Duchess walks herself home from school every day now, and is home alone for 90 minutes or so. While this is in line with the Surgeon General's Call to Action, what it really gets us is a lot of time. Duchess has time to walk home (often walking most of the way in the company of O Blond, likely being loud and ridiculous the whole time), unpack and put away her stuff, practice flute (fifth-grade band!), do her homework (every night!), AND read or listen to podcasts or play Minecraft for quite a while before I get home. It's luxurious. No more evening scramble to finish stuff, no whining about not having enough time to read, chores getting done without complaint. Fabulous.

Unfortunately, Skipper is not allowed to walk herself home yet, so she goes to aftercare at 2:15 and gets home around 6, which leaves her a scant two hours before bedtime to unpack, repack, eat dinner, do her homework,* and practice piano. Not to mention any extra time to read or play alone or with Duchess. So she's feeling, understandably, pretty jealous of Duchess. The poor kid needs her downtime, and she's not getting it. I'm not sure how we're going to get it for her.

Also, as Duchess prepares for a 48-hour camping adventure (the packing list for which included army surplus woolen pants, large and terrifying knives, fingerless wool gloves, and sharpening tools for the aforementioned large and terrifying knives), I must remember that it will make her a better person.


* Skipper's school is not messing around. She has Japanese homework three times a week, due the day after it's assigned, and a packet of English homework assigned once a week, due the following week. I can't remember how much homework Duchess had in first grade, but there was definitely a lot less of it. And this is the first year of Duchess's entire school career that she has EVER had to return homework more often than once a week.

Reason #45709 why parenting is very hard for me.

Skipper is at a weird point right now. She is pretty comfortable in her school and aftercare. She has friends and an active social life at recess. This is all great, of course, and it means she's working through some of the selective mutism, and actually expressing herself sometimes. However, a new problem is developing. What she's is expressing at aftercare is mostly her manic goofball show-off side, and she combines the selective mutism with the manic show-off in a way that comes off to older kids and adults as rude and weird. (Like silently making weird faces at her teacher when greeted and then ostentatiously turning away from her.) Her aftercare teacher, who is kind but strict, does not tolerate rudeness. This is problematic, because any kind of correction is enormously painful to Skipper, and just pushes her back into herself.

In our experience, the only way to correct Skipper's behavior effectively is through descriptive praise.  (This technique entails describing every positive thing that the kid is doing, no matter how ridiculous. As in "I see that you did not hit your sister, even though you wanted to, when she walked past you while you were screaming and writhing on the floor. That took a lot of self-control." It's really hard to do this when what you actually want to do is leave the house and spend the next few hours in a dark quiet bar. It does, however, work.) Punishment is useless, or worse than useless, because it just sends her directly into a world of despair and self-loathing, and she learns nothing except that the world is so painful and she is failing. She BELIEVES that she is awful and bad when she is behaving badly, and she seizes on any evidence that supports her belief. Offering her instead a narrative that identifies (honestly) places where she is making good choices gives her a chance to be a person who makes good choices.

I find it extremely difficult to take this approach, even though I both understand it and see that it works where punishment does not. It feels really unfair to me, and to Duchess, who sees that her sister is treated differently than she is. (We should, of course, use the same approach on Duchess, because it's a solid approach for everyone, but it's so hard that we almost always take the easier route with her. Because we can.) Duchess and I are both people who like things to be FAIR.

Anyway, it's not an easy thing to explain to an aftercare teacher, and it's not easy to ask her to do. It would be pretty tough for her to implement, even if she was totally on board, as she has a bajillion rowdy kids she'd have to treat the same way, for the sake of fairness. I'm not sure how hard to push this.

We went to Fort Vancouver today.

People who will no longer write books for me to read.

I'm not sure why the death of Oliver Sacks made me think of the death of Terry Pratchett, but it did.

"I wish we didn't have weekends."

So. School. Both kids are happy with it.

Skipper got the English teacher she wanted (the one with lots of Hello Kitty paraphernelia), and her Japanese teacher plays piano and sings a lot of songs. She feels very comfortable at her school now, with two years under her belt already, and she seems to feel socially solid - she has many friends who want to play with her, including the Blond Twins, who are in second grade and have recess with her, and that makes her feel very popular. Pitstock is in her class again this year, and she and he played "Dancing Ninjas" together at recess. And she likes schoolwork, because it's hard enough to engage her but not hard enough to threaten her sense of herself. She's excited to have homework. Her Japanese teacher speaks no English to the kids at all, giving Skipper a sense that she's going in the deep end for the first time, which she says she dislikes but actually seems kind of thrilled by. I'm sure she'll change her mind, but at the moment she LOVES school.

Duchess also loves school. She has the same beloved teacher as last year, almost all the same kids in her class plus a few good additions, and a smaller class size. She's a fifth-grader at a K-5 school, and therefore at the top of the pecking order, and she is also The Tallest Kid In School. (She probably was last year, too, but now it's official.) She is sitting next to and sharing a locker with a smart, weird, idiosyncratic, doesn't-care-what-anybody-thinks-of-her girl who has been in her grade all along but never been in her class until this year, and I think that could be good for Duchess. Duchess feels that she has a lot more confidence this year. She actually told me a few weeks ago that she feels like she's changed a lot this summer, and is now a different person. I asked her how she's different, and she thought for a moment and said "I'm happier now." She most loved the experiences this summer that involved small groups of kids forced to bond, especially at her backpacking camp. This kid is really starving for a club.

We're lining up the usual cavalcade of extracurriculars - Duchess has twice-a-week after-school Chinese, twice-a-week kung fu, once-a-week gymnastics, and once-a-month all-day wilderness nerd adventures. Skipper has once-a-week gymnastics, once-a-week piano, once-a-week taiko, and every-day after-school kung fu. They both wish to add more things.

That's about it. It's fall! The rain is supposed to start today!

First Day of School!

This is a picture of me and my baby brother.

Catch-up

My uncle sent over some photos from our river trip at the beginning of the summer, featuring us and various fabulous relatives (including the original BBE, a year and a half younger than Skipper but more reward-motivated and far more adventurous, making her an excellent partner in crime). Please note the amazing rowing job I am doing in the last photo, under very difficult river conditions.

Probably too much Netflix.

I just spent 20 minutes reading the results of a Google search on"Why didn't Joey and Rachel end up together?"

But really, WHY?!

Last swim lesson of the summer

This summer, we have only been to the pool 14 times, for Skipper's ONE session of lessons. I think this is the fewest number of pool visits in a summer that the kids have had since Skipper was born. Here's your obligatory pool trip photo series.

I hosed the girls down before the walk to the pool. It's really very hot here.





















































































I feel that these photos are a sort of Rorschach test. Do you see an adorable little girl?

















Or perhaps a goofy schemer?

Or perhaps a Machiavellian mastermind plotting to take all your snacks?
















Not Duchess's snacks, though.

Photos from this morning