Dangerous season for quirky kids

It’s that time of year again: School has started up. Families are getting busy doing whatever they do. And the holidays are marching toward us.

It’s an especially hard time of year for those who have children with special needs. First of all, we’re dealing with our kids’ education. Some of us are fighting for services. Others are fighting to get our kids out of special classes. Many of us are breaking in new teachers. All of us are dealing with the daily grind of having a kid who doesn’t fit in.

During the summer, it looks like a long time between the start of the school year and the pile of holidays that are coming, but suddenly it’s not even October and the stores are full of Halloween. Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

When you’re a parent with an unusual kid, it’s hard ever to be prepared for the stuff that keeps coming at you these few months. Holidays bring their own special kind of stress.

I’m most familiar with the plight of families who have kids with behavioral differences—autism, ADHD, and whatever-you-want-to-call-it kids who have what we like to call their “quirks.” I’m sure families with kids of other kinds of special needs have similar stories—feel free to chime in.

But for those of us with quirky kids, here’s how it works:

First of all, the holidays themselves. Holidays are exciting. Excitement is unsettling. Our kids are hard enough to deal with when they’re settled. The other day my daughter had a major meltdown because I agreed (oh, mommy, will you never learn?) to check if our local party store was going to have Voldemort costumes. All of a sudden it was all so overwhelming: What is a girl to do when she could be Voldemort (though they didn’t, it turned out, plan to carry a costume), or buy a better Gryffindor robe and be Harry (she did, after all, just get those super-cute Harry Potter glasses), or – or – or…

Quirky kid brain on meltdown. It’s not pretty. I had to drag her to the car and banished all talk of Halloween until it’s actually October.

The other thing that comes with holidays is get-togethers. Dinners, parties, all sorts of fun with other people. Our quirky kids want to have fun, too. The thing is, their idea of how to have fun might not go so well with societal expectations. Family members and friends, well-meaning as they think they are, generally just don’t get how hard we’re working to get through an evening.

Take the kids’ table. At family functions, this is often a given. The kids sit together and get to be kids. The grown-ups sit together and talk about boring stuff, without kids to interrupt them and tell them how boring they’re being.

My kids, however, have never handled the kids’ table very well. Child #1 was always more interested in talking to adults than to children. He’d rather sit next to his parents listening to talk about world events or the latest fumble a tech company has made than sit at the kids’ table and do… whatever it is they do at kids’ tables. He was never terribly interested in kids, unless they were kids like him who liked to talk about computers, high tech companies, and sushi.

Child #2 has a different set of needs. She loves being with other kids, but she knows that she easily gets out of control in groups. We’ve been working on life skills, with the help and understanding of the other adults she spends time with. At school, she is allowed to go hang out with the office manager if she feels like she needs a break from being in groups. The office manager puts her to work sorting library books, or just chats with her about whatever is going on. When she’s ready, she goes back to the group activities, recentered.

My parents have been helping as well. She is their unusual grandchild. When she spends time at their house, she likes to have a purpose. They give her jobs like helping out in the garden or taking care of the cats. At big family gatherings, however, she is often at loose ends. And when she’s at loose ends, her self-control starts to unravel. Soon she finds herself doing things that she knows she shouldn’t do. Later, she agrees that she should have behaved differently, but in the heat of the moment, it’s like a switch gets flipped, and she loses control.

I know that it’s hard all around: My siblings see us treating her differently, and they worry that their kids will feel that she’s being given special treatment. But on the other hand, I know that if she is going to navigate a family gathering successfully, she in fact does have to be given special treatment. It’s not special treatment that caters to her desires, but rather special treatment that caters to her needs. If we gave in to her desires, she’d be at the kids’ table more often than not. She’s a kid who wants to be a kid. She wants to be normal.

But while she hasn’t gained complete self-control, she has gained a lot of self-understanding. She has learned, at school, to say “I need to go to the office.” She has learned, at parties or other gatherings, to say “I need to be with my mom or dad.” More and more I see her being able to remove herself from a difficult situation and calm herself before coming back and trying again.

The thing is, our quirky kids aren’t going to just become normal for other people’s comfort. And some adults seem to think that’s an option. They think that our kids’ repetitive noises or behaviors, their hypersensitive ears, or their unusual fears are somehow under their control. Parents with usual kids sometimes seem to think that no one has ever told our kids to stop, as if they have a magic touch and it’s just a case of lax parenting that has led to this unusual child.

I’m sure that people want to help—I can’t imagine that they’re intervening out of a wish to cause the parents greater distress. But those who want to help should consider simple acceptance. Most people simply have no idea what it’s like to raise a child with special needs. They don’t see the enormity of difference between parenting, which is incredibly hard, and parenting an unusual child.

Those who want to help need to accept that this child is different, and will be different no matter what. They need to support the parents, because the parents’ job is hard enough without the judgment and criticism they get in tough situations.

It’s a dangerous season for quirky kids. Do a good deed today and give their parents a break.

So what’s with the marshmallows?

I love reading studies about the brain and how it works, and especially as they pertain to raising kids. Studies like these range all over the map from serious, in-depth, well-designed work by professionals to headline-grabbing, seriously flawed studies by people who think they know what they’re doing. In either case, the results from these studies—which should always be taken with a large grain of salt and a deep, calming breath—can help parents question their parenting. In my view, it’s not about being a perfect parent, but about being a conscious parent. As long as you’re thinking about what you’re doing, you’re probably doing a pretty good job.

One of the psychological studies that has been referenced a lot lately was the “marshmallow study” done with the children of Stanford grad students forty years ago. The researchers asked the children to sit in a room with a marshmallow and not to eat it. If they didn’t eat it, they’d get two when the researcher returned. Then the researcher went out of the room and watched while the kids squirmed and fought with their inclination just to eat the darn thing and get it over with.

The cool thing about this study is not the marshmallow. The cool thing is that these kids were the children of Stanford grads, and they agreed to be followed as they grew and made choices in their lives. (As anyone knows, if you want to make sure you can find people, just hire the Stanford Alumni Association to do it. For a period of about twelve years I moved at least once a year, and they always found me!) So this study is what’s called “longitudinal”—it doesn’t just test in a lab environment, but also in the real world.

These kids, one could argue, had everything: educated parents, excellent schools, a higher than average standard of living. But the researchers found that, in fact, not all of them had what they needed, and that thing they didn’t have was self-control.

You can read this piece at EdWeek to get details. It turns out that self-control correlates much more than pretty much anything else with a student’s future success as an adult. IQ, it has been shown, has no relationship to success. (One of my favorite statistics is the percentage of Terman’s “genius” students who won a Nobel Prize: 0%. That’s right, being designated a genius by an IQ test is not a prerequisite to reaching the top of your chosen field.) Even grades in high school are not a great determiner of future success.

I find this study interesting because it clearly aligns with what all of us see about successful people: They are more focused than the rest of us, they set goals, and they don’t give up. They say that the thing that successful people have in common is failure: They were more likely to have failed and persevered through more failure. The rest of us fail and give up.

I have a bit of a beef, however, with the original researchers and with the follow-up detailed in the EdWeek piece: What’s the deal with the marshmallows? As soon as I read about the original study, I saw a flaw in their reasoning. So I decided to question my daughter, who is famously lacking in self-control in some ways, but also completely honest about her intentions and able to think through situations to decide if she even wants to have self-control.

“So if I gave you a marshmallow and told you I’d give you another one if you held off eating that marshmallow for fifteen minutes, what would you do?” I asked her. Now, I realize that asking a kid and actually doing the experiment are different. But I had a hunch I’d get an interesting answer. Here’s what she said.

“Well, I’m not really crazy about marshmallows,” she told me. “They’re OK toasted over a campfire in s’mores. But if it was just a cold marshmallow, I’d probably just eat it right away.”

“Why?”

“Because cold marshmallows aren’t very good,” she explained. “So I wouldn’t want a second one anyway.”

Here’s self-control for you: Since our last camping trip, we’ve had a half-full bag of marshmallows sitting in plain view in the pantry. My daughter, great lover of junk food, goes in there daily and stares—we call it pantry TV or refrigerator TV in our house—trying to find something, anything that has no redeeming nutritional qualities. That bag of marshmallows remains untouched.

Similarly, I know that I can’t keep bad stuff that I love in the house. I recently made a cheesecake and the leftovers made it, small slice by small slice, into my stomach and straight to my hips! But that bag of marshmallows? I have no problem whatsoever letting it sit there. I second my daughter’s opinion: s’mores twice yearly while camping is marshmallow enough for me.

So to all you parents who are fretting about your child’s self-control, I ask you to reconsider this study: Instead of “does my child have general self-control,” ask yourself, “does my child have self-control when it pertains to a specific goal?”

The press tells us that Barack Obama can’t seem to resist a few daily cigarettes. But he made it to the presidency, which most of us would agree is a measure of success. I bet he wouldn’t have eaten that marshmallow, either.

An Ode to the Fair

I was telling my kids about the major memory I have of our yearly county fair. I grew up in a place that was rife with both artists and farmers, and I am guessing that our fair had plenty of worthy stuff to see. But here’s what I remember: Eating cotton candy, which makes me feel sick, then going on rides that turn my stomach around, which make me be sick. Yep, my childhood memories of the fair pretty much all involve throwing up.

So it was that in my adult life, I never thought about fairs. I never noticed, wherever I lived, when one was advertised. Oh, I have fond memories of the Ferris wheel, and when I drove by one I’d feel nostalgic, but that was it.

Then along came the kids, and their schools went to the fair. And then we started homeschooling, and lots of homeschoolers are are big into the fair. I was actually shocked to find out that one of my homeschooling friends whom I’d consider a shoe-in for the fair (she raises, kills, and jerks her own meat, fer gawd’s sake) doesn’t do the fair. It has become such a huge part of our lives.

The very coolest parts of the fair are not the ones I remember (obviously). My kids do get a little smattering of junkfood and stomach-turning rides, but the main reason we go there is to see everyone’s entries. One totally rad mom in our homeschool program puts together a scavenger hunt with all the kids in our program listed. Her version was four pages long! I condensed it to the front and back of one sheet by making the font tiny, but still, it was impossible to find everything on the list.

What did we see? We saw all manner of art, including a gorgeous close-up shot of a bee and some really stunning paintings. We saw sumptuous-looking baked goods that will become stale as people admire them through the week. We saw sewing projects and garden projects. We visited one classmate and the lamb she raised from a newborn.

My kids entered their own work in photography, sewing, baking, Legos, and the perennial favorite, Vegetable Creatures.

We also saw work by kids we’ve met through other avenues. I see them yearly and point them out to the kids: Remember Kaitlyn? Isn’t this gorgeous? Oh, and there’s Tara! And look at the amazing work Simone is doing now that she’s in high school. Though we don’t often see these kids anymore, we do see them yearly at the fair, meeting up with them like old friends at a school reunion.

The parents also get involved (though it occurred to me today that I’d never even considered entering anything). I saw a friend’s knitting, her husband’s plum wine, another friend’s photo. I love to see my friends doing other things besides parenting and striving to make enough money to parent. Art — and winemaking — is necessary for the cultivation of a healthy soul.

I also see grown-ups I know through other avenues — our vet’s goats, a family farm we’ve visited, someone I worked with before I had kids.

It is true that there are many drawbacks to the fair: It’s not cheap to get in (except on education day, which is when we go), and the food prices are a perfect illustration of highway robbery. My kids beg for stupid, expensive junk they won’t want in a week.

But it’s also true that you won’t get a better cross-section of this county at any event outside of the county fair. Everyone’s there, from strawberries cultivated and picked by our seasonal workers, much needed and little appreciated residents, to art by our semi- and professional artists. We’re all there, together, enjoying the agricultural, intellectual, and artistic harvest of the place we call home.

Local books for Santa Cruz kids

Ever since my husband and I read The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet*, which is set in Pacific Grove, to our son, I’ve had a passion for snooping out books with local flavor. It’s such a passion that I was sure I’d written about it before. But having searched my files, I have to admit that I have not, in fact, written about all these wonderful books! So here it is, my rundown of kids’ books I have read (and a few I haven’t) that are set in or near the Monterey Bay area.

1. Kildee House by Rutherford G. Montgomery

This has to be the first book on my list, because it holds such an important place in my reader’s heart. I was introduced to this book by my son’s first-grade teacher. After she read it aloud in class, he came home and asked if we could read it again! It’s the story of an old man, retired from a career as a headstone-maker, who builds a little cabin against a massive redwood tree. When we did this with my daughter’s book club, we met at Henry Cowell inside of the hotel tree! It was magical, to sit inside a tree with dim lanterns, sipping hot chocolate and talking about literature.

2. The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (and sequels) by Eleanor CameronWonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet

What can I say about this very weird, truly excellent book? It’s one of the ones I remember from my childhood, which is why, when we started to read chapter books to our son, I just had to read it again. And lo and behold, it takes place in Pacific Grove. I’m guessing there aren’t many works of fiction that take place there, but this one makes up for the lack of others. My husband has even searched to find out if the address in the book exists (it doesn’t). Great book to read to younger kids.

3. I Am Lavina Cumming by Susan Lowell

This rather obscure little book was recommended to me by Gay, the wonderful children’s book buyer at Bookshop Santa Cruz. It’s historical fiction about a real girl who lived in Santa Cruz during the earthquake of 1906. The writer posits (I’m not sure that this was the case) that Lavina counted amongst her friends the youthful Susan Pitts (later to be known as the famous actress Zazu Pitts). It’s a nice little book, and I suggest that upon reading it, find the detail that tells you without a doubt that the author has never lived in Santa Cruz (or anywhere on the California coast, for that matter).

Operation Redwood4. Operation Redwood by S. Terrell French

I haven’t read this one yet, though it’s been on my shelves for a while. My son read it and liked it — probably good for pre-teen kids.

5. Star Lost by Patsey Gray

One of my correspondents recommended this long out-of-print book, which our local library doesn’t even have a copy of. If you have a copy, donate it to the library and ask them to get it on the shelves so we can read it!

6. Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

This is a young adult book (definitely not for the kids, judging from the description) that is partly set in Santa Cruz. I haven’t read it yet!

7. The Changeling by Zylpha Keatly Snyder

Again, I haven’t read this, but a correspondent tells me that it’s set in an unnamed coastal California town. She also recommends The Egypt Game, which is set in Berkeley.

8. Eight Mules from Monterey by Patricia Beatty

From Nancy Winans: “I actually met her when I was a child when I was part of a junior library reading club and read several of her books, all historical fiction centered around her experiences living on the Pacific West Coast as a child.  Two were centered near where I lived in So Cal, one about the orange growing business and the other about boron miners.  Others focused on quilters in Oregon and a Quileute family in Washington state. I think they might still hold up to today’s readers, with parents explaining when they were written and about how people weren’t as aware of certain issues then.” [Visit Nancy’s Choices4Learning website]

9. The Terrible Churnadryne by Eleanor Cameron

Another from Nancy: “Another book I read as a child that was inspired by the Monterey Peninsula but which uses other place names.  I just re-read it last year for fun – only then realizing there were so many parallels to our area and finding out that the author lived here.”

10. Frosty: A Raccoon to Remember by Harriet E. Weaver

From another correspondent: “Apropos of Kildee House there’s also the 1973 “Frosty: A Raccoon to Remember” by park ranger Harriet E. Weaver, about half of which takes place in Big Basin and half in Southern California. Frosty even causes some commotion in the Mission St. Safeway parking lot.”

 

Back to homeschool

Both homeschoolers and schoolers alike are often interested to find out how homeschoolers work within our cultural focus on a “school year” and “summer break.” For as many ways as homeschoolers do everything else, we all have different approaches, but here is ours.

Until last year, I always had one kid in school. So summer was by its very nature different because our school kid would be home. Another difference was that while taking part in two school programs, we were very, very busy with school-related events during the school year, so summer seems more relaxed in any case. This year both my kids were in the same homeschool program, but somehow we didn’t have a more relaxed spring! What with spring school events, doing year-end wrap-ups with our teacher-consultant in our public school program, and other things like recitals that always seem to take place all at once, we were ready for a real break.

Another really important reason that we change our routine during the summer is the wonderful opportunity of summer camps. I’ve written before how if school were more like summer camp, we’d be doing school year-round as well! So when the camps are announced, we start scanning the possibilities and thinking about how to sandwich them in between travel, beach, swim lessons, and relaxation.

So as a result, in our family we do “take the summer off” from homeschooling in a formal way. This does not mean, however, that we take the summer off from learning:

  • Travel is a great way for kids to learn. You don’t have to do worksheets and tests to learn history, social studies, geography, and even math and literary analysis during your travels. This year we went to my kids’ father’s homeland — New York/New Jersey — for two weeks. We went to some great museums where they were presented with learning opportunities in a formal environment, and we did things like catching fireflies on warm Jersey evenings that promoted learning of a more experiential sort.
  • We didn’t go out for camps in a big way this summer, but my daughter did repeat her yearly visit to soccer camp. Of course she learned soccer skills, but she also learned important social and emotional lessons in an environment that is much more accepting of her big personality than a closed-up classroom.
  • We took time to work on long-delayed projects. My son and I started learning more about Arduino, a really cool piece of hardware that your kids can graduate to once they’ve learned the basics of computer programming and electronics. While we were doing that, my daughter got out our Snap Circuits, one of the best “toys” you can possibly invest in, and retooled her knowledge of how circuits work.
  • We spent a lot of time gardening and hanging out at my parents’ farm or down in the redwoods. Today’s kids are getting less and less time just to hang out in nature, despite the overwhelming research showing that they’ll do better in life if you just leave them alone sometimes.

The most successful thing we did to make sure that we didn’t just veg out during the summer was what has become an annual tradition: the Our Fun Summer poster. The kids and I sit down at the beginning of the summer with a pad of enormous paper and start to write down everything we hope to accomplish over the summer. We only took the poster down last week, and I’m satisfied to say that we did pretty much everything we wanted to do.

So now it’s back to homeschool. What that means for us is, first of all, reconnecting with the folks at our public homeschool program. This year reconnection took place at Blue Ball Park with a fair-like atmosphere — the older kids leading activities and crafts for the younger ones. The parents brought homeschooling supplies they were done with and exchanged them with other people’s cast-offs. (I scored a copy of Brian Jacques’ Redwall and a cursive practice book.) The teachers met with each group of kids and did a “get to know you” since there are always new kids coming in. Everyone perused sign-up sheets for school-led activities that they wanted to take part in. I signed up to help lead the film festival and the technology group.

So yes, Back to Homeschool does have meaning for us. But it’s not back to the grind, as it was in the old days. It’s more like a renewal of our commitment to living and learning together.

Now available