flea

I think I read a blog-review of this book somewhere, and then I happened to pick it up at the library last week. (The "parenting" books are right next to the dollhouse in the childrens' room.)

The subtitle is, "A Parent's Guide to Helping Children with Executive Function," and it's really geared towards parents with children who are AHDH or have other official diagnoses. The whole first section is about getting appropriate diagnoses for kids who are struggling in school. It also has a pretty nice chart that reminds worried parents what level a child ought, developmentally, to be operating at. Your six year old losing jackets is totally par for the course. Your 15 year old doing the same is possibly more problematic.

"Executive Function" isn't really one thing, in my understanding - it's a combination of skills that work together to enable people to be responsible and manage complex tasks, and includes memory, ability to both initiate actions and follow through all the way, planning, impulse control, and organization. The second half of the book breaks these different skills out and has examples, using schoolchildren, of specific skills breaking down. So, for example, the disorganization of a kid who has short-term memory issues and doesn't remember the homework assignment is a different disorganization from that of a kid who can't get started on homework or has trouble transitioning from task to task.

I can see this book being really helpful with adults as well as children; I've only had time to skim it so far but I can see things that I think help me understand some of mr. flea's (to me) bad habits better. One big thing is to establish routines, which in some cases can bypass the need for executive function altogether. A lot of adults do this as a matter of course; the keys go in X location without you even thinking about it, so you always know where they are.

One of the big points of the book is that kids often feel really bad about things like forgetting homework, and get into a cycle of blame, poor self esteem, and poor performance, when it's a matter of simple short term memory and developing a routine. Many kids may simply be developing organizational or memory skills more slowly than their peers - a parent can provide structure to keep them from cycling downward while the skills mature.

Casper strikes me as pretty middle of the road for her age; she occasionally forgets stuff, and has trouble getting started on homework some times, and she's not hyper-conscientious like a couple of her peers I know, but nothing to worry about. mr. flea has trouble with structure - he resists using a calendar, and in general is unwilling to make plans for things or commit to doing things. In contrast, I am always full of long-term plans, reviewing activities coming up, etc. While I sometimes get overwhelmed by the complexity of our lives (the book notes that sometimes things are so complicated anyone's executive functioning breaks down), I manage to keep things running. I'd like it if mr. flea and I could work together better, maybe doing morning IM chats to go over calendar activities for the day/week, so I don't feel like the only one who does the executive work in the family.

Today is Casper's sixth birthday! She's also kinda sick and went to school. Here's how the week went: Monday, popped a fever in the evening. Kept her home Tuesday; she seemed fine, just a little cold. Was driven nearly mad by the bickering (kept Dillo home too, as he was on day 4 of a junky cough and pinkeye). Wednesday, she went to school, and on pickup at 5:15 complained of an earache. Motrin fixed it, but she did go to bed on the early side. Thursday morning I had actually pretty much forgotten about the earache and she went to school as usual. Thursday at 4:15 I got a call from afterschool that she was crying from an earache. mr. flea picked up me and we got her and she was in a terrible state, in a lot of pain. Took her home, gave her Motrin, she cried until it kicked in about 40 minutes later, then fell sound asleep. After a two-hour nap, she woke up, ate dinner, did her homework, and went to bed as usual.

Then the dilemma was what to do today. She had a crusty eye in the morning and a little cough. We sent her in (with cupcakes). mr. flea was hoping to get a late afternoon doctor's appointment so she could go to school normally, and then he could pick her up from after school and have her ear looked at. Unfortunately the doctor's office closes early on Friday - they could see her at 12 or not at all. There's an Urgent Care that's an option, but it's $50. So we're following the normal routine, and I'll call after school early on to see how she is. If she starts getting bad again, mr. flea can go get her and take her to Urgent Care, and I can cut out from work early and meet them at home when they're done. I told her she should ask her teachers to call me if she started having a sore ear at any point during the day, and asked her to try to drink a lot of water in hopes of keeping the head mucus loose. It all feels like a terrible solution - aside from the fact that she wanted to go to school to share her birthday with her class, mr. flea feels like he's taken a lot of time off lately (him & Dillo to the doctor last Friday, him & Casper to the dentist Tuesday, cutting out at 4:30 yesterday to pick up Casper) and I had several things to do this morning and took Tuesday as a sick day.

If only we had a housewife.

We went to a potluck last night - someone told me the Evite showed 126 people attending, and we weren't on the Evite. It was a zoo. I'd say easily 50 children.

The family has 3 boys, aged 8, 6, and 4. The middle one is in Casper's class at school. They have a play set in the back yard and a scrum of boys in the 4-6 range were all over it through most of the party, while Dillo did some swinging and eventually some climbing and sliding. As you know, Bob, Dillo is the World's Most Cautious Child, but in this case his caution was appropriate - some of these kids were little hellions. General roughness in the course of games I can handle (though Dillo, not so much) but I saw pushing, tackling, and punches thrown. It was a serious male competitive atmosphere. It made me glad I have a sensitive new age kid. Not that Dillo was the only one who was behaving well - he stuck close to our neighbor Henry and his friend Tommy, who had their own elaborate game involving a frisbee, shield, and two horns off of a viking helmet.

I guess the part that disturbed me was that few parents were paying attention at all, and I had the sense that even if the parents of the wilder boys had been watching, they would not have considered the level of physicality and violence anything to be concerned about. Among our neighbors we have some wilder sorts - Owen is a natural Tasmanian Devil type, and Spencer has a temper and is big and can be physical. But both of their parents keep a close eye on them and call them out when they behave badly - Spencer's parents more effectively than Owen's, but Spencer also has a year on Owen, and Owen is seriously a force of nature. But I think some parents feel that boys are boys, and excessive roughness and pushing are par for the course, and they should work it out among themselves. Judging by what I saw last night, it's not a good strategy.

In other boy news, Casper recently informed us that she kissed a boy on the lips at after school. His name is Zachary and he's also a first grader I think, and actually he's quite a looker. Casper really likes boys.

My coworker is fretting that she is not being "crafty enough" in preparing for her son's upcoming first birthday. This weekend Casper is invited to our neighbor's birthday party, which will include a bouncy house and a spider-man theme (birthday girl is a serious tomboy), and next weekend she is invited to a Princess birthday party ("wear your own princess dress and we'll provide the crown and wand".)

It got me thinking, why don't the adults who are expending so much energy and creativity on their children's birthday parties throw some adult parties occasionally? What wouldn't I give to have an excuse to dress as a princess, eat cake, and come home with a goody bag?

(Possibly these parties exist and I am just not invited to them. Possibly *I* need to throw such a party.)

Side etiquette note: the princess birthday party is held jointly for two girls. Casper knows one and has been on playdates with her, but I don't think she knows the other at all well (goes to the same school, but not in her class or in afterschool). Do we have to bring presents for both? (Yes, I know you never HAVE to bring presents.)

Amusing Casper note:
me: Tells Casper she has been invited to Hannah's birthday party.
Casper: She's turning SIX?
me: No, she's turning five.
Casper: Oh, she is four now? No wonder she is so greedy!

When it all comes down to it, I honestly don't think we're all that good at this parenting gig. We're not abusive, or neglectful, but we just sort of muddle through and I don't think we have much of a gift for it. mr. flea is long on loving but overindulgent and can't discipline his way out of a wet paper bag; Casper has him wrapped around her little finger. I am easily bored and impatient and easily overwhelmed and can get very angry (I can discipline my way through three new york telephone books, but am not notably more effective than mr. wet paper bag). I notice our faults much more with Casper. Whether this means we are a worse fit for her as parents, she is old enough to push our buttons very well, or we've learned something and are doing a better job with Dillo, I'm not sure. I do feel sorry for her as a first child - our experiment, the one we screw things up on first. Even if we screw them up again with Dillo, we aren't complete novices.

The weekend started poorly, with Dillo vomit in the night on Friday. This was the first time he's actually been pukey. He spit up a ton as a baby, but that's a whole different animal. He begged for water or juice or milk but when we gave him half an inch of water he threw it up, so we kept him off liquids for several hours. He didn't sleep well and complained a lot. Was pretty much fine by 10 am or so, though, and had a big afternoon nap since he'd lost so much sleep in the night.

Otherwise we did a fair amount of socializing, with neighbors Saturday, and then more formally, with two arranged play dates for Casper Sunday (one with another new family who lives nearby, and one with the twins' grandmother). I had brunch with work people, which was just okay (no families invited, a big dog at the house - my already minimal dog-person-ness is on the decline). mr. flea drove Dillo all over northeast Georgia in an attempt to get him to nap today and only got 40 minutes. And then the evening, in which Casper was Difficult and I felt made of fail.

I'd gone off my anti-depressants shortly before we moved, which I knew was stupid, and mr. flea, when he learned last week, told me was stupid, so you don't need to add to that chorus, thanks. But we all do stupid things sometimes, and I was so distracted I was honestly forgetting to take them half the time, and I wondered if they were actually doing anything. It would seem so, at this point, and I still have some, so back on I go, I guess. I am still a little resistant to the idea.

I think that I would think I am a mediocre parent even if I were still on my meds, though. Antidepressants, for me, are a bit like tact. They don't change what's true, it just means I don't talk/think about the truth as much. And let's face it, human kind cannot bear very much reality.

I sorta quickie-skimmed this last night, but it was a book that does okay with sorta-quickie skimming.

Alfie Kohn, Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason (2006).

First off, my mother dated Alfie Kohn briefly, when I was maybe 12, she was 35, and he was 27. They met through a personal ad when we lived outside of Boston. It's a little funny to see that he has kids who are now about 10 and 6, judging by the photo on the jacket, since my mother's kids are now 35, 32, and 29. Also, he looks about 25 still, and he's actually 50. I remember him a little - he was very nerdy and didn't know what to do with a 12 year old in the slightest, which is also why it's very amusing to me that he writes about parenting now. Kohn first got famous (to the extent that he is actually famous; I mean, not Jackie Collins famous, obviously) by writing a book called No Contest, arguing that competition is bad for society. This in 1986, Reagan Time in America! I haven't read it.

I am exceptionally rambly today. Anyway, this book I read. It's essentially in the vein of books like Haim Ginott's, Alice Miller's, and Playful Parenting - basically, nice touchy-feely psychology-influenced hippie-people parenting. He argues that punishing kids is bad, but the thing that probably would get people riled up in this book is that he argues that *praising* kids is bad, too - it has the potential to stifle their inner motivation, and make them do stuff just *because* you say, "Good job." That's pretty radical, I think. In some ways it makes sense to me - but in other ways I can't imagine how you would actually raise a child like that. I gather the Montessori method is supposed to do that - I should really read up on it more since Casper's school is supposedly using it - but I must say her classroom seems to be all about rules and some really traditional stuff. I can't imagine her teacher doesn't praise.

He makes some important points: it's really important to understand the developmental abilities of children, and not punish them for doing something they can't really control (he has lots of examples of things he's witnessed people saying in public). Like, Dillo is throwing rice on the floor not to be bad, but because he's 14 months old, and throwing rice is fun. (We do not yell at him for throwing rice, in case you were worrying. We do *limit* the amount of rice available within his reach.) He also argues that American culture, for all its "Think! Of the Children!" propaganda, is actually NOT child-friendly or child-centered. Mass culture tries to *sell* things to children, but it doesn't really accept or respect their needs or abilities. He suggests that when we say children are "good" we really mean "being quiet and under our control" and that's actually something that bothers me when people say it about my kids. "Oh, is he always this good?" He's *easy* to take care of, and doesn't tend to fuss in public, but that shouldn't be a moral judgment, and I don't expect it to determine much of what his ultimate moral place in life will be.

Fundamentally, Kohn is a proponent of the idea that a parent's main job is to guide a child into being himself, and not break him too much. I agree with that, but he doesn't give much coverage to the problem that sometimes you need to control your child for your own sanity.

I told my mother I was reading this book and she scoffed at the idea that Kohn might have anything to say about parenting, implying it was too hippie-impractical (and Just Like Me With All My Permissive Ways). Since she owns copies of Between Parent and Child, and Pictures of a Childhood, WTF? I guess she is now well into her bourgeois post-hippie phase.