wanted to join the fun. The story above makes more sense if you know that the very first story I ever wrote was entitled “The Purple Rabbit”.
This year I had my birthday pretty much planned before the end of December. I was going to have a small dessert and maybe one gift and we would do the singing and candles and all would be happy. A couple of weeks ago Howard and schlock fans significantly changed that plan. Over the last two weeks we’ve been getting almost daily packages. Howard won’t let me open them, he’s been hoarding them away in his office and Kiki has been wrapping them. It got to the point where another package would arrive and Kiki would happily groan “Another present!” and run off to wrap it.
So I made a new plan. I planned that today would pass fairly normally and then after dinner we’d have dessert and candles, then we’d take the pile of presents and I’d have the kids help me unwrap them all. That plan is still in effect except the “today would pass normally” part. This morning I found a present in my email box. Rowyn made 6 pictures for me to use as LJ icons. Then to ensure that I was able to utilize them all she gave me a paid Livejournal account. It is one of those wonderful gifts that I didn’t even know I wanted, but I’m incredibly happy to have. Now I need to write appropriate journal entries so that I can use all of them. Thank you Rowyn!
Also a big “Thank you!” to everyone out there who sent me presents. I don’t even know who you all are yet because Howard won’t let me look at the names until present time.
I just finished reading Sister Emily’s Lightship by Jane Yolen. I
highly recommend it. It is full of short stories. Some are
fantastic retellings of fairytales, some are wonderful stories for
kids, some are dark and disturbing, one is downright dirty, but all of
them are powerful and none of them can be easily ignored.
This evening went really really well. This shouldn’t surprise me because I’ve focused on the implementation of my plans for several days now. The true test will come on a day that I’m tired and distracted.
Link loved being Kitchen Helper. He came running the first time I called and did all the work willingly. In fact he and Gleek had a fight because she wanted to help and he wouldn’t let her because he was the official Kitchen Helper. Somehow I doubt this level of enthusiasm will continue, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
The kids loved the game. They enthusiastically ran through the house trying to find out whether we gained points or lost points. I think I might alter the rules to make it a co-operative game rather than competitive. Rather than keeping individual scores we may just see what the cumulative family score is. Then I can institute a plan where if the family score is above a certain number, then we get a special treat of some kind (Ice cream, brownies, something.) So far it has also had some of the larger effects I’d hoped for as well. Link picked up his clothes off the floor and put them in the hamper because he doesn’t want to lose points next time we play. I figure I’ll give things five days to a week and then we’ll play again.
After carefully orchestrating Kitchen time, Homework time, and Game time I am worn out. Unfortunately I still have to do Bedtime. Howard once told me that I had an effective bedtime system in place with the kids like marionettes. All I have to do is pull a few strings and off they go. It may look like that from the outside, but to me it feels like herding hyperactive cats using only limp spaghetti noodles.
Last May I instituted some significant changes in how I ran the house and the kids. I called it the NewWorld Order and wrote and entry about it. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sandratayler/2004/05/30/)
Our lifestyle has changed significantly since I put those new rules into effect. The kids have grown and changed, Howard is home alot more, I’ve neglected my duty to maintain the law, and so it is time to institute another New World Order.
The first step is to be more dilligent enforcing the rules I put into place last May. The kids need to be doing their five morning things and one chore every day. I need to make sure they don’t get to play with electronic entertainment or friends unless they do.
The second step is for me to stop doing their Saturday morning work for them. I’ve set up the system. They know what they have to do before they can play with friends or electronic stuff. If I help, I end up doing most of the work while listening to complaints about how they need help because it is too hard. If I refuse to help I’ll have about 2 weeks of whiney unpleasantness and then they’ll do their work solo without complaints because they know that complaints just add to the length of time without reducing the work load. (I’ve gone through this process before and yet I keep forgetting and helping too much.)
Those steps are simply reinstituting things I’ve been enforcing more often than not for the last 9 months. Here comes the new stuff.
Step three. Kiki, Link, and Gleek are each assigned a night to be the official “Kitchen Helper”. The Kitchen Helper sets the table for dinner, helps prepare dinner, helps clean up after dinner, helps load the dishwasher, and helps sweep the floor. I’ll never have kids capable of doing these things if I don’t spend some time and effort teaching them.
Step four. Every day I need Gleek and Patches to have a quiet time where they practice sitting still. I’ll start at about 2 minutes and gradually extend the time. While they are sitting still I’ll read from pictureless storybooks so that they learn how to sit still and listen. This is specifically aimed at teaching them how to be calm and quiet in public places like church.
Step five. I’ve spent some time creating cards for a game over the past few days. The game is Tayler Family Trivia. On the cards are questions like “Where do we keep the scotch tape?” or “How do you clean a toilet?” Each correctly answered question gets 5 points. There are also Bonus cards. Bonus cards say things like “Get 5 points for every empty garbage can in the house” or “Get 10 points if you did your 5 morning things today”. There are also Oh No! cards. Oh No! cards cause people to lose points for household infractions “Lose 2 points for every piece of your clothing left on the floor” I intend to introduce this game tomorrow. Then we’ll play it again in another week or so to see whether we can improve our scores. Hopefully the game will have kids noticing when they put clothes on the floor or if garbage cans are empty. I read an article on this game by a woman who said it made a huge difference in the behavior of her two kids.
Two old things and three new ones are more than enough for me to try to keep track of. Especially since I’ve got to maintain things like homework enforcement, regular meals, and regular bedtimes.
Patches had an unpleasant dose of reality this evening. It began when Kiki and Gleek decided to shower together instead of separately. The shrieks and giggles (and splashes and puddles) from the bathroom convinced Patches that “Shower” was the coolest thing going this evening. So when the girls got out and I sent Link in for his shower, Patches was right on his heels to participate in the fun. I helped Patches undress amid giggles and joyful cries of “Show-a”. Then he took one step into the shower and under the stream of water. Water-in-the-face is cause for major Patches sadness these days. He never used to mind and in fact used to shower with me very happily. I don’t know what changed, but somehow Patches remembered “Show-a” as a happy-fun place and completely forgot the water part. Tears ensued. Many tears. I rescued him from his terror-frozen position in the water stream and wrapped him in a towel. He was angry with me for removing him and cried “Show-a!”, but when I offered to let him get back in, he didn’t want anything to do with that watery chamber of fear. For the next 15 minutes while I dried him off and dressed him Patches continued to cry for the lost joys of “Show-a” and the way it betrayed him. Fortunately a snack, a story, and a bedtime made everything better.
Taking Gleek and Patches to public places is an exercise in balancing disturbances. Every minute I have to balace the disturbance caused by a particular behavior with the disturbance caused by attempting to quell a particular behavior. I never have the option to cause no disturbance. No wonder I opt to stay home from things so often.
Today my sister wrote a journal entry lamenting the abuse of literature by trying to teach it to high school students who are woefully incapable of comprehending it. I responded to her post and I want to copy/paste my response here because it addresses some thoughts I’ve had on education recently. The response:
I did study literature in college fairly extensively. I remember reading an essay about exactly what you just described. It cataloged how The Lord of the Flies was first analysed at a phd level and then masters, then undergraduate, and then high school. It got stuck at high school because it had reached near incomprehensibility to the students.
The goal of teaching literature to high school students is supposed to stretch their capabilities. I agree that stretching leads to growth, but I frequently wonder if we are stretching too hard too fast. No matter how many times you walk a child around the room holding on to your fingers, he isn’t going to walk by himself until he is developmentally ready to do so. Lots of parents around here lament the fact that the schools aren’t teaching enough. Kids should know MORE by fourth grade. They should know this, they should know that, why isn’t more history taught? Why haven’t they memorized the 50 states yet? My kid knows the original 13 colonies in first grade! I listen to all of this and feel like they’ve made education into some kind of a race.
Education is not a race. Education should be a process. The most important thing my kids learn from school is how to learn. They need basic reading skills, basic math skills, basic history for reference, and then they need to learn how to use a library. If they learn that, then ANYTHING they want to know they can go and find out by themselves. This is why my kids remain in public school rather than private school or a charter school. I do want them to go to college, but I don’t need it to be Harvard, the local community college is just fine with me. (And cheaper!)
When I was little I remember watching the olympic gymnastics competition. We always got totally beaten by the team from the USSR because they would snatch young girls and make them live nothing but gymnastics for 10 years. The Japanese and Chinese teams had the same sort of intense focus. I remember hearing adults lament the loss of childhood that represented. Now as an adult I watch my neighbors running their kids to soccer and piano and dance and gymnastics and karate and then to a special charter school which they deem to be sufficiently academic. I watch all this and I wonder if America is becoming what we once mourned over. Where is the time for kids to play?
That strayed far from a discussion of literature. Sorry, I’ll get off my soap box now.
Today I had lunch with Gleek and Howard. The three of us were having a conversation about why we can’t own a horse. It is the second or third time through this topic with Gleek, but probably not the last. During the discussion Gleek made a discovery. She looked at her daddy, grinned, and said “Horse poop!” She was so gleefully taunting with this semi-forbidden word that Howard busted out laughing. Then I couldn’t help but laugh because both of them were laughing. Anytime the laughing neared a pause Gleek would delightedly start it again. “Bird poop!” “Horse poop!” “Macaroni Poop!” “Poop!” Howard could not stop laughing and he was so funny that I couldn’t either. So rather than being responsible parents and quelling the potty talk at the table we all laughed until we nearly cried. Towards the end I managed to work out the words “Howard, this is your fault! She’s YOUR daughter!”
I love being able to laugh over lunch, but I’m going to be living with the consequent potty fascination for weeks.