Peter's Cross Station

Proud of My Girls

Selina:

A couple of days ago, Selina mistook someone on the street for Babysitter J (her favorite person on the planet Earth).  She called his name happily, but we told her it was someone else.  The man turned around and looked at her with distinct annoyance on his face.  "Say hi!" we cajoled Selina, because we felt awkward.  But after a couple of times being told this, Selina looked the obviously disgruntled man in the eye and said, calmly, "I don't want to say hi."

Well good for her.  She shouldn't have to make us feel less awkward about a perfectly harmless baby mistake or feel the need to be polite and conciliatory to strangers who aren't polite and conciliatory themselves.  Anyway, that's my humble opinion.  I think it's a very good thing to be polite and gracious, and we are certainly teaching our kids that.  But you know, girls are asked far too much by our culture to smile and act nice for the benefit of others.  And they shouldn't have to if they don't want to.  I was proud of Selina for discerning that this strange, annoyed man was not someone she really wanted to engage.  She wanted to engage her beloved J.

Nat:

Nat is a champ in her Spanish class.  She really loves the teacher and I think the teacher is rather fond of her too.  But they do this weird thing at the school.  They use a plant mister--a little spray-bottle full of water, and they squirt the kids with it as a reward when they respond in an exercise or game.  I can't even imagine how anyone came up with that idea.  I see a water mister and think "cat punishment" right?  But the other kids (not Nat) just laugh and giggle and seem to love it when the teacher squirts them with this water bottle.

So it was Nat's turn, and she dutifully did whatever the teacher was aiming for her to do and the teacher squirted her. I was peeking through the classroom window and I saw Nat flinch.  I happen to know she hates to be sprayed with anything, because she complains whenever I spray water or conditioner on her hair when I'm braiding it.  So the teacher made it around the circle and got back to Nat again.  She asked Nat for a response again, and Nat hesitated, looked the teacher in the eye, and said calmly but clearly, "I don't want you to spray me with that water."  The teacher told her that was fine and she promised not to spray Nat any more.  Then Nat gave her the answer she wanted, and the teacher cheered her sin water sprayer.

I was just really impressed that Nat didn't cry or throw a tantrum or try to leave the circle, (or come looking for me) but neither did she submit to something she didn't like.  She named her boundary politely and made sure it was going to be respected before she went on with the exercise.

Really, I think I was as proud of that as I was of her quick and ready responses to the instruction.  Prouder even, maybe.

I wouldn't have done that at four.  No way, no how.  I would have rolled over with whatever awful thing the adult was doing or telling me to do.  I was a meek little kid.  Nat is not meek, but she is not rude, either.  Go Nat!

Arty

Nat has made some fun pictures lately.  I thought I'd share a smattering (so I don't have to actually keep them.)

This is a drawing Nat calls "Go" which she is still learning with Babysitter J, who says she's coming right along:

Here's a pretty painting.  Only recently, she's started paying more attention to filling space and color in a way she finds pleasing and balanced--as opposed to just going nuts with the brush for kicks.  I like this one, because it's in my favorite color scheme:

I dictated the letters and Nat wrote Selina's name.  I thought it was pretty good:

Nat has started to write a lot of words lately.  I only dictated this one.  Others she's written include "bear" and "apple."  She spelled bear correctly on her own, but apple, she spelled "APPL."  But I was impressed that she put two Ps in there.  Invented spellers at Nat's stage would typically just write APL.  And Bear--maybe BR.  But she reads a lot, so I guess she picks up some spelling that way, unconsciously.  I want to start writing stories with her, but I need some pointers on getting good stories out of children.

Here's a fairly typical face these days.  Sometimes, though, they do get quite elaborate with jewelry and appendages and clothing.  She still hasn't hit the torso stage.  When she does limbs, they come straight from the face:

 

And finally, a cameo from Selina!  Her style is interesting. Unlike Nat, who I mentioned has only recently started thinking about filling te space consciously (painting above), Selina is already quite focused on filling the page in a balanced way, with similar marks, in a variety of colors, evenly spread over the page:

Hola Amigas

That's about the extent of my Spanish.  But yesterday, we took Nat for a free trial Spanish class at a language school (it's a big national company, sort of like Berlitz, but geared to kids 2-10).  I had found it online and was a little skeptical that it might be one of those things that is fun and all, but not particularly educative.  You know, like toddler music classes or baby yoga or something.  I have nothing against those kinds of things, and in fact will be using the cheap versions offered through Parks and Rec quite a bit, I'm sure, but I didn't want to pony up big bucks for "fun but not particularly educative" seeing as how fun can be cheap and even free--right?

But it was both fun and educative.  I have some experience teaching English to adults in this model (the Berlitz-type model, but I taught for a smaller company) and basically, that's what they were doing, just geared to preschool kids.  Nat sat in on a class (they keep all classes under 8 kids) for kids aged 3-5, and even though it was the end of a session for the class, the teacher was just brilliant about giving each child (including newbie, Nat) access to success in the language at her own level.  She just kept going and going without a break for 90 minutes, changing activities about every 5-7 minutes to keep those kids engaged.  She had nary a "discipline" problem, as the kids were just always on their toes to keep up with her next activity.

I think the goal of the day was the verb "to play" and maybe also "to like."  The kids were putting balls in basketball hoops and kicking them and jumping up and down on one foot and holding hands and doing ring songs/dances and just all kinds of busy.  Nat just stared and listened with complete attention for the first half of the class then started joining in a bit in repeating words and phrases.  She absolutely loved it.

So we ponied up the cash and signed her up for one 90 minute class per week for ten weeks this summer (they also let you make up any classes you miss while on vacation or something).  I know 90 minutes a week is not enough to have her a fluent speaker in ten weeks, but it's a good start for her.  This one yesterday was the longest she's ever been in a classroom setting.  She'll be in preschool in the fall for three hours a day (though I'm thinking of keeping her home on Fridays), so this will help ease her into that classroom/peer/teacher experience.

I also plan to explore good opportunities to reinforce the Spanish just through life in our neighborhood.  We live in a neighborhood full of first-generation immigrants.  Right on our block, it's mostly African immigrants, but a couple blocks down you hit a very intensively Mexican immigrant neighborhood where all the stores have signage in Spanish and that's the dominant language on the street.  I'm thinking that I can find a playground right in that neighborhood, a grocery store where we might pick up milk every week--that kind of thing--to give Nat some natural life exposure to Spanish.

Then there's all the Spanish-language programming we can get on demand on t.v.  If the kids are going to watch 1-2 hours of t.v. per day (which is about what we average in the summer months--more like 2-3 in the winter months), an hour of it can be Plaza Sesamo, which Nat already loves to watch, even though she doesn't understand a word of it.

The school she is going to in the Fall does Spanish once or twice a week.  I doubt it's intensive immersion, but it will still be some reinforcement.  And maybe if I can find the cash, we can keep up the language school in the fall.

Overall, it does look like this is going to be a good start for Project Multilingual Kids.

People Are So Weird

Need to vent a little here in personal space.  So I wrote this thing (you might have seen it) at Strollerderby about questioning the appropriateness of pirates as a theme of children's play.  Mainly, it was supposed to be kind of funny, like "huh, yeah, never thought about it, but how DO you explain a plank to a 3-year old?"  (I told my kids their Little People Pirate Ship plank was a diving board.)

Anyhow, now a few commenters are convinced my children are micro-managed and having their creativity and learning opportunities cramped debilitatingly.

It really never ceases to amaze me how much assumption people can load onto the smallest pieces of information.  In another recent post, a woman said she was terribly worried about the children of anyone claiming to love their spouse more than said children and accused such people of having a sick "codependent" relationship.  You know, just in general.  Without knowing anything more than a silly comment on a blog about "love" which can interpreted in about a thousand different ways by a thousand different people.

For the record, my kids own about 300 books, buckets of blocks, a basket full of dress-up clothes (some girlie, some decidedly NOT girlie), baskets of dolls and stuffed animals, tea sets and play food, cars, trucks (and yes, even a pirate ship), a dollhouse and tons of furniture and dollhouse people, a miniature piano that has two and a half octaves of real keys, several drums and bells and other rhythm instruments, a real ukulele, blankets they use to build forts, a closet full of art supplies, more balls than I can count, scooters, tricycles, and yes, even videos (gasp!).  Plus more free-play time than any kids their age I know.

I hardly think I'm cramping their style by thinking twice about certain toys or books or videos. I mean, ALL parents choose what they let their kids play with to at least some extent, right?  (If they don't what's up with that?) My kids are still too little for peer influences, so I'm not exactly fighting them over their true passions.  They don't even know pirates exist (in spite of the Little People).  They don't miss them any more than they miss Hannah Montana, whom I sincerely hope they never discover (yeah, yeah, wishful thinking, I know).

Sheesh.

Pre-Preschool

Nat had a preschool "interview" today. They didn't call it an interview. Something about "fit" but anyhow, it was an interview. I have no idea what it was like, since Selina and I were exiled with other parents in he gym while the kids being not-interviewed were doing their thing in the classrooms.

Nat was the last kid to return from her group and I was dead curious as to why, but the teacher ran off after dropping her with me. She was running late for the next group, because, as it turns out, Nat didn't want to leave the classroom because she was having so much fun. All I got out of Nat was that she saw a rabbit eat hay, and saw some fish in a tank, before she broke down and had a full-on temper tantrum about leaving.

She wanted to A) stay and B) return to the room with the rabbit and "play with the toys." (I was happy to hear that they haven't brainwashed her to say "work with materials" just yet!) When we finally made it to the car and I got her calmed down, I got a bit more out of her. She said she poured water into a cup and didn't spill any (I asked) and that she used a "clip" to pick up "circles" and put them in a bowl, one at a time. That is "I picked up a circle and put it in the bowl and I picked up another circle and put it in the bowl and I picked up another circle and put it in the bowl..." etc.

Sounds like they were evaluating fine motor skill levels or something.  Or maybe they let her choose and those were the activities she picked.  But whatever it was, she loved it. I think she's going to pester me about going back for the next six months. I imagine they will offer us a slot, since we want the least popular, half-day afternoons.  We're going to apply for financial aid, which is a long-shot, but we might as well try.

So preschool it is.  What's nice about this school is that Nat can go half-days for two full years until she's six and a half.  Then we can revisit the question of school-school.  And reevaluate the impact of tuition on the budget...

Nat's Story* and Other Literary Achievements at Our House

"There was a dark, dark outside. And in the dark, dark outside, there was a dark, dark marching band. And in the dark, dark marching band there was a dark, dark peeking eye. And in the dark, dark peeking eye, there was a dark, dark look. And in the dark, dark look there was a dark, dark closet. And in the dark, dark closet there was a dark, dark rocking chair. And in the dark, dark rocking chair, there was a...GHOST!"

I don't know which I like better, the marching band or the peeking eye.

Selina, meanwhile, recognized a letter for the first time yesterday.  Well, that is to say, I recognized Selina recognizing a letter for the first time yesterday.

I was rocking her before her nap and reading a book to her.  She kept getting mad at me for trying to turn the first page and go on past "Big red dog barks bow wow wow."  So finally I said "fine, you hold the book and read it yourself."

She took it and looked at it and looked at it and talked a bunch of gibberish until it occurred to me that she was actually saying "W."

I said "W? You see a W?" and she got so excited that I had finally realized what she was talking about and why she didn't want to turn the page and went "yes!  W! W!" and pointed to the W in "wow."  So I pointed to the O and she said "ohhh" and then the next W again.  "W.  Ohhh. W.  wow-wow-wow!" she declared.  We stayed on that page repeating this for a good five minutes and she took the book with her to bed to study it some more.

Since I am always bragging on Nat's reading, I figured I'd better record this one for posterity to be fair to baby sis who is clearly a total genius in her own right.

* Based on a Halloween book that made a big impression on her last fall.

Me Too!

That is Selina's new battle cry.  She runs behind Nat, arms outstretched, squeaking "metoo!  metoo! metoo!"

It is adorable beyond words.

Love of Big Sister is gonna be the end of that kid, though, I tell you.  Yesterday, Nat was running around the hardwood floors in socks, slipped and sort of belly flopped onto a (luckily) carpeted part of the floor.  She survived, picked herself up and commenced to running again.  Selina, having watched the whole thing, immediately launched herself--squealing with delight--face-first onto the part of the carpet where Nat had fallen.  Then she giggled "Uh-oh!" scrambled up and did it again.

Selina is, shall we say, more physical than Nat was at this age?  Than Nat is now?

Meanwhile, babysitter, J, the one whose name Selina chants like a mantra at all times, whether he is present or not (she is head over heels in love), is teaching Nat to play Go.  I have no idea what it is, but J. is all into it, like crazy and he has been reading up on how to teach it to wee snappers.  He told me that "all the really successful professional Go players started when they were, like, 3 or 4."  I asked him if Nat could afford to keep me in the posh rest home in Honolulu to which I want to become accustomed in my dotage on a professional Go salary.  He told me professional Go players make between $100,000 and $million a year, depending on how many tournaments they win.

"Carry on, good man!" I told him.  Even Supreme Court justices need hobbies, right?

Nat, on her own, is reading things like "Daddy says we're going to grow vegetable soup." (Yes, from the book, wherein she also read "zucchini squash" which I can barely read myself) and "If you go outside today, be sure to take your umbrella."

I think she gained about a semester's worth of reading levels in about the past two weeks and I don't know how it happened.

Yeah, I'm bragging. Sorry, I can't help it.  The kid positively blows me away.

Thinking about School--Sort of!

One of the main reasons we want to home school is that we figure we'll never find a school with a curriculum we like, with any decent number of children of color, for tuition we can afford.

Except we just did.

We found a Montessori school near us that actually has a serious commitment to diversity and it's working.  There are at least 2 or 3 African American kids per 15-20 kid class, and lots more non-Black kids of color, too.

The curriculum is classic Montessori, which I mostly like.  I like the multi-age classrooms (each "level" incorporates 3 years), the individualized "work plans" for each student, the complete absence of grading (quarterly anecdotal reports) and the physical classroom space.  What sometimes squicks me a little about Montessori is the emphasis on orderliness and the idea that there is One Right Way to do everything.  But this particular school (we went for a private tour) seems to have a flexible enough attitude not to be too awful about that.  I do like the emphasis on respecting the materials and each other and tidying up after yourself.

I wish Montessori didn't insist on calling everything the children do "work."  I realize this was Maria Montessori's way to emphasize the importance of children's play, I just wish we could respect play, as play and not call it work.  But that's kind of a semantic issue and I can get over it.

I am also not ready for Nat to be in a full-time school and don't think I will be for a long time.  This program is three hours/five days.  We might very well skip Fridays on a regular basis, if she goes, since Friday is usually "yea! Cole-mom is home, let's hang out with the family all together" day and Nat did so terribly when asked to just spend 45 minutes tap-dancing on Fridays last Fall.

If she goes, it will be in the Fall when she's four and a half.  I am telling myself it's okay, because I am getting roughly this many hours of baby sitting, now, so it will still give me plenty of time to do all the same home school things I do now (or plan to do this spring, after not being able to keep on top much last fall during all our moving and settling).

Nat would get two full years of part-time before she went into the 6-9 year-olds class for an 8am-3pm day.  I don't know how I feel about 8am-3pm days for a 6-year old.  Maybe we can keep taking Fridays off or something, if we decide to do this school at that point.  And Nat's birthday is in February, so she'll be fully six and a half then.

But this brings me to money.  We can afford the half-days, as the money for that is slightly less than I'm paying for baby sitting now.  The trouble is, we'd still need some baby sitting, because of Selina.  But not as much.  And the nice thing is I can spend the time when Nat is in school (and Selina isn't with a sitter) hanging out with Selina so she can get her own good strong home education going between now and 4 if we do this same thing with her.

I'm also reminding myself that we can not go to the 6-9 year old class if we don't want to or it doesn't seem like the best decision (or we can't afford the full-time tuition, the very same year Selina would be starting to do the 3-6 year old half days).  I had been pleased to learn that school is not compulsory for kids until 7 years old in Illinois, and was thinking seven would be the first time I'd even consider school, but probably wait until nine.  We could, theoretically, bring her home again for the 6-9 years and send her to the third level ("upper elementary" they call it) at nine and a half.

On the other hand, the Montessori place is small, with a 1:10 teacher:student ratio and it follows a lot of the same philosophy that attracts me to home schooling.  Its weaknesses are music and physical education, but we'd have time (in the half-day years, anyway) to keep Suzuki and church choir and capoeira in our plans.  I don't want us to be rushed and stressed and over-scheduled when Nat is only six, because she's in school full-time and trying to cram in "extracurricular" things.  The school does keep to a half-hour homework limit after the kids hit the 9-12 year old class, so that bit seems reasonable.

We will apply for the fall and see what we see.  I do think Nat will really enjoy it.  It's totally up her alley.  She will thrive with the freedom to explore the room and choose what she wants to do, and she will enjoy playing with the same other kids--at a range of ages--every day.  I think she'll handle that "One Right Way" to do everything without getting a perfectionist or compulsive hang up, like some kids definitely do.  I just hope she doesn't get bored with the One Way, or if she starts inventing her own ways, they let her.  Because that's how she is.  When she finishes out the learning curve for something, she complicates it.  Most commonly, she complicates it by turning it on the adult who's trying to "teach her" and tries to teach the adult.  "What sound does B make?" she'll ask "b-b-b" I'll say "Good, Mama Shannon, I'm so proud of you!" she'll praise.

Can't you just see her doing that with the counting beads to her Montessori teacher?

It will be an adventure, I guess. 

Long Time no Write

Sorry to be so quiet over here!

News Round Up:

- We close on the new place, Friday and the movers come as soon as we get the key. Everybody is very excited. I told Nat she'd get her own (well, shared with Selina) bathroom in our new house and she said, "with soap?!" I told her, sure, she could have soap in her bathroom. Since then she's been telling people that in her new house, she will have soap. make of that what you will.

- A visit from my BFF and her nursing toddler made a HUGE impression on Nat. Now she carries her little stuffed dog around under her shirt, telling anyone who'll listen that she's feeding the dog milk from her body, which comes out of her nipples.

- Many human reproduction conversations before and following the nursing mom visit. We've been fleshing out a few more details of Nat's (and Selina's) birth and adoption stories. I picked up a copy of It's Not the Stork and brought it home for her. She read the cover thusly:

Nat: It's not the st--st--what's that?
Shannon: "stork" it's this white bird (pointing to picture on the cover)
Nat: Stork. A book about girls, boys, babies, b--b--babies?
Shannon: "bodies" see the o and the d? "bodies."
Nat: bodies. families, and friends

The thing is, I don't really ask Nat to read much, so I don't quite keep up with exactly what she can read and so every time she reads something like that, I get all shocked and impressed. Mostly, she'd still prefer to be read to, to recite a book from memory (a big favorite she knows perfectly by heart is The Gruffalo) or to pretend to read, by telling a story while turning pages. So I let her do whatever she wants in the reading department, seeing as I'd estimate that she is reading roughly at a mid-year kindergarten level at age 3.5 with no particular "pushing."

As for the contents of the book, so far the thing that interests her most is the picture of a little girl pulling another little girl's hair. She's very concerned about the whole scenario. Why did she pull her hair? Why did she say "yeow!?" Why did she say sorry? No doubt this is right out of a growing big sister psyche.

- Selina is blossoming intellectually herself. She is just as interested in letters as Nat was at her age. Nat reads books to Selina now and then and that makes more of an impression than anything else ever could. Selina is still Nat's biggest fan.

Selin'a hair is now officially as long as Nat's. Her curls are looser and softer. In four poofs it's comically adorable. Not sure what we'll end up doing with it in the long-run. I think I'm just going to have to comb it every day when she's older. Right now she HATES a comb touching her head under any and all circumstances. She tosses her head violently side-to-side, Snoopy-dance-style and screams at the top of her lungs if she just sees the comb in my hand. I have found that four braids will last about three days without looking horrible, so I've mostly been doing that to minimize hair styling time.

- Speaking of hair, here's a short answer to recent requests for tips on styling toddler/preschooler hair:

With Nat, she has become more and more willing to sit and let me work on her hair as she has gotten older. When she was Selina's age, I used to do her hair on the run, following her around as she tried to run away from me. I often made parts while walking and bending over her little head. They weren't perfect, but they were adequate. These days (since she was about 2 and a half) I plop her in her high chair (buckled in!) let her choose a video and sometimes a snack and get to work. She is usually reasonably cooperative for about 45 minutes. It usually takes about one hour to an hour and a half to get finished. When she causes me too much trouble--complaining, jerking er head around or whatever--I turn off the video, leave her view and ask her to let me know when she's ready to finish. When she's ready, I turn the video back on and get back to work.

This gets the job done and Nat's hair styles tend to last between 7-12 days, so we don't have to revisit it daily.

When we finish hair, I make a big, gushing deal out of how gorgeous it is and we visit the mirror together to admire it. Nat likes to put butterfly clips and things in her hair, and that helps encourage and bribe her during the process, but she also pulls the butterflies out and fiddles with them until they break, so I actually don't let her put them in very often.

When Nat was little, many Black mothers, grandmothers, aunties and baby sitters told me to do her hair while she was asleep. If you want to, go for it! I didn't want to waste precious nap time doing hair! But considering how much more violently Selina objects to hair care, I suppose there are kids out there whose hair just wouldn't get done any other way. And it does have to get done. That's non-negotiable. That's another aspect of teaching my kids to put up with it--the idea that it just has to be done, like we have to put on our seat belts in the car.

- Why I like white male baby sitters:

I like white male baby sitters, because there are no white males in our immediate family (though we've got uncles and grandfathers and all that) and I love that what my girls are learning about the species is that it is a species of caregiving, nurturing, child-centered kindness. That's not really the dominant idea of what white men are. But it's what I want my girls-and the women they grow into--to expect from the white men they meet in life. I want them to be shocked and horrified when they encounter anything less and to hold those people accountable to humane expectations.

- How Strollerderby is going:

It's going pretty well. Its nice to have this job, because it's an all new type of writing for me to learn and an all new audience (well, a mixed audience, some new, some I'm used to) to learn to write to. It's a good exercise in maintaining my own voice in different kinds of contexts. Here's what I think might interest my readers here the most lately:

The Trouble with Safe Haven Laws: Some Thoughts for National Adoption Month

As always, see my bio page for my most recent writing.

Debate (No, Not That One)

Resolved: Parents who decline to use the public education system should not receive any special vouchers or tax breaks when they do so.

Weigh in here.