Every day is Halloween

Last night we went to a Halloween party a friend’s house. My husband’s work is nearer to their house than ours, so he decided to ride his bike straight there, and thus ended up arriving before us. When I walked in, it would be an understatement to say that he was shocked. I’ve never been big on dressing up for Halloween. But for some reason I decided to go [almost] all out. (I didn’t get around to doing my fingernails.)

But the costume was the reason everyone else was surprised. They didn’t get why my husband was surprised because no one at the party has known me more than a few years. These days I affect a “harried California mom” look — jeans, t-shirt. Lately I’ve been attempting to wear more interesting clothing, but the years of spit-up and playing in the mud pretty much did in any attempt to be as interested in fashion as I used to be.

When I met my husband, however, in 1986 (boy, that was a long time ago!), I was in quite another state. I was what is now called a “goth.” At that time there was no general acknowledgment of the style — those in the know called us “deathrockers.” I had weird haircuts; I wore black, some of my clothing was very old-fashioned, some very modern. In fact, what I wore last night was vintage 80’s.

Halloween witchSo when I appeared at the party like this, everyone was a bit surprised at the change from “harried California mom” to witch, but my husband was recognizing a ghost from the past. OK, for sure I didn’t usually put green eyeshadow around my eyes in the daytime, and I generally wore my hair flat rather than teased, but otherwise that’s pretty close to the state he found me in when I got my first job out of college at a computer company in Palo Alto.

It’s interesting to really shock one’s husband, especially in a good way. And I got to do it to my kids, too, before the party, when I called them in one by one, saying “Can you come in and help me?” and they came in to find me like this. My daughter, who adores dress-up, was highly amused, and wondered if I could tease her hair too. (Not really.) My son looked shocked and amazed and a little frightened (a bit like his dad).

So today is the real Halloween, and I don’t feel the least bit inspired to do it again. It was fun to revisit my past, and maybe I’ll do it again someday. The one regret I have is that my Mrs. Peel boots are too small. Bigger feet is another thing my kids did to me, along with spit-up, muddy clothing, and the lack of time to care about whether my clothing is reflecting my true inner feelings.

And besides, my true inner feelings have changed. As a young adult, I felt it necessary to show how alienated I was from the world. Now I’m alternately amused, saddened, shocked, and in love with the world. I’d need too many changes of costume! So tonight I’ll probably go as I usually do each year, as a “harried California mom.”

Besides, who’s left to shock?

Understanding how scientists make decisions about your child's health

There’s been a theme running through conversations I’ve had lately. I and some of my more scientific friends have been noticing a general lack of understanding about how science works and what makes the scientific method worth considering.

First, a caveat. We all know that doctors have been wrong. So giving examples of when a medical approach turned out to be wrong doesn’t actually cancel out any of the information below. In fact, it confirms it. Science can handle mistakes — magic can’t.

So here’s the scientific method in a nutshell: Scientists noticed that if they could get a large sample of a phenomenon (let’s use human disease in this case), they could make general predictions for everyone based on that sample. So for example, all the knowledge we have about the basic vitamins in our diet came from observations like the ones we (hopefully) learned about in elementary school: Chinese sailors getting rickets, children getting vitamin D deficiency in wintertime. [Read more about the scientific method here.]

The scientific method says this: You make a hypothesis (a guess) based on your observations. You test that hypothesis in a double-blind test, where the people involved don’t know whether they’re getting the real treatment or a placebo (for example, a sugar pill instead of a medication). Then you look at the results. Did the people in the control group react in the same way as the people being given the real medicine? If so, the “real” medicine is a failure. If not, it’s a success. A good scientist is perfectly happy to prove that her guess was wrong.

So here’s a real-life example: American communities used to be devastated by polio. Children and adults died or were maimed for life. Then Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio. It was tested on a group of people, who were then compared to a group that didn’t get it. Amazingly different results: the vaccine worked. Soon practically everyone in this country was being vaccinated against polio, and now we live in a time when no one who now has small children remembers the devastating effects of polio on their community.

Until 1999, the polio vaccine was “live” and thus caused some polio symptoms in a small amount of children (many fewer than were affected before the vaccine). Since then, all polio vaccines are dead and there have been NO cases of vaccine-induced polio in children in the United States. (Polio, however, does still exist in the world, and the amount of unvaccinated children in our community makes it possible that it will return here.)

So how does this relate to the great interest people have had lately in alternative medicine? The thing you need to remember is that science does not negate community wisdom, but it can test community wisdom, which is very important.

So a good example is St. John’s Wort, an old remedy for depression. It has been tested and retested. The studies don’t all agree. So should we ignore them and assume they’re wrong? No — this is just a good example of the scientific method in action. Some studies have shown moderate benefits from St. John’s Wort, many have shown no benefit, and just a handful make it seem as effective as modern anti-depressants. So it’s clear that scientists need to keep working on this to be more definitive. But on a personal level, it means that you might want to try St. John’s Wort and see if it works for you. And if it doesn’t, there are other medications available.

Community wisdom was not able to test this age-old remedy. Science is in the process of doing so.

We have a number of medical doctors in our community who also work with “alternative” medicine — a better term is integrative medicine because it can be a good partner to Western medical techniques. I wrote an article about Lucy Hu of 7 Branches. She is a Western medical-trained doctor who works as an acupuncturist. Rachel Abrams is an MD who started a clinic that incorporates various types of medicine. These people understand that an integrated approach is better for everyone.

Finally, I wanted to address the question of group vs. individual decisions. The scientific method is what’s used by our public health officials to make decisions like the recent one to try to get all children vaccinated against this year’s H1N1. (Read H1N1 information here.) Their decisions are based on which alternative makes the most sense over a large population. Sometimes those decisions seem wrong on a personal level, but that doesn’t change the fact that the decision was made with the larger population in mind.

All the recent studies done lately to analyze whether early childhood vaccinations caused autism are pretty clearly negative. Over large groups of kids, there is no evidence that vaccines caused problems. But that does not actually refer to any one situation. It is completely consistent with that result that one child’s autism could, in fact, have been triggered by vaccines. What the research says is for the larger group: It’s still safer for your child’s longterm health to get vaccinations. Saying that no child should get vaccinations because one child was hurt by them is like saying that no child should walk to school because one child was hit by a car while walking to school. It makes no sense, and if you made all your decisions that way, you might end up living in a padded cell.

I read a really great piece in the New Yorker about fear of vaccines and its roots in a swine flu scare in the 70’s. Definitely worth reading (if it’s still available when you read this). The writer says that some parents have been having “swine flu parties” like some do for chicken pox (another disease that can be debilitating or fatal).

The facts are out there if you want to know them. If you don’t, then you’re making your choice and you will live with the consequences, as we always say to our kids! And it’s very possible that there won’t be any consequences. The scientific method tells us that.

No matter what you choose on an emotional and personal level, the scientific method will be there to test whether it’s a logical decision for large numbers of people.

How to kill a great book

Last year for his birthday, a friend gave my son a movie theater gift card. My son’s school has kids from this side of the hill and the other side, two different counties with two different area codes.

It was a great gift. Unfortunately, we don’t have that chain in our county. So it sat there and bothered me for months. I hate loose ends! Finally my sister (who lives in the East Bay) and I cooked up a plan for us to meet halfway and use our gift cards.

That is how we ended up at Where the Wild Things Are in a very uncomfortable IMAX theater in Santa Clara.

When our son was a baby, we decided that we’d raise our kids without TV. The seminal moment was on a Thursday night. Back in 1999, Thursday night on NBC was a must-see for us. So as usual, we sat down in front of the TV to watch. Usually a dedicated nurser, our son kept popping off and looking at the screen. He wasn’t even a year old yet, and TV was so distracting he couldn’t eat.

We turned it off.

Then I did what I always do when I want to know something: research. I found out that when kids are watching TV (no matter what kind of TV it is), their brains basically turn off. I found out that preschool teachers can tell which kids aren’t being raised with TV just by the quality of their play. I read about girls being pressured to conform to feminine stereotypes younger and younger, largely because of TV. Obesity, low grades, hyperactivity, you name it.

If you want to read some of the research, take a look at an article I wrote a couple of years ago for Growing Up in Santa Cruz.

In any case, that choice fundamentally changed our family, and we are notably different than most American families because of it. Throughout our children’s preschool years, videos were a very occasional phenomenon in our house. When I started homeschooling my daughter, we did add in a bit more. She is a high energy person, and both she and I need the break during a busy day. But we know what it is: it’s not learning, it’s anesthesia. We’re very clear about that, just as we are about junk food, which we call entertainment, not food.

Though we allow videos now, we’re still very selective. As little violence as possible, no commercial tie-ins when possible (it’s hard enough to go to the store without my child whining for the latest Dora toothpaste!), no Disney because Daddy hates them so much. OK, a bit of Disney: old Disney like the Shaggy Dog, Pixar movies because our son loves the animation.

And generally, we avoid watching remakes of really great books. Really, I’m never sure if there’s any point to that, past easy marketing. A great book seldom makes a great movie. Sometimes we get a movie based on a book and talk about the difference. Our son is working through the Harry Potter movies slowly. He acknowledges that the book is always better. He has never developed a taste for video violence so he can’t watch them before bed.

With all those caveats you know I’m not the right person to write a review of Where the Wild Things Are if you happen to be someone who loves TV and video. But review I will:

It’s really OK. There was no level of violence that I found particularly aggregious, and they did a great job with the massive, shaggy costumes that they put real actors into. It was sort of like Nightmare on Sesame Street, to tell you the truth.

My problem with it wasn’t what I thought it would be. It was simply this: They tried to explain a great book, and when you explain a mystery, you kill it. Did we really need to know why Max got sent to his room? We could all picture it (I could, even though I was a generally docile child). Did we have to know that his mom and dad were divorced, mom had job troubles, mom had a new boyfriend, sister was mean to brother?

I really don’t think we needed any of that backstory, because when we read that book as a child, we know the backstory, and the backstory is ours. My parents were not divorced, and when we had money troubles, the kids didn’t really know about it. But we still got sent to our room. We still imagined our revenge, our escape. I understood Max. I didn’t imagine my room growing trees — I imagined living in our house turned upside-down and walking on the ceiling. But that never made any difference to the book.

If you go to this movie, your children might be transfixed, like my daughter, on the edge of their seats, eyes shining with excitement. Or your children might be somewhat bored, like my son, who waited patiently through all the backstory, and then once the Wild Things came onto the screen, we knew where it was going to go, and he didn’t really care about the Wild Things’ own highly detailed backstory, which I haven’t even described.

In the end, like so many short stories puffed into feature film size, the movie would have been improved with lots more curled-up, digital bits on the e-floor of the computer.

I’m not saying, don’t go, but then again, I will say don’t go to one group of people: If you loved Wild Things for those few pages where Max’s room transforms into a forest, and if your childish mind’s eye could see those trees and hear them creaking as they grew, don’t see this movie.

The only thing they cut is the one thing they should have kept: the power of a child’s mind to transform his world and thus transform himself. Instead, they gave Max the learned helplessness of a world that is out of control, and he is lost in it, waiting to be saved.

Gifted misunderstandings

A friend forwarded me a link to this article. I think she thought that I wasn’t busy enough this weekend, and that instead of cleaning the toilets and vacuuming (which is what I’m supposed to be doing right now), I should write a passioned response to yet another blogger who doesn’t get it!

She was right. I would much rather write about education than clean toilets…

The article is about how “gifted” children really aren’t any different than other children and shouldn’t be given special educational opportunities. The writer compares giftedness with getting teeth early, and says that just as it’s ridiculous to give special dental care to a child who got his teeth early, it’s ridiculous to give special educational attention to kids who read early.

I heartily agree with that. But the problem is, reading early is not equivalent to what “gifted” really means. And the problem starts with that word, which I like to refer to as “the G-word.”

Parents of “gifted” children talk often about how that word doesn’t work. It implies that other children are “not gifted,” which is misleading. Public schools have also missed the boat on what “gifted” means, and they are more and more often missing the boat for all other kids, too.

A better term for the kids referred to as gifted is “neuro-nontypical.” They learn differently than other kids. They are often awful students. They have a higher drop-out rate than neuro-typical students. They do not cease being neuro-nontypical in fifth grade — if they do, then the assessment of the child was not done correctly.

What characterizes a neuro-nontypical kid is not reading early or doing math early: it’s how they think and learn. Even the ones who do well in school are often miserable, because our standard way of teaching goes about it all wrong for neuro-nontypical kids. Lots of neuro-nontypical kids seem delayed like Einstein did. Those kids seldom get picked up by public school gifted programs.

I completely agree that each child should have her own “IEP.” Unfortunately, that’s just not possible over a huge population. Some small private schools and special public school programs can do that. All homeschoolers (many of whom are homeschooling because their kids are neuro-nontypical) do it by default.

If you want to learn more about what “gifted” is and why these kids need a different educational approach, I suggest Serving the Emotional Needs of the Gifted as a great resource. Being a neuro-nontypical kid is hard! And if you have a neuro-nontypical kid and need help educating her, The Gifted Homeschoolers Forum is a great place to start.

Also, remember that saying that we should deny an appropriate education for one group because you don’t think another group is getting one is much like one oppressed minority group saying help shouldn’t be given to another minority group.

All kids do need and deserve an appropriate, loving education in which their weaknesses are addressed and their strengths are supported. Parents who are obsessed with their kids’ early reading or math skills are definitely doing a disservice to their child. But parents who try to change the school system so that it better serves their children are doing what ALL parents should do.

It’s the parents who don’t watch out for their kids’ needs who allow our public schools to slide further into mediocrity.

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