Our friend who moved in the other day

We’re starting to get a little tired of it all: the midnight feedings, the neediness, the scratching and scrabbling, the nocturnal rambling.

It’s like we have a new baby in the house… but wait, we don’t have a new baby in the house. We have a relatively new pet, but he only bugs the girl he sleeps with. Our son, at 13, is finally (usually) sleeping through the night.

This is like the baby we didn’t ask for and we didn’t know was coming: We’ve got a lodger in the house, and he (or she) is not paying rent. On top of that, he’s a midnight partier.

I vote for “he.”

“He” is the new friend who has taken up residence in our wall. Not just any wall, mind you. We’ve heard them in the roof, in the corner of our office. But fer crying out loud, didja have to choose the wall at the head of our bed?

I was awoken last week to the sound of ripping. Apparently, although our friend had been living in there a while, it was redecoration time. He just didn’t like that insulation the way it was, and he was working on reupholstering. RIP! One of us awake. Scrabble, scrabble, crunch, crunch. We’re both awake.

I bang on the wall. He seems to settle down. Apparently, it wasn’t the right night for a party.

Good. Maybe he’ll move on.

Well, no. Our friend is a nightly visitor now. Apparently, he sleeps through the day, enjoying the comfy fiberglass decor. We go to bed with silence in the wall behind us. But sometime every night, he decides it’s time to have fun. He has loud dinner parties, dancing, and the ever-present redecoration of his apartment.

My husband has no plans to be outschemed by a rat. He set traps. Nothing. He banged on the wall. Our friend danced to the beat.

The other day he came home with an Amazon.com box. Later, he called me down to see the amazing scene. Snaked through an outlet hole in the wall, the miniature camera on a flexible extension reveals a fine nest full of nuts and other debris. But no one, apparently, is home.

Last night, the party started up again. RIP! Crunch, crunch. Scritchscritchscritchscritchscritch. My husband banged on the wall. We groaned in frustration.

At least, when you have a baby, you have a sweet, cuddly thing during the day to remind you why you’re losing sleep.

This afternoon, I was walking through our bedroom, and I just couldn’t resist. I banged on the wall. I scratched. I thundered. I wished I had some insulation to rip.

“You hear me, rat? Keep it down in there! Go find somewhere else to live!”

The thing is, bad neighbors never seem to care when you’re a bad neighbor back to them. I could almost hear his thoughts.

“Hey, maybe those stupid, sleepy animals on the other side of this wall are more interesting than I thought.

Maybe tonight I’ll invite them to the party…”

Posted in Avant Parenting.

1 comment

By Suki – February 22, 2012

The very best Santa Cruz County fieldtrips

I asked around to find out the very best Santa Cruz County fieldtrips. My correspondents’ comments are in quotes. I haven’t done all these, but they’re worth a try! Please leave more suggestions as comments below.

North coast:

Wilder Ranch: Just north of Santa Cruz, learn how a ranch operated in the 19th century. Also, bring bikes and bike the trails up on the bluff.
Swanton Berry Farm: Visit the farm, pick berries, pay by the pound, and eat them up!
Pebble Beach: No, not the one south of us. And I’m fudging because I think this is in San Mateo County. This is a beach just south of Pescadero that is a true pebble beach. To get to the beach, go down on the north side of the parking lot. To access fabulous tidepooling, follow the path down on the south side of the parking lot.

San Lorenzo Valley:

Quail Hollow Ranch: We love Quail Hollow. I wrote about it here and here. Aside from the planned activities, it’s just a great place for a hike.
Henry Cowell State Redwoods: Henry Cowell is an excellent place to bring people who haven’t yet seen big redwoods but aren’t adventurous hikers. The main loop is super easy and includes a tree so big you can go inside it. For the more adventurous, find the various beaches and go for a swim in the river. In the fall, the Ohlone Festival is a fun cultural event.

Santa Cruz:

City of Santa Cruz Dump: “Includes hands on recycling, a film and an art project making paper.”
Neary Lagoon: “Wildlife inhabiting or visiting the refuge include mallard and wood ducks, pied billed grebes, a multitude of coots, the world’s meanest geese, several varieties of fish and the occasional great blue heron or hawk.”
Life Lab: “We promote experiential learning for all ages through children’s camps, field trips, youth and internship programs, and teacher workshops. Drawing on over thirty years of work with students we have also created curricula and workshops for educators interested in bringing learning to life in gardens nationwide.”

Capitola/Aptos/Soquel:

Pacific Migrations: The visitor center at New Brighton State Beach is really fantastic. Instead of having the usual wildlife and history displays, they have arranged everything according to the theme of migration—both animal and human.
Nisene Marks State Park: Not a destination for many out-of-the-area folks, Nisene Marks is a really nice park for hiking and biking. If you have kids, the biking is fabulous, especially in the winter when cars aren’t allowed past the first gate. There’s a long, largely flat dirt/gravel/paved road you can follow. The cars are generally pretty respectful of bikes. The Old Growth Loop is a relatively easy hike that includes some old redwoods, including the wonderful twisted tree grove, where all the trees twisted into spirals trying to get at the sun as they grew.

Watsonville and south coast:

Elkhorn Slough: Birds, otters, little sharks. Hiking, kayaking. Teachers must first complete a Teacher Workshop before bringing a class to the Reserve.
Near the Slough: “We absolutely love going down to Moss Landing State Beach–not only are the waves often wilder and during the week NO ONE is there, but every time we have gone in the past year there is a large family of sea otters (about 30-50?) we can observe from really pretty close. And then the sea lion colony can’t be beat! We could watch this wildlife for hours. And of course with the slough right there, such animal watching can easily be paired with a birding expedition there, which we have done and which was really fun.”
The Farm: The Farm is a unique agricultural showcase. It consists of an agricultural education center, demonstration farm, produce stand and recreation destination. The Farm is designed to tell the story of contemporary farming amidst the majestic surroundings of California’s Central Coast.

Posted in Avant Parenting.

1 comment

By Suki – February 16, 2012

On learning and remembering

Neither of my kids learned their multiplication facts on schedule. The way the public school standards tell it, kids are just supposed to do it in third grade. You know, the way they’re supposed to walk on schedule, talk on schedule, and read on schedule. My kids have been equally as dismal at being “normal” in all those categories!

Schools assume that you learn things in order, and all their materials are based on that assumption. And even materials that are not created for public schools tend to follow the same assumptions.

The thing is, kids don’t learn things in a standard order. In fact, it’s often the kids who are eventually going to become masters in a subject who seem to lag behind. There are numerous tales of mathematicians who couldn’t add their way out of a paper bag. (“Let’s see, one paper bag plus one mathematician… Oh, geez, I really should have memorized that one before I got stuck in this bag!’) It’s heartening to know this, but when you’re in the thick of it, having a math-smart kid who can’t remember 7×8 — much less 5×6 — is hard to deal with.

A recent e-mail list discussion I was in on tackled this subject. Here is some of the wisdom I gained.

First of all, question why your child has to memorize math facts, and if it’s in his/her best interest to force it right now:

Does your child need to learn them because she’s in school and her teacher is pressuring her?
Does your child need to learn them because not knowing them is holding him back from doing math he enjoys?
Does your child need to learn them for reasons of self-esteem? (Kids who can’t seem to memorize random bits of information are often at a disadvantage in our schools.)

Secondly, be aware that there is absolutely no correlation with ability to memorize and overall intelligence. They are separate traits with nothing bit a tangential relationship.

A fairly large amount of successful people have trouble with rote memorization. That’s why they went into professions where rote memorization was not necessary for success.
Our schools operate on the assumption that certain types of learners should be rewarded, while all others should be punished into becoming the “right” kind of learner. But if your kid has trouble with rote memorization, there is no research that indicates that this will ever change, no matter what consequences she faces.
The “visual spatial” learning style is particularly noted for producing kids who have trouble with math facts. Visual spatial learners are very likely to have trouble in school, except in art class, shop, geometry, and other disciplines where their skills shine through. [Learn more about VS learners here.]

If there is a good reason that your child has to learn math facts, try a variety of methods in order to determine the one that “speaks” to your child’s way of thinking. Methods include:

Visual representation with blocks, pictures, or manipulatives. Make sure that your child really gets that when you say “2 times 4″ you really mean take 2 of something and count it 4 times.
Different aural approaches like singing (lots of kids like Multiplication Rock or the silly rhyming method which I can’t seem to find a reference to but will at some point!)
The analytic approach: Show your child how you can fill in almost all of a multiplication table just by using the facts she already knows. Talk about how to quickly come up with math facts that he can’t remember off the top of his head.
The project-based approach: Take math facts as the starting point to do the sort of project your child likes. Incorporate math facts as part of the project. One of my daughter’s teachers, for example, had kids build “factories” out of recycled containers that spit out math facts on slips of paper.
The carrot-and-stick approach: You don’t necessarily have to pay, but find a way to reward each math fact earned. It could be as simple as the method we’re doing right now, where the math facts she doesn’t know are stuck on the walls of our breakfast room. Each day, if she can tell us the answer to one without hesitation, she gets to take it off the wall.
Association: This is the most tried and true method of memorization, but it’s hard for a lot of people to do with numbers. The basic principle is this: Find something to associate with each number, and practice the association so that it’s grouped with the number in your head. People who see numbers as colors or smells do this instinctively, but it is possible to create these associations on purpose.
Games: Any game that requires math will help. A good one I got recently is Muggins, which is quite fun.
If your kid loves computer games, find games like Timez Attack and let them play.

The main thing to remember about memorization is that the harder you force, the harder the brain fights back. Kids’ brains learn best through play — when it becomes work, it’s time to take a break. Sometimes that break can stretch out for a long time…much longer than the school standards might want to admit. But if the eventual goal is a happy, well-educated child, the standards just sometimes have to wait.

Posted in Education, Homeschooling.

5 comments

By Suki – February 5, 2012

Here goes another cliché

Another cliché I’ve heard about parenting is how parents of kids with special needs talk about how brave and inspiring their kids are. It sounds like something people say just to make themselves feel better about how difficult their lives are. Then it happens to you.

My daughter declared yesterday that she must sign up for softball. She had said this before, and I had looked into it, then I hid the flyer someplace in my desk. But she said it again, with that determined face that said this was not something I could hope she’d forget. (Lots of parents say things like, “Oh, just ignore it. Your kid will forget about it.” They don’t have my kid!) So bright and early this morning, we were off to softball try-outs.

I have written about how my daughter loves soccer. But really, she loves all team sports. Not watching them on TV. Not watching other people playing them. She loves them for two reasons: Learning something new, and getting a uniform. Practices, as long as they include learning something new, are fine with her. Games? Well, as far as she’s concerned, games exist so you can get a uniform. She doesn’t seem to have any great competitive streak, just a hunger to learn to play all games and to collect as many uniforms and t-shirts as possible. In fact, she said the other day, she could dress only in Santa Cruz Soccer Camp t-shirts at this point. She was pretty proud of that.

The thing is, she’s never actually played softball. Since I attempted to forget about her interest in softball — though she’s been asking since last spring — we don’t own a softball. We own a glove because she saw one at the DLC Flea Market and begged to buy it. She didn’t even care that it’s pink! Have I mentioned that I abhor games that involve balls? When I was a child, my eyesight was very poor. When a ball was coming at me, it would split into two balls and I’d have to do eeny-meeny-miney-mo on it. I always lost.

But this is where the bravery and inspiration comes in: We get to the try-outs and she reveals that in spite of my reminders to bring “everything for softball and your riding lesson,” the glove was sitting on the bench in the front hall. Furthermore, all the other girls are out there warming up with their dads, and she’s got no glove, no ball, and her mom’s tendons scream every time a ball actually hits her glove (accidentally, of course).

But happily, she lines up with the other girls and waits her turn to show her stuff on a softball diamond (never set foot on one before). She is instructed that she’ll first catch a ground ball (she learned what that is from a Youtube video yesterday), then throw the ball to first base (that’s the one where all the people are waving their arms and saying, Good Catch! Throw it to me now!), then after three balls, run to first base.

Good thing we didn’t arrive any earlier, or she would have had to go first.

But the fact is, she did just fine. She watched about five girls ahead of her, girls who had clearly been playing softball since they were in the womb, and she was not discouraged. She marched out there with her borrowed glove and she got those ground balls just fine. She threw them so that…. eventually… they got to first base, and then she trotted off herself.

I know myself: When I’m going someplace I’ve never been before, to do something new with people I’ve never met before, and those people are most likely much more accomplished than I am, I get nervous. In fact, I try to find many reasons why I can’t go. Really, it’s not that I know that I’ll fail, but, uh, I really did need to, uh, refinish the floors that day.

Or something like that.

But my brave girl doesn’t think like that. Everything she does out in the world is a challenge. Each time she walks into a new room, people figure out really fast that she’s different, and their reactions have not always been positive. Adults usually try to cover up their dismay, but it shows. Other kids have said really nasty things right to her face. But she plows on and does what she wants to do.

I was sitting next to a dad and his small son. When my daughter stepped up, the boy said to his dad, “That’s a boy!”

“No,” I said, “That’s my daughter. She hates brushing long hair. She has never played softball before. But she’s here, and she’s doing it.”

So much for another cliché. She was brave, and she inspired me. What a gal!

Posted in Avant Parenting.

3 comments

By Suki – January 29, 2012

Just about 1/4 mile

My older child has been working on his science fair project. He’s highly motivated this year, having noticed last year how the stakes were raised: they expect more, but they give more. And he’s a computer-obsessed kid who is saving for a new computer. So he’s got this idea that his science fair entry could win him some money to put toward this purpose, and he’s been working on it as much as we have let him.

Since my husband and I both work with computers, we know a thing or two about it. And one thing we know, that we’ve been trying to impart to our kids, is that sometimes the best way to solve a problem you’re having at the computer is… NOT at the computer.

This may be true in general: When you stand at a locked door literally banging your head against the wall to get in, it’s very easy to ignore the open door around the corner.

The thing is, computers have this way of sucking us in. We become hyper-focused, not noticing anything in our surroundings, answering “mm-hm” to pretty much anything someone asks us. (My kids take advantage of this last feature relatively often, knowing that they might get a distracted “mm-hm” to pretty much any question if they ask it when I’m very busy!)

So even though it’s true of any problem that sometimes the best way to solve it is to walk away from it, I think it’s even more true of sedentary, hyperfocused work like computer programming.

That’s one reason I treasure my solitary morning walk: I often “write” more while out on a walk than in front of a computer.

In fact, I composed most of this piece while walking on Sunday morning. In that case, however, it wasn’t my solitary walk. I had convinced my very reluctant boy to tear his focus from the computer screen and ride his bike on my walk.

He was very reluctant. “I’m in the middle of trying to figure out a really hard problem,” he told me. “This isn’t a good time to go for a walk.”

“This is a perfect time to go for a walk,” I assured him. After some cajoling (and perhaps some not-so-veiled threats), I got him out the door. He got on his bike and rode out ahead of me as I walked. He zoomed down the road, then turned and came back to me.

As he approached, I saw the smile on his face.

“I think I figured out my problem!” he said.

We were about 1/4 mile from our house.

Sometimes that’s all it takes. You walk away from the problem, putter in the garden, or take a nap. And then suddenly, the problem that seemed unsolvable only a short time before presents itself fully formed in your mind.

We got back from our walk and I said, “OK, go solve your problem!”

He bounded up the stairs with a smile on his face, some fresh air in his lungs, and freshly stimulated neurons ready to go to work again.

Posted in Education, Psychology.

3 comments

By Suki – January 23, 2012

A passionate plea for more mud pies

You’d think that hanging out with homeschoolers, as I do, would insulate me from people who feel the need to do academics with kindergarteners. However, amongst new homeschoolers you hear this common refrain: I really don’t know how to homeschool, so I just want to find a curriculum in a box I can do with my five-year-old. The people saying this mean well—they really think that a curriculum-in-a-box will be better for their children than just hanging out with mom and doing whatever lame stuff she comes up with. But those parents have fallen into the same trap as the administrators of our public education system. They think this is some kind of race, and they’ll be hurting their children if they don’t get them on the track and running as soon as possible.

I should have read it long ago, but I recently read what should be required reading for new homeschoolers, Tammy Takahashi’s Deschooling Gently. Takahashi’s book is considered a classic amongst homeschoolers, who see the process of “deschooling” a child who has attended school before homeschooling as key to homeschooling success. However, I found that the book had a lot more to say to me as an adult: How many of my ideas are residual bits of misinformation planted by my many years in school? All of us have this stuff stuck in there, even if we’ve consciously denied its validity.

Our feelings about “academic” education, in particular, are strong. Many of us inherently believe that “earlier is better” and that there’s something wrong with letting a child play if he can’t read yet. We haven’t turned out in mass protests as our public schools are pushing academics earlier into the curriculum, forcing out such kindergarten staples as finger painting, story telling, and free play on the playground.

The thing is, every single educator worth listening to has read the data and knows this simple fact: The most educated people in the world are not necessarily the people who had academics shoved at them at an early age. Forcing academics earlier into the American public schools is not going to slow the decline of our kids’ education. In fact, it might hurry it up.

Finland is an oft-cited example. There, they don’t even start teaching reading till around the age of 7, and academics, such as they are, are hands-on and cooperative until the higher grades. No tests, no grades, just fun. How can that be?

Well, I can give you plenty of examples closer to home: Millions of successful adults in America. If you went to public school in the 70′s, it is very unlikely you did any sort of academics in kindergarten. Sure, you probably sang the alphabet song and learned to write your name, but you spent as much time learning how to tie shoes and, yes, doing finger painting as anything academic. Those Americans who were educated in the 60′s and 70′s are no sorry bunch. You’ll find them at every successful technology company, in every important medical lab, in government buildings making decisions about our national safety, and making fabulous art, music, and literature.

Keep in mind, these people did not do academics in kindergarten. They didn’t get recess canceled because they couldn’t read. Their schools didn’t get denied funds or have every teacher replaced by a stranger because of their parents’ socio-economic status. And yet, here they are, leading the fastest technological and scientific change ever before seen by humankind.

There are better ways to educate than to force five-year-olds to study. I say, Let them make mud pies! Let them develop their minds at the same time as their hands, their bodies, their hearts, and their souls. There will be plenty of time for them to sit in front of a computer. But as we adults know, there’s limited time later in life to contemplate the wonderful feeling of mud between your fingers.

Posted in Culture Critic, Education, Homeschooling.

4 comments

By Suki – January 15, 2012

OT Graduate

My daughter just went through one of those little milestones that mean a lot to parents with a quirky kid: She has officially “graduated” from Occupational Therapy.

Before I had kids, I went for adult occupational therapy for a wrist injury. But I remember the first time I heard someone refer to the sort of OT my daughter received. It was a teacher in her preschool, who told me, “Some people recommend occupational therapy for kids like her, but I can’t really tell you what they do.”

That seems to be the point of view of lots of people: I’ve heard of OT, but I’m not sure what the point is.

At its core, pediatric OT is just like adult OT. Because of an injury or birth defect, children need to learn to do things they need to do in their lives. For adults, OT sometimes results from an on-the-job injury, so the “occupation” part of it makes sense. For kids, just consider eating, playing, and socializing their “occupation” and OT plays a similar role. So a classic case for OT would be a child who needs to be taught (or re-taught after an injury) how to feed herself.

The sort of OT my daughter had, however, goes a bit further afield. It starts with an evaluation. The therapist asks the child to do all sorts of things that kids normally do: Playing activities such as balancing on a beam or catching a ball, learning activities like tracing a picture and writing words, and social interaction activities like asking an excited child to suddenly be quiet as a mouse.

Neurotypical children have no problem with these tasks, and though of course all children vary in their skills, the typical mastery of these skills has been charted so that the therapist can see how far off the curve a particular child is. Some kids are just going to be generally behind the curve, and this may not be cause for worry if their development is otherwise normal. Some kids, such as a classic child with autism, will be further behind. Other kids are on the curve or accelerated in some ways, while at the same time wildly behind in others. That’s more like my daughter.

I’ve written before about how frustrating it can be to have a child who is clearly different, but not diagnosable. Depending on who we’d ask, we could come up with an alphabet soup of diagnoses, none of them fitting her any better than the next. The great thing about OT is that although they have to give a diagnosis for insurance purposes, the OTs we worked with over the years never focused on a diagnosis and thus an expected cluster of problems. They always looked directly at the child in front of them.

I loved the guidance I got from our OTs. My daughter had some autistic-like characteristics — toe-walking, lack of understanding of social cues, out-of-proportion emotional responses — but they never just gave her some “autism package” of treatments. When she was a preschooler, I got the great advice that helped us work on some of her more difficult physical behaviors. Our first OT gave me this memorable advice: “If this kid had been born 200 years ago, she’d have been up at the crack of dawn hauling water from the well as soon as she could carry the bucket. Kids need hard, meaningful work.”

Another OT helped me understand her need for tactile stimulation, and we brainstormed ways that she could get what she needed without a) destroying our house, and b) further damaging my fragile back.

As she aged, we got a new OT who started to help her with her fine motor skills such as handwriting and typing, which were keeping her from being able to do the things that she was intellectually ready to do.

My daughter still has stuff to work on. Her most recent OT would love to get her in a group situation where she has to control her responses and practice social cues, but luckily, life provides a fair amount of those. Her handwriting still doesn’t match her academic skills, but that’s what keyboards are for! (And hopefully it will continue to improve as she grows.) But in general, she’s showing positive change in all the areas we were so concerned about.

This sort of graduation is a strange thing. There’s no one event that announces its arrival. Just one day her OT and I realize, pretty much simultaneously, that she’s ready to move on.

Today she asked, “When do I go to OT next?” and I reminded her that she’d graduated.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I wish I could go back and do the zip line.”

And see her wonderful OT, Melissa, who sent her off with a hug and the promise that she’ll be there if we need her again.

Posted in Avant Parenting, Psychology.

3 comments

By Suki – January 4, 2012

That organizing energy

Like all couples, my husband and I share stories about experiences we have shared, and we have whittled many of them down to a few words. Now that we have kids, the kids also get to take part in this… sometimes. We also have shorthand ways of talking about our experiences with our kids. (Once I’m sure it will have no weight anymore, I will explain one mysterious acronym our kids occasionally still hear: “DPT!”)

One of our oldest comes from when I first moved to Santa Cruz to be closer to my husband. The “love commute,” as we called it, was wearing us down. I was finally fulfilling my dream of living in San Francisco, but there was no way my husband was leaving Santa Cruz. So I moved south. I didn’t know anyone here, and since my husband worked OTH (over the hill) in Silicon Valley, he only had a few friends here, as well. Soon after I moved here, he found out that someone he had worked with was living here with his wife, and we arranged to go on a little adventure together. Upon arriving at the Capitola Wharf, where our adventure started, his wife looked at us and asked, “So who is the Organizing Energy in your family?”

She said it with those capital letters. We thought it was very funny, very California (as two transplants), and rather New Age-y. It was all of those, but it also got to an essential truth: Some of us have Organizing Energy. We can use our powers for good, but there is also a Dark Side.

As you have probably guessed, I am the Organizing Energy in our family. It’s really best not to have two OEs in one family, at least, not two adults. You can’t choose what kind of kids you’ll get, but from my point of view, you can always hope you’ll get a little OE there as well.

This winter break I am allowing my children free rein on the computers while I indulge my OE: So far I have reorganized our homeschooling supplies (oh, so satisfying to Get Rid Of) and prepared two of our garden beds. I also made more headway on transferring all my recipes to the wonderful Evernote. I am hoping to get to the bookshelves, and perhaps even to the CDs we don’t listen to because they’re all on our music server.

Now, I know that some of you are envious, because you tell me so. Moms with wistful looks on their faces tell me that they have been aching to get at that closet or that play room. Moms are amazed that I can find time to organize when there’s so much else to be done! But here’s the Dark Side of OE: sometimes it keeps you from doing what you really want to be doing. It can also, though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, drive your children insane.

The Dark Side is what happens when I walk in the door, having dropped a kid off somewhere, with some set time in which to do something meaningful. Each child gets one morning a week of solo homeschooling, when I am supposed to be focusing just on that child. And occasionally (though less and less often), I get time when I’m at home all by myself.

I walk in that door, all ready to get started on the meaningful work I have chosen. I will have a mental list of all that needs to be accomplished, and then it’s all dashed from my mind when I open the door and my OE is assaulted by the scene within our living room. Days’ worth of mail piled on a table. Shoes strewn across the floor. My daughters’ dress up clothes, dropped as she shed them while walking toward the car. That stack of books I meant to look through. All the magazines I had piled next to me the last time I got a chance to sit on the couch and read magazines. The breakfast dishes, some still on the table.

The Dark Side of my OE starts to talk to me: You can’t really plan to homeschool your child in this mess, can you? How will you ever know what’s worth reading if you don’t go through those magazines? Perhaps there’s something important in that stack of mail. If you don’t do the breakfast dishes now, they’ll pile up at lunch, and then how will you ever get dinner on the table?

Then my OE talks through me to my child. Couldja do a little better at clearing your breakfast dishes next time? Did you really have to strew tiny clippings from plastic drinking straws all over the house? When I asked you to put away your laundry, did you really think I meant put it away on the floor of your room?

My kids are used to this. They weather it somewhat like we took in tornadoes when I was a kid: Oh, here it comes again. I think the basement should be safe.

And I get over it. I am like an alcoholic who has gotten past the stage of acknowledging her disease. I’m at the stage where I watch myself driving myself crazy by trying to get my life organized and think, Wow, I really should be doing something more meaningful with my time. Eventually, I do enough to soothe my OE into submission, my kids come crawling out from under the house, and we can get on with the messy business of life.

I have only one regret: No matter how I patiently teach them (“Isn’t it so much nicer to be able to access all your toys rather than have piles of them to sort through?”), badger them (“Please please please when I come upstairs let me not see that mess I asked you to clean up three hours ago”), and bribe them (“Will you keep that table cleared off if I PAY you?”), my kids seem to have inherited not one scrap of OE. Organization, for them, remains that thing they find most annoying about their mom. Someday, I’m guessing, they’ll have to go off and find a spouse to bring some OE into their lives.

If they don’t, I just can’t imagine what will become of them. My OE shudders at the thought that they will never, ever wake up and know that today—no matter whether they planned to find the cure for cancer or be the first human to step on Mar— is the day they really need to clean out the linen closet. And what kind of life would that be?

PS: My Santa Cruz friends should consider doing a little indulging of their organizing energy for a good cause. The Discovery Learning Center is having a big Flea Market as a benefit, and we’re looking for donations of your gently used toys, books, sports equipment, or other items you think other families would love to own. Visit the DLC to find out days when you can drop off stuff for our sale. And visit our sale on January 21!

Posted in Avant Parenting, Santa Cruz.

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By Suki – December 30, 2011

Kool Kale

I’ve been somewhat into kale for a while, but two new recipes got me crazy for this wonderful vege. Before, I thought it had to be cooked for a long time. And if you’re cooking it in watery substances, it does. However, kale can be prepared with a variety of methods to very different effects.

Kale is excellent in almost every way. High in vitamin A and C, calcium, and lots of other good stuff. It is easily grown. In fact, it’s a weed, so when I see it priced like it’s some sort of boutique vege, it makes me mad. I challenge you not to be able to grow kale. I can do it in my redwood-shaded yard, so I bet you can, too.*

Personally, I think lacinato kale, which you seldom see for sale, is the best. But I’m happy with pretty much any kind, and these recipes are successful with whatever you’ve got on hand.

Kale chips

The first time I had kale chips, I paid an exorbitant price for a small bag in a health food store. Then my sister brought some she’d made, and I went crazy for them. They are easy, they are cheap, and if your kids are like my kids, they’ll love them, too.

Take a bunch of kale and rip the leaves off the stems. Discard the stems. Wash the leaves then spin them in a salad spinner or put them out to dry. They should be pretty dry before you proceed. Rip them into mouth-sized chunks (they will shrink a bit, but if you leave the chunks too big, they will get crumbs all over the place when you bite them). Put them into a bowl and dribble a little bit of olive oil on them. (Not very much at all.) Toss the leaves so the oil is distributed, then arrange them in a single layer on a cookie sheet. It helps to use parchment, but it’s not necessary. Sprinkle them with sea salt. Put them into a 300-degree oven, on convection if you have it. They will take about 15 minutes to dry out. You may need to turn them or spread them part of the way through. If the leaves are at all limp when you take them out, put them back in. They must be really dry or they’ll get soggy very quickly.

There are lots of variations possible: Make them Asian-style with sesame oil and tamari. Make them Italian with some herbs and parmesan. Get more creative if you’d like. I find that I never get around to the creativity because they’re so darn good with plain old olive oil and sea salt.**

Bruised Kale Salad

You don’t have to cook kale to get that deep color and nicer texture. Take kale leaves, sprinkle them with sea salt, and pound them with some garlic till they get a brighter green color. This breaks down the cell walls, similar to cooking, but leaves all the nutrients. Put them in a bowl with some sort of acid and accompanying ingredients. Here are some good combinations:

balsamic vinegar
olive oil
parmesan
black pepper

rice vinegar
sesame oil
soy sauce

Here are my sister’s more adventurous combinations. Again, the simple version is so good I haven’t gotten around to doing anything this complicated:

rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds, edamame, arame (soak for 15 minutes before adding)

balsamic vinegar, red onion, olives, leftover chicken w/garlic or chick peas, feta cheese, leftover polenta or brown rice

lemon, red onion, leftover salmon, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, goat cheese

Beans ‘n’ greens

This is actually a cooked recipe, but it’s a big favorite in our house so I’m adding it. Cut kale (or chard) into strips. Saute garlic in olive oil just a bit until it releases its scent. Add the kale and sea salt and saute until limp. If you want the kale significantly more cooked than it is now, add a small amount of water or white wine, cover, and cook until almost done. Then add cannelini beans and cook until they start to break apart, about 5 minutes. Pepper vigorously and serve. Great with pasta.

Notes:

*Years ago, I read an article about the urban gardening movement that pointed out a huge problem that most people don’t know about. If you’re starting a new garden in an urban environment, or anywhere near a road, you should either remove the dirt and truck in “clean” garden dirt, or you should grow a couple of crops of dark-leafy greens and throw them away. That’s right, don’t compost like the good earth-person you are. Dark, leafy greens are fabulous at leaching heavy metals out of soil. If you’re in an urban environment, your soil is full of bad stuff. So don’t eat or compost your first couple of crops. Put them in the garbage!

**About sea salt: My dad the chemist tried to tell me that it’s just plain ole NaCl, no matter where it comes from. I agree, but there’s something different about sea salt. It has a brighter taste, and you need less of it to liven up your food. Try it, I dare you.

Posted in Avant Parenting, Health.

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By Suki – December 15, 2011

This neighborhood’s going to the dogs!

Out for my walk this morning, I decided to take a longer route, as I often do on Sundays. I started down a stretch of road that I don’t walk every day, and within thirty seconds, I saw the problem: two large dogs sniffing at the side of the road, apparently unaccompanied. I slowed and watched them, waiting to see if anyone was with them. They were alone, no human to be seen.

Then they saw me.

Here’s what I imagine was going on in the dog brain: Out here with my buddy, sniffing the road. Hey, is that Fido who came by here on his walk? Darn, I woulda liked to bark at him. Mm, squirrel. Where is it? I want to chase it. Out here with my buddy, alpha-dog inside in bed. Ooh, yeah, I smell that Flora came by this morning. Man, I’d love to get together with her when her alpha-dog didn’t have her by the leash. Wait: What’s that coming down the road? Someone else’s alpha-dog? Hey, Buddy, Look!

My family has had dogs—big dogs—all my life. So I get dogs, and I’m not unusually sensitive about them. The thing is, I also grew up in the Midwest where few people fenced or leashed their dogs, and I was a long-distance runner. So I know a lot about dogs whose alpha-dog/master isn’t around, and what they think of humans moving fast toward them. They think: Alpha-dog is inside in bed. I am now guardian of our property. I must defend against this fast-moving intruder!

Of course, as soon as the dog noticed me coming toward him at a fast pace, he started to growl. His growl attracted his buddy, who stood next to him and barked madly. Again I slowed to see if a human would come, but none did.

In my Midwestern running years, I carried mace. It was technically illegal in my state, but there was a loophole that allowed it to be shipped in front out-of-state. I found an ad in the back of Runner’s World Magazine. My parents thought it was a fine idea for me to carry it. Here in California, I am seldom threatened. The last serious time was when I was pregnant with my son. A dog (different dog) on this same stretch of road barked at me. It was a German Shepherd, but didn’t seem like it was too serious, so I walked on by. I misjudged. He rushed at me and caught the back of my shorts in his teeth. I screamed, a neighbor who was out in his yard yelled, and the dog retreated. No harm done, but that particular stretch of road does seem to be spooked with bad dog karma.

The growling dog looked like a Chow mix. I didn’t like the look of him. The ruckus they were making attracted all the other (fenced in) dogs in the neighborhood, and a mad barking started up. Not a single human looked out to see what was happening. I decided that this was not my battle to fight, and turned back to go the other way. The two dogs followed me at a distance, then lost interest as I left their territory.

Now, I know what some intense dog lovers are going to say: Those were perfectly nice dogs. They’d never bitten anyone. You were in no danger. The thing is, those intense dog lovers are fooling themselves. Dogs follow their instincts and their training. If you own a big dog, you know that it’s your job to become that dog’s alpha-dog, so that it responds to your commands. But when you’re not there? It’s not going to be the same dog, because it depends on your presence to follow those behavior patterns you’ve set up. A dog on the loose can always be a danger, especially to a fast-moving human coming into its territory.

Despite being raised around big dogs, my son went through a period of intense fear of dogs, as many young children do. I couldn’t count the number of times that an unleashed or long-leashed dog rushed him and the owner called out, “Don’t worry! He’s friendly!” The thing is, my kid was crying, screaming, and flailing his arms, not normal behavior for a child, as far as the dog knows. I worked with him each time we went for a walk, reminding him that when a dog rushed at us he should go completely still and quiet and he would be safer. But until my training kicked in and his fears were soothed, he was a danger to himself and to the dog, and any responsible owner should have seen that.

Some ago I wrote this article about the problem with kids and dogs in parks in Santa Cruz. All the parents I spoke to were reasonable. None of the pro-dog people returned my calls, so I can’t speak for how reasonable they are. But the fact is this: if you choose to bring an animal into your home, you choose to be responsible. And one responsibility you choose is to keep that animal from harming others or getting harmed because others fear its behavior.

No, I’ll never know whether that chow’s growl was serious. But if I’d had that can of mace in my hand, as I always did as a teen, I would have been willing to use it. So much easier, it seems, to keep your gate closed and your dogs off the street.

Posted in Culture Critic, Santa Cruz.

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By Suki – December 11, 2011