Two photos

Skipper has moved on to representational drawing!















Also, Big Cooks are visiting; they have bestowed gifts of baseball caps and legos! They did not, however, influence Duchess's choice of outfit to go with the cap.

Baby dinosaur steps

The kids have been getting more screen time lately. This shift is happening at least in part because I'm having a harder time defining what's wrong with screen time. There's a lot to learn from screen time, after all.

However, some of the screen time they get really doesn't have much redeeming value. For example, Skipper has watched several episodes of a PBS show called "Dinosaur Train"* which she really likes. (Duchess does too, because Duchess likes everything.) She learns a little about dinosaurs when she watches, but it's really just enjoyable to her for the same reasons that "America's Next Top Model" is enjoyable to me - it's silly and it makes her laugh and she doesn't have to think about it too much.

Yesterday, though, Dinosaur Train did something great for her. Some of the kids** were playing Dinosaur Train at recess, and because Skipper understood the reference, she joined in the game. She joined in! And then she and one of the kids spun off their own game, pretending to be pteranodons flying around the playground. Their own game! "Mom, I think (Pteranodon Boy) and I are getting to be friends now!" she said

I understand that this is a mundane moment on the playground, and I also understand that she's probably had other moments of participation that she just hasn't reported, but this moment seems to have been significant to her, and it's certainly significant to me. Every morning she says she doesn't want to go to school, and every morning I have to actually physically*** shove her into the classroom. Every morning I walk away feeling unhappy about it, and very aware that this is not something she HAS to do. Every morning I am forcing her to do something that makes her unhappy, and I'm doing it for reasons that sometimes don't seem good enough. Knowing that she had a joyful pteranodon moment yesterday helped me walk away today with a more hopeful heart. Thank you, screen time.



*Because somebody was like "Hey, what do preschoolers like? Dinosaurs...and trains! That would make an awesome show that preschoolers would love!" and that person was totally right.
** All boys, of course, because her class is more than two-thirds boys. 
*** Not very hard  - I just have to nudge her in. It's not a wrestling match - it's more like a token gesture of protest, like she's just making one last demonstration that she's sure as hell not doing this of her own free will.

Rules for Life

According to Skipper, the rules of her classroom are:

1. Do Your Best
2. Stay Safe
3. Be Nice

Social anxiety

I have informants watching Skipper. L and R Blond attend kindergarten at her school, and they go out for recess at the same time as the preschool classrooms. R asked me the other day "Why doesn't Skipper play with anybody at recess?" Skipper does play with R and L, who like her and are nice enough to play with her at recess. She does not play with anybody else. Skipper told me she either plays with the twins, finds a teacher to stand next to, or walks "steadily" around the playground.

Ugh.

Skipper still doesn't know how to engage with other kids. She says "the other kids don't want to play with me!" which appears to mean "the other kids don't come up to me and explicitly invite me to play!" She doesn't know how to (or can't bring herself to) invite other kids to play with her, or introduce herself into playing that's already going on. She is capable of playing with other kids - she and Duchess play together a lot, and she plays with L and R when they're here. She prefers older kids in general, but she'll play with younger kids if they're not too destructive.

Nothing is going to change at school. They don't have the staff capacity or training to do one-on-one social skills training. I'm not even sure that this can be taught. Regardless, it's going to have to be Skipper herself who makes the change, and I'm also not sure she actually has it in her raw ingredients to do this. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a more social classmate will take the initiative to reach out to her.

In the meantime, I'm trying not to feel too sad about it. It's nice to have my informants keeping an eye on her.

More ranting

You guys! It's happening again! Not even two weeks into the school year, and I'm already finding myself weeping (WEEPING!) in conversations about the state of public education, and the way in general that we fail, as a society, to support kids. Ugh.

Miscellaneous:

• Duchess is missing her classmates who have gone off to the magic TAG school. She is once again on the top of her class, academically, and ready to coast along for another year of not trying too hard. I'm ready for another year of feeling sad about her schooling.
• I saw one of the Homework Club kids I worked with a lot last year. She's excited that this year she's going to be early to school instead of late every day, because a different adult is dropping her off. She's a decent kid. I want her to make it.
• A friend of mine has taken in foster kids who have some developmental delays - nothing serious, and it all seems like the consequence of early neglect, rather than inherent deficits. The little one, after just a few weeks, is making huge strides - she's still young enough that her elastic little brain can compensate. I don't know about the big one. I want them both to make it, too.
• I met a new parent at Duchess's school who actually transferred her kids there from another district on a No Child Left Behind waiver. (The receiving school has to accept the waiver, so she couldn't get her kids into one of the better PPS schools, but she still felt that getting into our school was a huge improvement from where her kids were.) She is amazed by the level of parental involvement, the quality of teaching, the attitude of the kids, and the general feeling at the school, and is thrilled to have her kids there. This reminded me that, in spite of my feelings of despair about Duchess's school, there are many, many, many (many) schools where kids are much (much) worse off.

After all the Talented and Gifted hubbub last year, we decided not to push to get Duchess nominated for TAG identification. However, this fall, I have reversed myself, and decided to go ahead and nominate Duchess. I had three experiences that led me to the decision. First, as part of my Big Volunteer Thing I've been doing at Duchess's school, I've been calling enrichment programs, and I spoke to a staffperson at one excellent, super-expensive program who said "Oh, we do lots of classes at your school, for TAG kids!" Second, I recently learned about a cool-sounding math class, offered by that very program, that took place last spring in mornings before school. Duchess would have loved it. It was only open to TAG kids, and it was free. Third, I had a conversation with a woman, a parent of older kids, who has worked with Duchess in school, and respects her reading and analysis chops. We talked about the ethical ugliness that is TAG, and her experience as a teacher and a parent, and she said "You've got to get Duchess identified as TAG."* So I went and picked up the forms. There's a nomination and testing process that will unfold over the year in some mysterious way. I told Duchess (from whom nothing like this can be hidden, as she is way more persistent than Harriet the Spy) that no matter how the test identifies her, we will continue in the conviction that she is awesome-identified.

It just all, as you (very well) know, makes me furious. Nearly every kid in the school would benefit from a cool math class at least as much as Duchess's TAG classmates. While the TAG screening test is explicitly designed to be accessible for kids who can't read English well, so in theory it's a great way to identify kids from all backgrounds who have intellectual aptitude, the fact is that the kids in Duchess's grade who are receiving TAG resources are all middle-class-or-richer kids. TAG resources are offered not just to TAG-identified kids, but also to kids identified as "TAG-potential" which means that they didn't get a qualifying score but had strong "advocacy" scores (as rated by their teachers and parents) and work samples. Guess which kids are likely to have strong "advocacy" scores and work samples? I know plenty of kids at Duchess's school whose parents, for many reasons,* aren't going to nominate them for anything and aren't supporting their homework and school activities to encourage them to produce strong work samples. Those kids would benefit from cool math classes as much as any kid. The program should be called Talented and Gifted and Having Pushy Parents.

And now I am a Pushy Parent, and I'm feeling pretty shitty about the ethics of being a Pushy Parent. I hate that I am trying to extract more resources for my own already-very-lucky child, out of a limited pool of resources. My kid has everything she needs to thrive, and I'm greedily grubbing for more, because I can, and because I want more for her. This goes against my belief that not only is it in our benefit to support all the children in our community, so that they will thrive in our community and make it a better place, but that we have a moral obligation to help them flourish. I go around and around on how to address this. I can't not try to get Duchess everything I can -  I'm a primate, after all, and this is a competitive world. As with most things, the current situation means that my refusal to take stuff for her just means more resources for OTHER privileged kids. But I have an obligation to do something about that current situation. I just don't know what, yet.

Anyway, Duchess is determined to be rich when she grows up, TAG or no TAG. We recently listened to a podcast identifying the most lucrative college majors. She listened to the top ten majors, and decided on naval architecture (#7, I think), as it is the best fit with her already-identified career hopes. She's going to be a naval architect during the day, and an author at night (writing great books while cuddled up with her husband and her Great Dane - she's fairly detailed in her planning). Skipper decided that she'd go for #1, petroleum engineering, since she has no strong preferences yet. I didn't say anything about how I feel about petroleum engineering; I'm pretty sure I won't have to worry about it. Of course, Skipper is also planning to have seven children,*** so she's either going to have to be rich or not work at all.



* Note the language. I've got to get her identified - I think that zeros in on everything wrong with the system right there.
**Stress, language barriers, cultural barriers, poor health, lack of time, and other factors, including the assumption that it doesn't make that much difference, which is the assumption under which I've been operating.
*** Duchess is holding fast to her determination to have no children at all. Having watched Skipper be born, she definitely doesn't want to give birth, and she says it's clear that kids are a pain in the butt. I feel kind of bad about this, as I'm the one giving her this impression with my apparently negative attitude about parenting, but it seems that Skipper has no such qualms.

Portrait of a Young Reader

These are the items Duchess chose to check out from the school library today. I think it would be hard to come up with a more succinct depiction of her right now.

I think Skipper's brain is going to explode.

Skipper has learned a handful of Japanese words this week. I just picked her up from school, and on the walk home, she said "Mom, does Japanese have pictures in it instead of words?" so I promised to look up the history of Japanese characters when I got home.

And I found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system and oh my lord. And that led me to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language and apparently this is EXTREMELY complicated.

More words

Tonight Skipper called Duchess an "ass-pain-butt" and a "topsy-turd."

Book review: Hoot, by Carl Hiassen

"Mom, this book is really good! It's only the second chapter, and there are already alligators and portapotties!"

Only 14 more years of school to go.

The first week of both-kids-at-public-schools is over. I am exhausted. I'm actually temporarily grateful that I don't have another job besides logisticking my kids. This month, I'm picking up all the Blonds from school three days a week (O is in Duchess's class, and L and R are in kindergarten at Skipper's school), so I spend a lot of time trudging between my home and the two schools with children in tow.*

I also spend a lot of time preparing lunches and then cleaning lunch containers. I had forgotten how much I hate that. All those damned tiny containers! And those moms who raise the bar by preparing their children adorable and healthy lunches! Duchess is always coming home talking about her friends' delicious lunches.** I managed to pull off a reasonably successful lunch program this week, thanks to the discovery that if I cook a whole heap of leftover-grain/tofu pancakes and freeze them, I can send them in Skipper's lunch with a little ketchup on the side. Win-win! She eats something moderately healthy, and I don't have to scramble every day.


Next week we'll be back to peanut butter sandwiches with sliced apples and carrots on the side. I may just start flinging all the food, without containers, into the lunch boxes and let it all rattle around together...

Anyway, I have been told that girls stop eating food at school altogether in middle school - what a relief!



*The five kids are physically similar enough, and variable enough in height, that we look plausible as a family. People give me pitying and/or condescending looks.
** When she's not talking trash about friends who bring junk food in their lunches. I have mixed feelings about this - I feel that it's good to choose healthy food, but I also feel that it's bad to judge other people for THEIR choices, given all the complex factors affecting food choice. Once she said to me "Kid X's parents must not love her very much. She gets cheetos in her lunch!" and I cringed in shame. She's gotten better about it, but I dread to think what she says to kids to their faces.

As an aside.

I love Jasmine from So You Think You Can Dance.  So much. I want her to come live with us so we can have dance parties all the time. Or we could watch her dance. Or we could just hang out. Whatever works.