I've been really irritated the last few days.  At first I thought it was just because I was adjusting to a new schedule.  But it has slowly emerged that in the last few months, I had the delightful situation of all 5 children being in phases that were independent and amiable.  So when, slowly, the situation began to change, I didn't realize it was happening.  I just knew that I've been feeling like I'm barely treading water, I've been irritable, I've had "too much to do" (but I'm not sure exactly what I've been doing), I've been raising my voice a lot, and I've been feeling generally stressed.

I think what is getting to me the most are the messes.  To take a moment to appreciate things, there was a solid few years where the mess was so outrageously unmanageable that I was cleaning up four times a day so that I could have a path to walk.  I hired two organizers, increased my housework skills, restricted food to the kitchen/dining room, and the littles grew bigger.  It got to the point where I can sometimes go a day or two without straightening and it's just messy and not havoc.  So to turn around and realize I am back to needing multiple straightenings a day again is something I didn't consciously realize and it was attacking my narcissism.

Aside from the messes themselves, Elazar (age 7) seems to be heading back into an Idea phase that is often accompanied by manic energy where he is curious but unintentionally destructive, and he is wild, especially when he is in a place or situation that expects restraint.  Aharon (age 3) has entered the Intense Tantrum phase, where numerous times a day, restrictions or refusals are met with flopping, screaming, crying, and often attempts to hit, bite, pinch etc.  (And he calls me "doody" but that's mostly amusing.)  If I were employed and my employer treated me this way, I'd quit.  Jack (age 4) is his usual self, but that usual self includes a fair amount of discipline these days.

Another thing that has been getting to me is the way that they make messes.  I walked in to the bathroom the other day, and they were making potions with cups of water.  That is normal drippy mess I am accustomed to.  As I walked in, Elazar took a syringe full of water and shot the ceiling.  His brothers cackled.

There have been a series of messes that have an edge of aggressive energy to them.  Although they have plenty of opportunity and their lives are set up to make lots of tactile mess outside (and even inside in a lot of ways), they enjoy destroying things and breaking things and messing up things that they know are part of the home.  When they eat wacky macs, invariably someone flings some with a spoon and then they are all doing it and giggling.  They are making messes and egging each other on and being mightily amused by them.  All this amusement gets me furious.  I found myself yelling to stop it, cut it out, etc.

During the most recent mess (I can't even remember what it was.  It wasn't wacky macs because I remembered to remind them, before handing them food, to remember not to throw the macaroni and I elicited agreement of this before they got their food) as I was yelling, a part of me was thinking that this is definitely not the best way to handle this.  Yelling is not that effective.  Why am I yelling?  What am I trying to achieve?  I realize that I was just being reactive instead of parenting based on my principles, and I hope this week, now that I realize what is going on with these gleeful messes, to devise a healthier and more effective parenting approach.  But unconsciously, what was I trying to achieve by yelling?

On a basic level, I wanted them to stop.  Also, I wanted to "teach" them that their behavior was socially inappropriate.  I wanted to show disapproval.  And I was angry so I guess I wanted to hurt them.  Why don't they know that what they are doing upsets me?  How will they learn to be civilized if I don't show very strong disapproval when they do this?  They "should" know better!

When I stopped to think about this, it seemed to me that there are better ways to teach them that their behavior is socially inappropriate.  Instead of raising my voice, I learned from supernanny, lowering the pitch of my voice immediately signals to the child that I am serious.  Making eye contact and firm but gentle physical contact is also very effective.  Telling the to stop firmly in a low pitched voice, quickly stopping them physically, and then supervising or helping cleanup or repair will stop the behavior, show the children I'm serious, teach them not to do it without making them feel worthless or shaming them, and demonstrate and aid constructive ways to repair the consequences.

So my reactive, instinctual way to "make them stop" is not the most effective and it can have serious negative long term consequences.

I think it also highlights an unconscious erroneous notion.  Although boys ages 7, 4, and a very abstract 3 know very well that certain behaviors such as throwing food inside the house and destroying things are socially inappropriate, destructive, and will upset me (I don't think they understand "morally wrong" yet), I get angry because I am not accepting the reality of young boys (perhaps all children).  It is normal behavior to get carried away by the enjoyment of destructive energy.

That doesn't mean that I have to tolerate it, and I think the method I outlined above will work just fine.  But the fury that overcame me was because I was feeling they "shouldn't" do this and they should "know better" and restrain themselves without my help.

In conclusion, when I'm feeling generally overwhelmed, I take a look at what the stress points are during my day.  I try to devise creative strategies to manage them.  I try to gain clarity about how I was reacting that wasn't working, and to gain some insight into what was underlying how I was reacting.  Realizing that I'm overwhelmed and going into "strategy" mode instead of "reaction" mode is half the battle.

staylistening

About a year and a half ago I had an extremely difficult time with my 2 1/2 year old.  He had been such an easy two-year-old, so mellow, so easy-going, so biddable.  And then he changed.  At first it wasn't so noticeable; once in a while he would get a little insistent, but it was so unusual it didn't seem to be a problem to give in to him, since it didn't "teach" him to behave that way, since his behavior was mostly perfect.  Gradually, though, he began having tantrums.  Huge tantrums, insane tantrums, 2 to 3 to 5 hour tantrums.  I didn't know what to do.  I usually could hang in okay for the first two hours.  After that, I began to have trouble.  I got mean.  I yelled.  I hit.  I screamed.  The most difficult part was when I was trying to remove myself to get some space, and he would follow me around, pulling on my clothes and shrieking, or, if I would go lock myself in the bathroom or away from him, he'd bang on the door and kick it, screaming.  I didn't know what to do.  

I discussed it with an occupational therapist and a speech therapist.  They suggested maybe, since he was so mellow, he didn't have the tools to calm himself, which other children, who used to get more upset, had learned earlier in their lives.  I tried teaching him techniques like deep breathing.  I tried deep pressure activities, sensory integration activities.  I tried discussing it with him afterwards (by this point, over 6 months had passed and he was three and able to converse and brainstorm and communicate) and we both agreed we didn't like when I got so angry like that and if I needed to walk away and calm down, he would let me, so I could come back and hug him, instead of screaming at him or hitting him.  I enlisted my husband's help and the help of my older kids, who agreed that when I felt I needed to walk away, that they would take over and make sure he didn't chase after me and bang the door down.  All of these things helped me handle the situation better, but didn't really help the situation.  

Last year's seder, he started crying at the beginning of Magid and cried all the way through Pesach-Matza-Maror.  Hours.  

At this point, I was fortunate that from one of my yahoogroups, somebody emailed me offlist about a technique from hand-in-hand parenting called "staylistening."  She gave me some links and offered advice as I stumbled through it, and it has become one of my primary tools for handling temper tantrums.  

The idea is to "invite the tantrum."  Meaning, for example, you let your child know that the answer is No. And then you do not give in.  Obviously, not giving in is going to get him* upset and he is going to try to get you to change your mind.  (tactics: screaming, tantrumming, throwing things, hitting parents, etc.)

The amazing insight to me about staylistening is that you "invite" this tantrum.  Once you make a parental decision, you mentally prepare yourself for the tantrum, and you don't try to stop it.  (For me, that was a huge attitude adjustment but also SUCH a relief.)  Then you let them "cry to futility."  You are empathetic and reflect back their feelings as they talk, but you don't try to change the reality of the situation.  ("Yeah, you are angry because you wanted to listen to the song again...yeah, you're mad at me.. yeah, you want it and i'm not listening to you.. yeah, you want it and i said 'no.'.. etc.)  And you have to block the hits (punches, scratches, bites).  But the amazing thing about it is that they cry, but that's ok, he's having strong feelings about not getting his way.  And he cries "to futility" meaning until he accepts that he doesn't get his way.  I think it's one of the most compassionate and most effective ways of addressing the concerning situation of "spoiling" a child.  And when you see them take that deep breath and sigh, it's amazing.  (At that point I usually "invite the tantrum" again, meaning I say, "You're angry I wouldn't let you have the song again?" and that sets off the tears again, and gives them the opportunity to give that last bit of fury and frustration and upset-ness and disappointment expression.).  At that point, they find it within themselves to move forward and accept the reality.  It's magical to see.

It takes some time to do.  When they get used to it, they can "cry to futility" in about 5-10 minutes, but sometimes it's as long as 1/2 hr or I've had 3 hr sessions**, when I first started this approach, because they had never cried "to futility" while I was compassionately listening and not trying to stop it before.  

_____________

*I'll use "him" because I learned this with my sons.

**It's true I had 3-5 hour crying sessions with Jack before this technique, but the difference was that I was stressed because I felt I should be stopping the crying and I couldn't, whereas with this technique, I'm just giving him the gift of experiencing the full gamut of his rage, fury, sadness, etc.

sibling fighting observations

We had a friend sleep over with his son, who is almost 6, around Elazar's age.  I guess the boys were having some conflict, and he asked me my policy on fighting.

Yesterday, I read an article about boys roughhousing and in some of the comments, there was some discussion about how things escalate and somebody always gets hurt.

I described to my friend what I look for in an interaction:

• When there is conflict, do they try to address it verbally or do they go straight to violence? (In my experience, there is almost always a verbal attempt. Or four or five.)

• When they begin to scuffle physically, is it very hard or is it a properly weighed cuff--hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to do serious damage?

• When somebody hurts someone to the point where he cries out in real surprised pain, is there a hesitation, a slight backing off to check it out, or does the aggressor keep going to hurt more?  

Backing off momentarily indicates empathy and caring, and you can stay out of it; ignoring pain and continuing to hurt or trying to induce more pain is a sign that you should immediately wade in a grab the hitter and move him away.

I think most people don't notice this slight hesitation or understand its significance.  Most children are naturally empathetic and have this reaction.  (Notably, my sweet 3yo did not when he was 2 and sitting on his 6mo brother.)

Another thing people miss, in terms of escalation, is that although there is frequently a small intensification of back and forth smacks and punches, accompanied by screaming, it usually quickly peaks to a mutually agreed ending.  It is still somewhat of a mystery to me, but after a flurry of beating each other, one or both backs off.

• Either they both agree that justice has been served (ie the little one broke the bigger one's castle, so the big one smacks him, and the little one smacks back, and the big one smacks back, and they all agree that justice is served and they both back off, emotionally satisfied).

or

• One decides that pursuing it is not worthwhile (ie one wants a toy and tries to take it and they yank it back and forth and smack the bejeebers out of each other and one decides he's been smacked enough).  He may walk away crying, but note that it is already de-escalated without you doing anything.  In that situation, I give hugs and kisses and sympathy (only if I am approached by a crying child), but I do not interfere with the justice of the jungle.  Often, after a brief cry, the child will find some other way to interact.  

It is important to notice that what adults think is fair or just in this situation is not the same as how the children experience it.  I am astonished how often a swift delivery of justice, followed by a retaliation, followed by another cuff of justice/retaliation, is considered equitable to both parties.  I have observed this multiple times.

It is also valuable to let children who are having conflict to physically work it out.  Watch carefully and note how measured the hitting is.  It is not so hard that it will cause damage, and yet it is with enough force to sting.  There are often hesitations and pauses while they learn how much force is too much and how much is just right, and they respond and back off in reactions to exclamations of intense pain.  These are lessons in socialization and emotional intelligence.  It trains children to respond empathetically and to notice nuances in expression, and to grasp emotional subtleties.   When adults don't get involved, you will also observe that children are inclined to back off based on an internal tolerance limit.  They are also inclined to take some time to regroup, and then rejoin with a different approach.  These are things we all would like our children to find the internal fortitude to practice.  Children who rely on adults to intervene often do not have the experience of looking within for these approaches.

If you find that one child is beating another and there is crying out and you do not observe a peak and a slight backing off (but make sure you are not interfering too early--watch first and look for subtle signs of empathy in the midst of the fighting), then separate them.  

My preference is to physically move them apart but not to speak.  I haven't found that saying anything is helpful or useful.  It more likely conveys disapproval and anger that is not beneficial to the child/ren.

But it is really astonishing, if you learn to observe signs of empathy and internal de-escalation, how infrequently you will have to get involved.  I'm not saying it doesn't get loud.  I'm not saying there is no crying.  And I have punted the phrase "No hitting!" from our home.  But the spurts are brief, intense, and noisy, and frequently end with some time of agreement.  It's more Wild, Wild West than civilization.  But read up on justice in the wild west and you'll be surprised at how fair it generally was.

boomerangs

Elazar was interested in boomerangs last month, and I never got around to researching if there was actually an easy way to make one.  Today I did, and I found 2 really easy methods.  Well, the origami one has a lot of steps, but in theory if I follow the directions it should probably be manageable.  The cardboard one looks so simple I might just do it.

here is the easy one:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Paper-Boomerang

you just take a cereal box and cut out a three armed figure, with the arms the same size and shape and 60 degrees apart.  Then you fold back a "corner" of the rounded edge of each arm.  Check out the pictures.

and here is the origami one:

http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-boomerang.html

This one involves lots and lots of folding but the included pictures are very clear.  (I originally found a wikihow with no pictures! From the descriptions, I couldn't envision exactly where to fold.  There are videos, but I prefer instructions with pictures.)

So we made the first one.  It took me a while to draw it correctly.  I finally drew a circle.  I'm not sure where my compass went but it would have been useful.  Elazar is now throwing it (the boomerang, not my missing compass).  It doesn't come back perfectly (that might be because we need to practice throwing it correctly), but the folds clearly cause some turning and it flies in an arc, even though it doesn't come directly back to us.

Yeah, I'm always experimenting on my kids

I read about elimination communication when my 4th child was a baby. I was reading an anthropological work about how African women's babies don't pee on them--they take the baby out of the sling, and the baby pees. I thought that was fascinating, but mysterious. Not something I could actually try at home.

Then, when my 5th child was a couple of months old, I read that Western parents were doing this. There were actually instructions on how to do it. There were actually books about it. I read Diaper Free by Ingrid Bauer and within the month I was trying it. I'm only sorry I only heard about it with my youngest child. Like many parenting endeavors, I would find it very rewarding to try it again, with the knowledge that everything works out in the end and you don't have to get so bogged down or worried about the minutiae, the details, and the moment to moment or even day to day. That it's a long term, gentle, relaxed, gradually flowing process.

My oldest 3 children were trained by my unschooling philosophy (even though I wasn't an unschooler back then): leave them alone; they'll figure it out when they are ready. They took care of it themselves at age 3.5, 4.75 (!!!!), and 4. Once they decided, they did it at night, too, and could hold it in long enough that when they said they had to go, you had 10 minutes to find and get to a bathroom. My 4 year old decided he was no longer wearing diapers the day we were going to the Bronx Zoo. "Are you sure?" I asked him. "Today?" Yep, he was sure. And it was fine.

My youngest two are seventeen months apart. My 4th watched me as I brought my 4 month old to pee in the toilet. By 22 months he was climbing on, too. A few months after 2, he was using the toilet and before 2.5 was dry at night.

When my youngest was 17 months, he began to say "doody, doody" when he had to go. He often takes himself. I never really achieved more than 80% catching his pees (probably because he was not my first child), but by age 2 we have a lot more 100% days than days where we have a miss. (I stopped ECing at night at 7 months, when I stopped co-sleeping.) He is dry 90% of naps, and sometimes at night (I don't respond to the 4 or 5am wakeup, when he probably has to pee).

People think that all EC is is to watch your baby carefully when she has to go, and then bring her. Or learn their cues (like fussing) or base it on timing (before naps, after naps etc). But I realized something astounding-- it's more than that. There is an actual communication that goes on between caregiver and baby, and it's more than just the caregiver receives cues from the baby. The baby can also receive cues from the caregiver! When the baby hears the ssssss sound, it triggers the baby to relax and release from his or her bladder. At this age, I can ask him if he has to pee and he'll answer me yes or no. But if we are about to go out and it's been a couple of hours, then i bring him and "cue" him, and he pees. That is him responding to me, not just me bringing him when he needs to go.

I can cue him for bowel movements, too. When I got home from work in the mornings last year, I cued him and he went. Today I'm going out and my mother-in-law is babysitting, so I'd like him to have his bowel movement before she comes. (At this age, I don't usually cue him for bowel movements any more, since he's 99.9% reliable to take himself to the toilet when he has to have a bowel movement--way more reliable than peeing, which he is as liable to do in the toilet as anywhere else in the house, if I don't take him.) So I cajoled him to the toilet, and he agreed, and I cued him with a grunt noise, and he made. Again, this is not me noticing his cues, it is me cueing him.

It's really interesting. I would not have thought it possible.

two tips

tip #1:

I read a great piece of advice a few months ago, and I've been trying to use it ever since:

When assigning a task (chore, errand, etc.), give it to the youngest child capable of doing it.

I have found with this that my 6, 3, and 2 year old boys have been doing a lot more.  They are still excited to be big, to participate, to have something to do.  And it cuts down on resentment a lot, because the older kids see that I am trying to spare them extra chores when I can.  This, in turn, makes them much more cheerful about helping out.

tip #2:

The other thing I do is with children as early as age 1, as soon as they are mobile and know where the garbage is.  Whenever they bring me something to open (a piece of gum, a string cheese, a yogurt), I hold the opened item and hand them the wrapper.  "Go throw that out and I'll give this to you as soon as you come back."  This habituates them to throwing out their own garbage.  I cannot communicate how utterly wonderful it is to not be used as a human trashcan, which for some reason children unconsciously presume their parents to be.  This leads to the point where when I open something, I don't even have to say anything.  They wait for the wrapper to throw it out.  And when they are older, and bring me milk to pour, or whipped cream to spray, I hand it back to them when they are done and they put it back in the refrigerator.  And if they ever bring me garbage, I just point to the nearest garbage and off they go.  (A few years ago, I did add 2 more garbages with kitchen garbage bags in them all around the main floor in order to make it simpler for the little ones.)

another great idea i may follow through on

I just read this blog post and it has inspired me: month-by-month decluttering

So I wrote up a little schedule for myself, and why not make it a little more permanent by popping it up on the internet, for other people who might possibly find it useful.

I've actually done a serious amount of decluttering in the last bunch of years, to the point of hiring an organizer twice while I was pregnant with my 5th child to get things under control before he was born, and reading a few books on the subject.  I can say now that I am wildly better at housekeeping than I was when I had one kid.  I would not call myself good at it yet.

My general goals were: to be able to clean any trashed room in under half an hour (such as a basement full of toys), to be able to straighten the house if unexpected company is coming by in 10-15 minutes, and to be able to walk through the house without avoiding things on the floor (that actually takes about 3-4 pick ups a day).

Despite my great beginnings, and slowly working on flylady, it does still have a tendency to get overwhelming if I'm not on top of things daily.  Which is understandable, considering I have supremely active 6, 3, and 2 year old boys who are in the house most of the day.  (Chana thankfully has learned to police her brass.)

So here is my schedule:

1. my bedroom: July

-surfaces

-floor

-ari's closet

-my night table

-laundry basket

-under the bed?

2. boys' bedroom: August

-under the bed

-3 shelves

-clothes

-dresser

3. office: September

-my closet

-my dresser

-surfaces

-ari's desk?

-floor

-toy bin

-boys' clothes

4. basement: October

5. living room: November

-bookshelf

-computer desk

-behind the couch

-floor

6. dining room: December

-door to downstairs

-corner

-blue furniture

-surfaces

-filing cabinet

-wine cabinet

7. bathrooms: January

8. sunroom: February

-behind couch

-clutter

-corner

9. storage rooms: March

10. kitchen: April

-cabinets

-surfaces

-fridge and freezer

-microwave cart

-floor

-laundry room

11. pantry, shared room: May

12. cars, linen closet: June

how i feel some days

This has nothing to do with Chumash but does have to do with homeschooling.  Well, not even really homeschooling.  Just being home with the kids all day.  ("How do you do it?  Being home with your kids all day?")  Usually I love it.  Usually, it's like a nice relaxing long weekend, only all week long.  (With me as the janitor.)  Usually, we play and laugh and enjoy.

But some days....

I said to Ari, I can't stand my employers.  Nothing makes them happy.  They are irrational, scream at me frequently, nothing I can do satisfies them, and their demands are neverending, impossible to keep up with.. and even the things I do manage to do, I don't do how they want and they are not nice about how they tell me so.  Sometimes it even degenerates into them physically abusing me, pulling on me or trying to hit me while they are screaming at me.  And the whole time, there is more to be done and more that they are demanding.  Also, I have more than one employer that i'm responsible to, and their demands and needs overlap and are often more than one urgent at the same time.  I'm trying to meet one employer's needs and the other one or more begin shouting about how their demands are urgent.  It's a working environment with constant demands and screaming and little ability to accomplish the demands of the job.  No lunch break or coffee break.
 
I don't want a different job, but sometimes I would like a little vacation!  And remember, a "family trip" is NOT a vacation! :)

Observation about sibling rivalry

It's been a rather insane 2 weeks with power out from the hurricane.  One thing that we homeschoolers joke about is that we didn't have off from school.  After a couple of days, though, Chana went to sleep at her cousins' house and that was the last I saw of her until erev Shabbos.  But she did double chumash the next week.  For a while, we took a break from new pesukim.  The rashis and pesukim were too complicated and adding even one new one every day was getting overwhelming.  So we took a week to really pound those pesukim and rashis, and just started adding new pesukim yesterday.

Aside from noticing that the sibling rivalry ratchets up in response to my own stress level, I noticed something about how the boys fight.  I saw this happen quite a few times.  One boy does something to another.  Something aggressive or destructive (e.g., he breaks a train track that his brother is building).  The victim gets angry at the aggressor.  There is a sense of outrage and a sense that there was a wrong that needs to be righted.  Justice needs to be done.  The victim goes over and wallops the aggressor.  Usually one good wallop, but sometimes a few sharp *whap*s.  Then, it seems like the sense of outraged justice has been satisfied, and there is a sort of deflating.  The aggressor seems to agree that he deserved it, and although he grunts in pain, he doesn't attack back, which is a tacit acknowledgment that he deserved it.  Then they move on to something else.

It's fascinating that it doesn't escalate beyond that.  Initial act of aggression, cry of outrage on behalf of the victim, victim puffs up and belts aggressor, aggressor responds to pain but doesn't attack back, both settle down like two chickens with ruffled feathers clucking and then calming down.

• it fascinates me that there seems to be an innate sense of justice operating here, and both parties agree.
• it's interesting how it settles down and doesn't escalate.  And yet, there are definitely other types of sibling rivalry interactions where the violence does escalate.  I'm curious to observe what causes the escalation and in which situations it occurs.

one aspect of "what homeschooling means to me"

i haven't done any chumash for a week.  chana's been doing chazara by herself and is all finished when i get home from work.  tomorrow we start the next parsha. 

aharon, who is 16 months, asked for milk this morning (ie he gestured until i opened the fridge, then he indicated the milk).  i poured him a little bit, which he drank himself.  he doesn't like me to hold the cup for him anymore.  then he wanted more.  then he wanted to carry the cup out of the kitchen.  drinks outside the kitchen for anyone under 2 is a soft limit for me (meaning i generally don't allow it but if you throw a really big temper tantrum and i'm already feeling frazzled there's a chance i might choose a spill over a nuclear meltdown of emotion).  so i took the cup away and he protested a bit, but i stood firm.  he didn't go off happily to play, so i asked him if he wanted cheerios.  he did, so i got a bowl.  as i was putting the cheerios into a bowl, he came over to me holding a plate he had taken from the pantry.

as i transferred some of the cheerios from the bowl onto the plate and put the plate on the ground so he could eat, i realized that this is part of unschooling.  i had an idea about how cheerios are to be eaten.  he presented me with an alternative idea.  instead of urging him to do it the "right" way or my way, i followed his lead.  i could see on his face, as he sat down to eat his cheerios that he had decided to put on the plate, that he was enjoying not only the cheerios, but the ideation of his theory that the cheerios can be eaten off the plate.

after a few minutes, he gestured to the bowl.  he picked up his plate of cheerios and poured them into the bowl. 

last week was parshas bereshis and this reminded me that adam was told "v'kivshuha" to conquer the world, to use our abstract capacity to master our environment and to make changes in it and to discover scientific principles and apply them, which leads to all sorts of creativity and technology.  and we also have shabbos, where we desist and put our creativity into perspective of Hashem's creation. 

i think for me, a lot of homeschooling is about giving my children the opportunity to have ideas and to try them out.  to have opinions on what they want to do and how they want to do it, and to have either the glorious satisfaction of it working as they imagined, or having it work out not as they imagined, or having something completely different and interesting happen.  i feel like this is one of the great enjoyments of being human, as well as it being part of our mission and design.  it starts early, as soon as babies start exploring, and i feel that being told to sit at a desk for the majority of the day and to do work that you haven't chosen and haven't felt a spark of desire to explore ends up quelling most people's innate curiosity and creativity.

we are creatures of will.  we have free will and we have choices, and most human beings are largely unaware of just how much free will we really have and how many choices there are.  when your childhood is full of days brimming with possibility and exploration and delightful "what shall i do today?"s, who knows what adulthood can be like?*






*everything i've ready by unschoolers who are now adults indicates that they are responsible and productive members of society. 

bullies2buddies experimentation

Last post I described an intriguing theory to manage sibling rivalry and my concerns about it. 

A few months ago, Jack was sitting on Aharon and beating him up, and Aharon was screaming (Jack 2, Aharon crawling).  My usual policy when that happened was to merely lift Jack off of Aharon.  Don't blame, don't expect self control, do separate.

Testing the theory that the boys love each other, and although Jack is clearly under the grip of aggressive desire, he doesn't truly want to hurt Aharon and will respond to his distress, I let the cries get worse and didn't move him.

Jack watched me, puzzled, sitting on Aharon, not getting off of him, and clearly wondering why I wasn't stopping him.  Aharon cried.

I waited more.  Jack didn't get off.  Aharon cried louder.  I couldn't take it and I moved Jack.

***

This week, Jack (2.5) started bothering Aharon (14mo).  Jack pushed Aharon.  Aharon cried.  Jack kind of glanced at me, waiting for me to show some sort of disagreement with that decision or to comfort Aharon, which is what I would often do.  I looked away (feeling kind of sick).  Then Aharon went over and pushed Jack!  Hoo, boy, I thought.  Bad idea.  Then Jack started crying.  Then Jack pushed Aharon.  And Aharon smacked Jack.  And they were fighting and crying.  I was pretty uncomfortable.  The yelling was getting pretty loud.  Then it hit a pretty intense point, and they both backed away from each other, crying pretty badly.  I was profoundly uncomfortable.  Then they stopped crying and started playing with each other.  I blinked.

****

Elazar was on the beach, drawing a big circle with Xs in it for buried treasure.  Jack kept on deliberately stepping into the circle and on the Xs.  Elazar said, "Jack, stop."  "Jack, stop."  "Jack, stop!"  "Jack, STOP!!"  Jack was doing it on purpose to provoke him.  My wont was to step in and move Jack away.  Don't blame, don't expect self control, do separate.

This time I let it continue.  Finally, Elazar, exasperated, gave Jack a *thunk* on the chest.  "Jack, STOP!"  Jack stopped immediately.

****

Aharon was playing duplo.  Elazar started building a tower taller than himself.  Ordinarily, my policy is that the child who is building builds in a location that is blocked off from the destroyer, so the destroyer has no access.  Don't blame, don't expect self control, do separate.  However, the destroyer was playing first, so it wouldn't be fair to pull him out of the room.  Even with some legos, he'd still feel upset.  Naturally, he went over and knocked down Elazar's tower.  Elazar was upset.  "Aharon knocked down my tower!  I'm so angry at him!  Aharon, I'm angry at you!  I'm so angry!"  Even all of this verbalization was not sufficient to cool his anger, and although I could see him striving to control himself, it burst out and he thumped Aharon on the chest: "Aharon!" *thunk* "Do NOT break my tower!"  As soon as he hit him, justice was restored in his mind, and the anger drained out of him and he went to rebuild.  Aharon began crying hard and came over to me, muttering and he hit me.  (Either he was passing on the aggression or he was telling me what happened.)  He muttered more and hit me again.

I was in a lot of conflict about this.  Clearly Elazar tries verbal communication first.  Clearly, Elazar feels better once he's hurt the person who has hurt him--but is that something I want to teach my children?  The animalistic law of the jungle?  If someone hurts you, then hurt him back?  Then you'll feel better?  I sat there, holding a crying Aharon, feeling conflicted.

Elazar looked up.  He said, "Aharon!" and he did a silly jump and flip so that Aharon would laugh, which he did.  He coaxed Aharon over and gave him a hug, and patted him, and said, "Don't break my tower, ok?" and Aharon said, "Ya."

***

So I think I will try to continue observing with this and see what happens.  I'll keep you posted!

***
PS.  As I was walking today, Jack and Aharon were in the umbrella stroller (Aharon sits and Jack stands behind him), and Jack started rat-a-tat-ing on Aharon's head, and Aharon started mildly complaining.  According to the theory, am I supposed to just leave that alone?  See if it gets bad, if Jack will back off?  I opted for my usual: "Gentle, Jack, gentle."  Jack started rubbing him gently, and I praised him.  I don't know if I would have left it alone, if they would have ended up fine.  But I also don't know how they would learn to be gentle if it isn't taught.  Would it come naturally?  

bullies2buddies and sibling rivalry

For the first 11 years that I was a parent, I had two children 5.5 years apart.  It wasn't no effort to raise them, but I did not deal with the classic "sibling rivalry."  People talked about their kids fighting, and I had no experience.  Periodically they argued or fought or annoyed each other, but it was basically nothing.  Then I was blessed with 3 children in under 4 years.  I still haven't had that much sibling rivalry to deal with until now.  Part of it may have to do with the fact that the older two did tandem nursing, which people say helps cut down the sibling rivalry.  A huge piece of it is the personality of my middle son, who by nature is peaceful and obliging.

So I read Siblings Without Rivalry by Faber and Mazlish.  And I've been using Playful Parenting techniques by Larry Cohen, which I am sorry I didn't know about when the girls were little.  When I see aggression brewing, I sweep the aggressor into wrestling or some type of fighting play, and it works miracles.

But as far as an ideology regarding sibling rivalry, I've been thinking for a while about bullies2buddies principles.  I read about it a couple of years ago, before I had 3 children close in age, so it was still pretty theoretical.  Some of the concepts (from my faulty memory) include:

• Hitting that doesn't draw blood or leave a mark is not really "hurting" between two people of about equal power.  It is actually a pretty effective way for them to navigate conflicts.
• Children don't usually want to badly hurt each other, and if left to their own devices, the majority of the time they will respond fairly quickly to a cry of true distress and back off immediately.  On the contrary, when adults get involved, it leads to children ignoring each other's signals and focusing more on the authority's cues and getting parental attention.
• It is useful to distinguish between bothering and annoying and hurting. 

Overall, he urges a policy of general non-involvement, on the theory that the great majority of what is going on is not true hurting that leaves marks or does damage, and on the theory that siblings generally love each other and will be responsive to a true cry of distress and will back off, and on the theory that they will thunk each other a few times and that is an acceptable way for them to work out their conflict.

I find this extremely logical.  There are a few points that cause me great discomfort:

1. What if it isn't quite so benign and one sibling is torturing the other.  Shouldn't that be stopped?  Isn't that damaging to the psyche of the one being tortured?  
2. Is encouraging/not stopping hitting and other mild forms of aggression something we want to teach our children?  Isn't growing up a lot about being able to control impulses, especially aggressive impulses?  Is this counter chinuch?  Do I really want to imply by my non-involvement that it's OK to hit?

Despite these hesitations, I am very intrigued by the theory and I have been eager to test it out.  The trouble with testing it out is that if i sometimes get involved and sometimes don't get involved, I am not sure if I am exacerbating the situation.

My next post will describe some situations where I tried it out.

going through a phase

I am blessed with a bunch of kids.   At any given moment, some are easy and some are giving me a run for my money and making me question everything I thought I knew about parenting.  As I keep reading on twitter: "Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories." ~ John Wilmot

I have noticed, though, that every time a child gets into a "difficult" phase, it takes me a little while to realize it.  For years and years I was surprised every time it happened again.  They would stop tantruming and become more amenable for a while and I apparently had an idea that that was their new way of being.  Until it isn't anymore.

One thing about parenting for well over a decade is that these ebbs and flows aren't as surprising to me as they used to be.  I'm beginning to learn to enjoy the pleasant interludes and mentally roll up my sleeves and give that extra effort and attention when they are calling out for it.

Basically, I use the rule of thumb of: am I getting annoyed at this child on a regular basis or are the two of us getting into more conflict than usual.  If yes, that means we have exited "pleasant phase" and entered "needy phase."  (I usually don't catch it for the first week or two of "needy phase" and instead feel a general stress about my life or unconscious dread of interacting with that child until i realize what is going on.)  So the first rule of the game is to make sure I'm giving that child extra one-on-one attention.  More playful parenting, more conversation, more focused attention. 


I also use that time to think more deeply about this child's overall development.  What qualities am I seeing?  What would I like to see develop?  Am I pushing too hard?  Not enough?  Have I screwed up?  Is it time to tweak how I'm doing things?  What is this child's nature and am I providing the proper soil and environment for this particular nature?


Is it "just a phase?"  Will the kid outgrow it?  Maybe.  Sometimes you don't need to do anything and the time passes and they become more of a mentsch. 

But maybe this time of extra intensity, extra stubbornness, extra assertion-of-the-self-in-a-way-that-annoys-me needs that extra love and attention.  I think of it as a soothing balm that helps them navigate whatever conflicts they are working through.  It's never a bad idea to put some effort into reconnecting emotionally.  When I feel irritated, I take that as an indication it's time to put in that effort.

Unschooling, Math, and Motivation

I had a fabulous idea for a math problem for chana.  Well, actually, it started as something I was starting to figure out and decided it would be great to fob off onto chana.  I noticed I was running low on face wash.  I have two brands.  One is 6oz and one is 16oz.  I like them both equally.  I wondered which one to replenish.  I thought it would be great for chana to do that.  Real live math.  So practical. 

All she has to do is go online, find the prices for each one, and she'll slowly and eventually realize that since they are different sizes, the cheaper one might be smaller so it's not necessarily the better deal.  Then she'll have to do some math.  She probably won't do it efficiently, but she'll be able to do it at her pace, and it will provide her with a deep understanding of unit price, much better than anything I could teach her from a book.

So I went downstairs and told her I would like help figuring out my shampoo.  She was in the middle of animating her latest movie.  She has subscribers who are waiting for the next installment.  Without taking her eyes off the screen, she told me she's not interested.

I am absolutely positive that as soon as she has her own, limited amount of money, and she has objects that she would like to buy, she will figure out how to get the most item for the cheapest unit price.  I tried to nudge her towards it, but since she doesn't need it now or find it useful, she is not interested.

I could urge her to work through the steps with me.  It would take about a half an hour, she'd be longing to go back to animation, she'd be annoyed that I'm disturbing her creativity, and she may or may not understand it.  Let's even say that she will understand it, since we are doing one-on-one work and i ought to be able to figure out a way.  But she won't be emotionally connected to it, she won't care, she might or might not remember it when it does eventually become relevant to her.

On the other hand, if I wait until she encounters it herself, and she has the idea that these types of questions are answerable with a little thought and calculation, and she knows i'm available for guidance if she gets stuck, then as soon as she needs it, she'll figure it out extremely quickly.  She'll be motivated and efficient.
***
The other day, chana was trying to figure out how many pages she had left to the book.  She wanted to calculate how many pages she had to do per day in order to finish it in a week.

I wanted so badly to show her how to look at the page numbers and subtract.  I tried to show it to her.  She was counting page by page.  She got irked that I butted in.  I've been thinking about that.  If I let her do it at her pace, using the method that she is figuring out, then she'll have a much deeper understanding of the process and it will be much more real and useful to her, then if I impose my way of doing the calculation.

Another argument for unlimited multimedia

I downloaded Seth Godin's book Stop Stealing Dreams.  I'm 32% through it.  I have read some of Seth Godin's posts via Trent from The Simple Dollar's roundup edition, where he appears regularly.  I am fascinated by his understanding of the post-industrialized world, the world of connection, and his description of the educational model that will be effective.  He writes about how even 5th graders can educate themselves with this new connectivity.  I have seen this with Chana; in her quest for animation, she finds techniques that she wants to learn, and then she contacts the people who do it and requests tips, or, even better, for them to make a youtube tutorial.  Within a few hours, a tutorial is up in response.  She then can ask questions.  It's remarkable. 
 

I'm really looking forward to reading the rest.  It confirms that the unschooling, or "child-led" model of education is efficient and full of passion and excitement.

He says (and it's obvious, really, but Seth Godin is always full of good sense that is obvious in retrospect and I need him to say it), the connectivity of instant, world wide communication allows people with the same passions and interests to find each other.  Now we can have conversations with each other and learn and grow from each other.  And collaborate.  And information doesn't need to be hoarded or memorized.  It is all instantly available. 

Here is a quote that is apropos of the question of allowing children unlimited access to technology and multimedia:

A citizen can spend his spare time getting smarter, more motivated, and more involved, or he can tune out, drop out, and entertain himself into a stupor.

Nurturing children to follow their passions will likely encourage them, especially with unlimited media access, to follow dreams.  Another quote: "Settling for the not-particularly uplifting dream of a boring, steady job isn't helpful.  Dreaming of being picked--picked to be on TV...or picked to be lucky--isn't helpful either..The dreams we need are self-reliant dreams.  We need dreams based not on what is but on what might be.  We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen."

on choice in unschooling

As far as video game execs creating games to suck in my kid as long as possible, I once read an education article saying that video games are the perfect paradigm of education.  They are challenging in difficulty, getting incrementally more challenging in an exciting way that builds up and up as you improve.  They give emotional satisfaction from solving problems.  Those are the factors that make video games great :-)  I try to model my lessons after them.

Again, I will be keeping a close eye on elazar and the other boys when they get old enough, but right now the part that he loves is the figuring out, the mastering, and the achievement.  Leonard Sax's point is well taken that boys need these same satisfactions in the real world, or they risk being sucked in to enjoy it via media and not deal with the frustrations of the real world.  But I hope homeschooling will give my boys many happy hours of enjoyable real world challenges.  It may very well be that given a choice of the stifling way that we make boys behave vs media, that they will choose media.
Elazar woke up at 5:45, chose to snuggle for 1/2 hr, then watched Shrek III 2.5 times (I assume that's about 5 hrs.  I heard him repeating some of the lines and mimicking their tone).  Then he desperately wanted friend interaction and activity.  Based on the Are You Hungry paradigm, I firmly believe that kids will choose activities the same way that they choose food, and IF all things are offered, and IF there are no underlying emotional issues that are being expressed, children will choose moderation and balance, and a mix of everything.

As I say over and over, I am open to the possibility that this is not true, and I will keep an eye to see what is happening.  But so far all indications point to lots of choosing.

*Are You Hungry?: A Completely New Approach to Raising Children Free of Food and Weight Problems [Hardcover]

Jane R. Hirschmann (Author), Lela Zaphiropoulos (Author)

2 unexpected things

i was thinking of skipping today.  last night, motzei shabbos, we had to pay a shiva call that took 3 hrs travel time and 1 hr there.  i brought the chumash in the car but 1. it was night time and there was no light and 2. chana was hungry and thus grouchy and even if we could have seen, she wasn't in a good state.  then today we had a bat mitzva (awesome fun :) and getting ready took all day.  (not really, but i realized this morning that elazar and i wake up raring to go, whereas chana doesn't).  and then we had a purim chagiga, and i was feeling like i was just going to let today slide.  but chana came in and asked if she would be permitted to use her computer in bed this evening just to do some movie making thing. 

(side point: usually chana is not permitted on the internet in her room, which i was happy about yet again this morning as she has her youtube channel and someone kept asking her about being friends on facebook and she consulted me on how to respond: "my mom doesn't let me be friends with people i don't know in real life.")

so i said she could use her computer this evening in bed, and she looked at the clock, and said, "ok, so i have time to do chumash." 

well.  that was unexpected.  so i asked her what she wanted to do.  and she said, "new pesukim and rashi."  so we did new pesukim.  i said they were difficult.  she asked how many we would do.  i said however many she wanted.  we ended up finishing chamishi.  at one point she said, "why are these taking so long?  oh, yeah.  you said they were hard."  and then when she got through the tough ones (5) there were only 2 or 3 more til the end, and they weren't so difficult.  afterwards, i really wanted to review them again.  because even though she wasn't in a bad mood, her focus was not there.  one rashi which she found hard but we had been making some progress on, she didn't know a single word.  and til now, she'd been improving every reading.  sometimes she doesn't learn well because she is angry or in a bad mood or has different expectations.  but today she was just not concentrating well.  maybe because she went to bed after midnight last night and woke up early and she has a cold.  it was interesting because most usually she has trouble translating or understanding for emotional reasons; tonight it seemed to be physical.  come to think of it, when she's hungry she has trouble too--but that usually expresses itself as her being in a bad mood or grouchy.  anyhoo, she asked if we could review it tomorrow instead. 

i felt, perhaps incorrectly, that the neural pathways would be more easily treaded if we reviewed it right away.  i have intuitions about these things based on hazy memories (no irony intended) of scientific articles i read about blazing neural pathways.  so i asked her if she would pay attention if i read it.  she assured me she would.

so i read it with a lot of expression, reading and translating.  i watched her to see if she was paying attention.  she was actually mesmerized, which i gotta tell you is unusual regarding chumash.  i asked her afterwards if she liked it, and she said it was like i was reading her A Little Princess (which i am in the middle of reading to her).

i wonder if it might be a good idea to mix up chazara with me reading it to her like that.  as a general rule, i don't like to do that because it is passive not active, and the student has a tendency to mentally wander off.  but if she'll enjoy it, i will definitely do it.

tangent the perception of time

I've been thinking about the passage of time.  In my teens and 20s, a decade seemed like a really long time. A project that would take a decade, be it learning something new, seriously improving a character trait, or accomplishing some project that would take a "long time," seemed like something overwhelming.  It seemed like something that it would be easier not to bother with, since the end goal was something so far away.

But now that I've been self-willed for almost 2 decades, I am at the tail end of long blocks of time.  Ten years have passed from more than one starting point that I was aware of.  To paraphrase the words of Yehuda (Bereshis 43:11), "Had we not delayed, we could have finished twice already."

When you are young, the projects seem daunting and the time seems too long and it doesn't feel like a decade is enough of a reality that it pays to embark.

But after 2 decades, it's been striking me lately how much time we have.  And how much we can do with that time.  If all goes well, I will have a few more decades.  And a decade is enough time to do some major things, make huge progress, complete grand schemes and gain tremendous clarity and knowledge in an area.  I won't be daunted.  I am old enough now to mentally grasp a decade.  When I was a child, a day was long.  A year was long.  An hour was long. 

Now, ten years is long.  But long in the sense that I can roll up my sleeves, dig in, and get some things done.

Here's to the future!

tangent on horoscopes

since this is my only blog and i don't feel like opening another one, i've decided to periodically post random things.  they will have the label "tangent."

Reuven was not feeling well and went home to his family. On that very day, his horoscope said that being with family when ill makes you feel better. Reuven found this interesting.

Sarah and I did not find this interesting. We felt that this is a coincidence. Perhaps slightly more than coincidence, actually--it is a manipulation based on statistical probability designed to be relevant to a majority of human beings.

Reuven thinks that making decisions based on horoscopes is a Torah prohibition of "Lo S'Onenu." Therefore, had Reuven not been feeling well and read in his horoscope that he should go home, he would not have done so. However, Reuven already intended to go home (or was on his way home) so there was no prohibition. Reuven thinks that astrology has some knowledge (chochma or wisdom) that it "knew" that he was sick and going home.

Reuven does not think this is "astonishing." It did not "blow his mind" or make him think that he should consult astrology because it has the answer to all of life's questions.Reuven did not even think this was "amazing." He does not think that it is a fantastic source of knowledge or wisdom. However, Reuven  does think it is "interesting." He thinks that this accuracy indicates that there is some bit of wisdom and truth here.

Reuven is not "superstitious." Perhaps, as Ari often puts it, he is merely a bit "stitious."

In my opinion, most people in the world are either with their family or not with their family. (Ok, that actually applies to ALL people in the world). If they are sick, they will either find comfort in their family or yearn for their family. "Sick" can be physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. So this applies to the majority of people, since most people have some form of unhappiness that can be interpreted as "sick." This is why Sarah and I do not believe that there is anything significant in this.

I paraphrase the episode of South Park where Stan pretends to be a psychic:
Stan: "I'm getting the month... November..."
Lady: "Oh, my god! My mother's birthday is in November!"
Stan: "Oh.. I chose November because Thanksgiving is in November and I figured you'd probably have some family memories about that... but birthday works, too."

Ibn Ezra on Vayikra 19:31 (do not turn to those who speak to the Dead) says:
Those who seek to know the future and those who are empty headed say, "If not for the fact that fortune tellers and magic are true, the Torah would not forbid it." And I say the opposite of their words: The Torah does not prohibit the truth, only sheker. And the proof is the prohibition of idols and statues.