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Possible Interference
Inside the Duck Blind
Not On Vacation (Entirely)
Impulse Control
Happy Returns
Is It Working Yet?
Teenie Weenie Town
Santa Guilt
It's Not EST, But It Could Be
Not Offensive at All. It's a Trend
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Possible Interference
Dear All,
YOu will have to possibly forgive, again, some potential interruptions to updating these pages. Blogger is not going to allow FTP posting any more as of tomorrow and Indiebride, as you know, is in the process of launching a redesign that will mean we don't need FTP posting anyway. So don't give up and if you have emergencies, feel free to write to indieetiquette (at) yahoo (dot) com
Cheers and many thanks Elise
posted by Elise at 7:30 AM
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Inside the Duck Blind
Recently I had the peculiar privilege of invading my younger son's privacy by observing him in his classroom without him knowing I was watching. My husband and I crammed into what is usually a closet for glitter and craft materials, and watched the morning proceedings through a one-way mirror while a baby monitor provided the soundtrack.
I think this sounds creepier than it actually is, though I know that there are plenty of parents who find this sort of thing problematic. For my part, I don't believe three-year olds have particularly refined notions of privacy.
Anyway, Sebastian's school experience has been something of a mystery. For reasons having to do with getting the children to separate from their parents and caregivers (he is in the youngest class at the school), adults don't get to cross the threshold of the classroom door, so there's a fair amount of mystery about what they do that isn't cleared up by the cryptic tidbits of information the children offer up or the art projects that come home in large bags every once in a while.
As it turns out, it's a mini-Utopia on the other side of the door, with all the children finding their ways though different projects and activities, all of them managing to be extremely serious and focused on whatever art project or dress-up game or building scenario was at hand. I confess it is a relief to see this because after the two-week long spring break I asked my son's head teacher if he needed to be evaluated for something, anything.
Though perhaps the better question would have been whether I should be evaluated. As it turns out, the problem is not with the child, but with his mother. I am the person whose presence triggers his new early morning shouting trend, intense refusal to listen, urge not to change out of nightclothes in spite of having been awake since it was dark outside. News filtered in from gymnastics and music classes that my kid's behavior is incomparably better when I am not the caregiver in attendance.
Of course I'd rather it be this way than the other way around.
posted by Elise at 7:38 AM
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Not On Vacation (Entirely)
Well, it has been quite a trick writing here recently, and not because I have nothing to say. Technical difficulties have gotten me down and with any luck they will resolve themselves soon in ways that will dazzle and inspire.
But I've also been a bit overwhelmed and, quite frankly, torn. 2009 was chock full of various sorts of frustrations and bad ideas of mine which led to bad decisions and I'm looking, now, in the hazy first quarter (just ended, but still...) of 2010 to remedy that funk. What am I doing? I'm trying to embark on a new style of work and starting soon I am going to try to become an athlete. Wish me luck. All of this has been a long time coming.
At the moment I am recently back from this year's vacation and I am not too proud to say that traveling with children who are 5 and just shy of 3 is a tricky proposition. My advice to you is not to forget the stroller, even if your (almost) 3 year-old doesn't use one much in any quotidian way. If I had stayed away any longer I would have the arms of a lady wrestler and would need to do some sort of work to correct my back creaking out of joint.
It is interesting, though, how children choose the strangest and least convenient moments in which to exercise their developmental muscles. My younger son fully embraced the terrible 2's while we were away and no amount of telling him that he has come perilously close to outgrowing this stage made him stop shouting. I am hoping that the return of school (regular, not reform-- for now) will cut short this phase.
My older child as well seemed to shift in the days we were away. I was suddenly treated to the kind of withering looks and baleful glares that I wouldn't have imagined he would be able to produce for another 4 years at least. And yet here they are. I am not full of fantastic ways to deal with these unfortunate turns, but I hear that dolphin trainers prefer exclusively positive reinforcement, so I'm trying that, mixed with strict removal of privileges when positive reinforcement fails.
And here I am.
Forgive, please the silence, born of technical and personal frustration. There are things I need to do that don't fit into the scope of this diary. I'm not gone, but I do have to keep other things in motion.
posted by Elise at 9:34 AM
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Impulse Control
I'm coming to you this morning from deep deep deep in the belly of birthday season, where things are sort of like a casino. You're never sure what time it is or even what day it might be but you're high on cake and some sort of entertaining activity and only briefly troubled by the tug of obligations and a huge pile of neglected work, forgotten chores. Even the terrier has caught birthday season fever and is trying to get his dinner time permanently shifted to the mid-afternoon-- the time of pizza and cake.
As hostess, I survived one of the two parties I have to take care of this season and I dealt with the whole issue of present weirdness (which I wrote about in the context of Emily Bazelon's unsatisfying solution to her own "present guilt" a while ago) by only opening presents gradually, having my kid say something about each present for use in a thank you card and then putting almost everything away, so that this embarrassment of items can be dealt with slowly. (I can't let myself get behind on thanks, but I do feel the need to institute some sort of perspective.) Oh, and while I write the notes, my boys need to sign them, so they can get a sense of the writer's cramp their mother sustains.
Maybe this is as bad as the Bazelon Solution, but I think we all make crazy deals with ourselves to make these uncomfortable things bearable.
So it was with some interest that I spotted last night, when I was neither watching the Super Bowl nor doing anything productive, another couple of pieces on Slate about teenage recklessness and how to get the kids-today-with-their-hair-and-their-clothes to act with a little more regard for life and limb. Both were written by Alan Kazdin and Carlo Torella and are pretty interesting. (Here is the first installment. This is part two.)
The interesting thing, to me, about the recommendations, is that what these psychologists advocate is extremely normal behavior: rigorous but gentle monitoring of kids, strong parent child relationships, encouraging skills in children.... that sort of thing. Not surprisingly, as with the preschool set, explaining why dangerous activities should be avoided doesn't tend to be successful.
What does this have to do with birthday parties and present opening? Nothing too much really, except that I realize that the more complicated and strained one's efforts are to have good kids, what one should probably do is strive to be reasonable-- which is not as interesting as some of the more wild techniques, and is sort of difficult and boring.
posted by Elise at 6:41 AM
2 Comments
Happy Returns
Birthday season has arrived. Due to the way my childrens' school arranges classes, these occasions tend to bunch up within a couple of months and every year I'm a bit blindsided by the sudden furry of social activity. Many dread these happenings but I don't really see the point in getting worked up. If my kids clearly hated the things it would be another story but as I see it, at this age, it is something to do on a cold weekend afternoon and the child who doesn't attend the party can hang out with whichever parent is free. The only real drag is trying to keep track of things, but that's the drag of everything, isn't it?
So with all this in my mind (and having just purchased a semi-educational "matching" game for the most recent birthday party), I was interested to read Emily Bazelon's piece in Slate this week about the deep conflicts she has about her sons' birthday parties (mostly the aggressive consumerism involved in present giving) and the unsatisfying way she tries to resolve her distaste. She and her husband instituted a semi-complicated birthday book swap tradition in lieu of having their children get presents and this worked for a while until her kids realized it made them different and they wanted a more standard present getting set-up. In her article, Bazelon details the strained compromises, her sons' upsets, and the conversations she and her husband have with each other about their position on presents.
I read all of this and was left with an almost despairing feeling. This often happens when what seems to be a non-issue (or at least a non-pressing issue) gets turned into something very large and intractable. I throw up my mental hands and resign myself to being corrupt and dissipated and accept that I am guilty of some secondary sin. I don't have it in me to conjure stilted present giving rules for my kids and I don't want to make my children the vector through which my guilt and confusion gets filtered. I'll try to work that out on my own without them having to deal with it.
What is it that makes birthday parties so complicated? I'm guilty of this myself in non-present-related ways. I am a late summer birthday myself so the party thing was never much of an issue since no one was around much and even now, my annual dinner out is always several weeks after the actual birthday to accommodate two of my dinner companions' vacation schedule. But I always forget to plan the thing, scramble at the last minute, vow to bake a cake from scratch, chicken out and order something from the tolerant (and happily accommodating) bakery in the neighborhood. Is there something about one's child's birthday party that makes some of us desperate to control (even if, in my case, it is control through procrastination) instead of just getting it over with? Why should this thing have to contain a grand statement as it does for Bazelon? Or in my case, why should it bring on such bouts of indecision?
Anyway, for my part, the first of the parties I need to plan is almost upon me and since I snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by suddenly remembering not to schedule it for a long holiday weekend, I should be feeling ahead of the game. Bazelon has a lot more arguing to do.
posted by Elise at 10:49 AM
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Is It Working Yet?
On one of my too-brief jaunts on a treadmill before New Year's, I saw someone on the morning "news" saying that for them to be successful, we should really call our resolutions something else like "goals." I am not particularly sure how necessary the semantic difference really is (though the interview subject went on so long about it, I wound up on another channel, catching up on the top ten "weirdest" television moments, sadly for shows I wasn't aware existed, of 2009).
Anyway, I tend to make resolutions and then not tell anyone (a mistake according to the long winded lady) and then eventually they slip away and I then start resolving on a weekly basis. Sorry, making goals, until the year wraps up and the cycle begins again.
This year, in a fit of winter vacation frustration, I made an effort to at least start on the right foot and had the children create a sign for my door. (If it works at all, someday I'll needlepoint something or at least have a sign that doesn't need to be wrapped in plastic wrap due to the volumes of glitter it sheds.) One of my many large problems with focus lately has been kid interruption. I am a bit of a pushover so that even when there is a designated time for me to work, things for the boys eat into it and I find I'm back to the early morning/late night work schedule which doesn't do it at all.
So the sign. It is a simple glittery creation, a little abstract, but even Sebastian has learned at school what "red" and "green" mean when it comes to proceeding across a street or through a door.
Is it working? Not so much yet. There's a bit of a learning curve in which they barge in and then pull up short asking: "Oh what did the sign say?"
But I'm not exactly going great guns either. School returned this week, though, so perhaps it is all a matter of getting the engines oiled again, and being pleased I thought to contain the glitter shedding before I put this practical masterpiece to work.
posted by Elise at 3:29 AM
2 Comments
Teenie Weenie Town
With the holidays comes no school and somehow a pile of work, so forgive please my long silence. My resolutions for the new decade will involve enhanced productivity and focus. What I will say now is that for a number of reasons, writing here has been quite difficult of late and I hope some new strategy or two will loosen me up a bit more.
What is it about the holiday season that inspires traditions predicated on making the world very very little. I am guilty of embracing this myself with an annual gingerbread house that I have scrambled to produce (with assistance) for the last nine years. But this town is full of binky universes. I have gone now to multiple train shows which miniaturize Manhattan. One is still chugging along in Grand Central Station and depicts all sorts of trains zipping around a sort of compressed city in which King Kong labors up the Empire State Building while Santa sails over some mountain on the far side (very far side) of shrunken Grand Central Station and fragments of street scenes have a kind of Edward Hopper-esque quality, in spite of being surrounded by shiny twinkly things. My children can both spend hours mesmerized by this scene (while I find my mind is often quickly overtaken by thoughts of H1N1 flu).
But this being Winter Break from school, larger excursions are required to keep the kids from pulling my hair out (that's for me to do), so we embarked yesterday on a grand train mission and went up to the Bronx Botanical Garden for hours of fun at their universe of New York (and its environs) landmarks made of botanical bits and pieces around which all sorts of trains chug along. This is a spendy excursion, though it can be extended (as I did) by getting the kids to run around through the gardens and into the "Gingerbread Adventure" area, but the highlight is the trains. It is pretty remarkable to see these likenesses of centuries-old buildings (93 Reade Street, for instance, is there) and impressive structures like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the George Washington Bridge all looking as if they sprouted out of the hothouse soil they're stuck in, while little electric trains service them. I don't know what my children found so astounding, but they were mesmerized. (It is odd, because I think the very young can be entranced and adults can be interested-- though they might not go if they weren't in the company of children) but kids old enough to really "get" what is going on with the buildings being representations of the buildings they see around town might find it too babyish and uncool.
So what is it about little worlds and this time of year? Is it some sort of reaction to so many Nativity scenes all over the place that we want to shrink or reinvent something quotidian? Is it just that much more amusing to see the world as a manageable set of toys?
I'm not complaining at all. I'm wracking my brains for more tiny things for the children to see before school blessedly starts up again and order can return.
posted by Elise at 11:32 AM
1 Comments
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