Copasetic Flow

 We’re living in the time of covid. There’s another surge right now; it started just before Christmas, and with the cold, rainy wether and holiday gatherings it’s cruising along. As a result, I’ve been somewhat terrified of the kids injuring themselves. We’ve never had to go to the emergency room. It seems that now would be a terrible time to start. I made myself worry even more when, on an early morning walk, I stepped onto one of the rocks scattered throughout our local park—for people to perch on or to create borders—and promptly and unceremoniously slipped right back off, my hiking sandals finding no purchase atop the boulder made slick by the morning’s fog and the previous night’s rain. Things got so bad—in my own mind—that a few days back I did one of the thing I try very hard never to do. I asked the kids to be careful when they were playing on the rocks. It was ridiculous. I regretted having said it immediately. The kids grew up in that park. They know every single rock lik...

I received the Tish Murtha book, “Elswick Kids” a few days ago. In the book is an introduction by Mark Richards, and further along, a picture of several kids climbing up the scaffolding of a building. The scaffolding picture is ebullient. The kids are having a blast; a group of six or so of them are at various stages in their climb up the side of the building having levered boards down in a few places to more easily scale the thing.  Meanwhile, the book’s introduction laments, To those of us who lived through this time the images will look strangely familiar - like a mirror of our own existence for we children who were lucky enough to be born free. and I’ve got to say, in some ways I think kids are still born free, can still play like the kids in this book, but in other ways.. Well, it made me think of our own scaffolding experience a few weeks ago. Plugging away at my standing desk in front of the Old Fed Reserve, I noticed the kid’s feet were no longer on the ground. She’d launc...

Fire hydrants! What are they really for anyway? Are they to put out burning buildings? Firemen speeding to the scene, pivoting a hose into place to extinguish the blaze? Yeah, certainly, they’re good for that.  Are they for opening up to create sprays and puddles for kids to cool down in the summer? Maybe. I mean, I’ve sen pictures of kids doing these sorts of things with fire hydrants. We all have right? All the pictures I’ve seen were old though. Do kids really do that anymore? I dunno. And besides we’re in San Francisco where it rarely gets hot enough for that sort of thing, and when it does—you know, those three days of the year—we’re more of a bus to the beach sort of crowd. What about hydrants as an integral part of a citywide playscape? Oh! Yeah! That’s what I see hydrants used for the most. They’re used to balance on; they’re used as quasi-barstools while kids wait for the bus; and they’re used as platforms to launch onto other makeshift play equipment like... I dunno... Ye...

 The gang—Daize, Towser, and Tawnse, all aliases, aged 9, 8, and just for  a little bit longer 5—have picked up a new skill in the pandemic. Disappearing into their surroundings.  Before you go there, no this isn’t a pandemic socialization piece. It’s not a learning loss and socialization piece either. This is a post about an honest to goodness new skill the gang has picked up. In  retrospect, I suppose it started with Towser years ago. Walking though a park near our home in San Francisco,  we realized that five year-old Towser was  just gone. We looked around for him a bit, but I had a feeling in my somewhat panicked gut that I knew where he was. We headed for the house. Sure enough he was sitting on the steps by the front door.  “Hey! I’ve been waiting for you!” Towser groused. “I just picked a different path through the forest when you weren’t looking. I wanted to see if I could sneak all the way home.” We talked a bit about  the  importan...

Just a pointer on kids and clothes.  Not about your kids per se, what you do with your kids is your and their business, but more about kids in general.  Please, let them where what they wanna wear, and keep your comments to yourself. Fortunately, the gang here hasn’t ever been hassled about their clothes.  Their shoestrings on more than one occasion, but so far, not their clothes.  (Which isn’t to say I haven’t been regaled with the ‘your baby’s too warm/cold/temperate’ nonsense, because I have, but the kids haven’t.)  The fact that the gang have not been hit up about their clothes is somewhat amazing.  Given that they wear a combination of all their available clothes including the clothes I wore as a kid—apparently my dad’s a bit of a clothes archivist, who knew?—the kids here on any given day look very much like Tyler Durden curated their ensemble.  Still, while we get the occasional wide-eyed look from folks on the sidewalks of San Francisco—t...

Eight year-old No. One stood in front of a room of 50 people at the junior track of engineering conference with a mic and a laser pointer.  She was describing a two-bit binary adder she’d built, and she nailed it! She and her sibs pretty routinely speak in public—although not with that big of an audience—in one form or another.  To them, it’s not a big deal.  It’s something everyone else around them does, so why wouldn’t they?  They never got the memo telling them that public speaking was something to be feared. Part of their comfort—I think—has to do with the fact that they inadvertently grew up speaking in public; thanks in part to me being lazy.  Here are five things we did together that I think got them used to the idea of public speaking. Paying the ticket at the restaurant:  It’s always been the job of the youngest kid to take our money for the restaurant bill to our server.  The three to four year-old kid wanders around, finds the pers...

We had a cozy, welcoming local coffee shop in the little college town we lived in when the kids started arriving.  It was a large two story affair with an outdoor patio. All sorts of different mugs decorated the walls.  You’d pick out a mug, tell the kid tending the counter what you wanted, and they’d make it in your chosen vessel.  This adorable little hangout is one of the first places the gang learned how to head out on their own to work on things they wanted. When 8 y.o. No. One was almost three, she, her little brother—still in the wrap, snuggled into my chest—and I would go there.  The place had a water dispenser, one of those ceramic arrangements with a plastic jug sticking inverted out the top of it.  It had a spicket on the bottom with a lever that you pushed down for water.  A stack of paper cups sat next to it so you could have a drink of water along with your coffee.  The kid was fascinated with the thing.  She could reach the cup...

I get a big kick out of the 8, 6, and 4 year-old kids here being as independent as they are.  It’s fun to watch them accomplish things on their own.  The look of pride they have in their own abilities makes me happy.  Knowing that they can do things on their own makes my world less stressful and more free.  Their independence also makes all of our lives more convenient.  They’re starting to learn how to get around town on their own on public transit, so they can get to the things they want to do without me.  They're all developing different interests, so it's great that each of them is pleased as can be doing things on their own without their sibs, my partner and I.  All of this lets them do and experience more.  They also help me with errands we need to get done for the whole family.  Their ability to roam out, free away from me, means they can take care of some of our shopping tasks while I take care of others. They’ve all been practicing...

I'm a huge fans of unsupervised outdoor play.  I had yet another great experience with it during our camping trip over the last weekend. The kids headed out early in the morning with their nanny to get our campsite setup. Since they’re able to get there early, we're usually able to get a tent site, even during the busy summer months.  The days, the kids haul their own sleeping bags and the tent.  When they arrived, they set up the tent, (the nanny doesn’t know how), put their backpacks inside to anchor it, and then headed out for a  five mile hike into the nearest little town at the bottom of the mountain.  (The place the raptor class took place as a matter of fact.) LetGrow.org has a great  interview about the value of free, outdoor play . That afternoon, I met the gang in the same little town, took over from the nanny, and we all headed back up to the campsite via public bus line.  By the time we arrived back at the campground, the wind had tumbl...

First, there’s a great FB user group if you’re interested in things like kids being independent .  It’s sponsored by letrow.org .  After the music festival post a few days ago, somebody asked how my partner and I navigate issues where the four year-old might feel like she needs to wander off from the other two kids.  Here’s what’s worked for the gang so far: At the start of the year, right after her birthday, I probably wouldn't have let the 4 y.o. wander off with her sibs.  We do a couple of different things as far as practice and prep.  When the four year-old was three, she wasn't allowed to go with her sibs.  She and I would wander the neighborhood while they walked the dog though.  She got to pick the directions to go, and we talked all about the things we saw.  I think that's how she began to learn about landmarks.  Since she's been four, she has been allowed to go on the dog walks, which have been getting progressively longer. ...

The gang, (8 y.o. No. One, six y.o. No. Two, and four y.o. No. Three), my partner, and got to go to a music festival this weekend.  We saw James and the Psychedelic Furs, and it was soooo easy!  We arrived about 10:30 in the morning to get a good seat.  The kids were with us, we’d be there till about 5 PM.  The music was scheduled to start about 2:30.  We brought a ton of food because the kids and I travel on our stomachs, and wait for it, one activity.  The single activity was a card game that involves the players throwing foam burritos at each other.  The kids played one game of it with their friends.  The rest of the day, they blissfully (for me), and independently occupied themselves with exploring the festival.  My partner and I didn’t have to mess with any of this.  She got to paint with watercolors for a while, and read.  I got to write for a bit.  We got to catch up with our friend, (the parent of the other tw...

I can’t wait!  Our annual two week camping trip is coming up in a few weeks.  We’ll head out and away from town—the one time all year we actually drive a car—to explore the forests, rivers, deserts and rock formations around us in a roughly four or five state radius.  We plan travel a lot like we plan unschooling—in broad swaths of possibilities.  We know we want to camp.  We know we want to fish.  We know we’d like to see snow.  (Yup, there are totally places to see snow in June.  It even snowed on us a little last June.)  Finally, we know we’d like to see the dry, warm desert.  We’re making a north, then south loop that will get these things done, but we’re unclear on all the rest of the details so far.  I know we’ll stay off of interstates in favor of state highways.  The little towns and the countryside are better out there; there’s less traffic; and the people are really nice.  We might head towards a few places w...

Just a little note to concerned ‘grownups’ everywhere.  If you look at a kid—and I mean really look—I don’t mean notice a person shorter than you, I mean make eye contact, notice their facial expression and observe their body language—If you look at a kid, don’t assume they need your help unless they’re obviously distressed, or ask for it.  You might think this is difficult call to make.  You might think, not having kids of your own, that you’re unable to make this determination.  You are.  You do in fact, already have the skills even if you’ve never been around kids  It’s a remarkably simple call to make, just use the exact same criteria you would for determining if an adult was in distress.  Because, guess what, kids and adults are in fact the same species of animal and communicate in the same way.  Honest.  If someone—adult or child—doesn’t need your help, feel free to say hello, give a wave, give a smile, but don’t—do not—try to force hel...

A few weeks ago, we went to a friend’s birthday party at a water park.  After we’d gained admission to the park, five year-old No. Two was promptly nowhere to be seen. “Have you seen Two?” I asked my partner. “Nope.” So, off to look I went.  Fortunately, the water park had a rather compact design.  There was the splash area, a full sized pool for swimmers, and those learning to swim, and a collection of seven or so water slides, all fed by the same three story tall set of stairs and platforms.  I knew Two wasn’t in the splash area because that’s where we were.  As I meandered between the big pool and the slides, I caught a flash of Two’s ultra-blonde mop of hair out of the corner of my eye and way up. In disbelief, I looked up the water slide tower to see if I had really spotted Two.  I had to wait a few moments, but I caught a glimpse of him again.  He was at the entrance to the slides on a platform thirty feet up in the air.  He’d line...

Life skill testing?  Sounds like a bad idea, because, well, it is.  If you’re wondering what on Earth I’m talking about, it came up in yesterday’s post when I wondered if perhaps unschooling kids could hang out with vetted Directors of Tactical Ops, (DTOs aka nannies),  while traveling with their parents on work trips.  As a brief recap, I reasoned/hoped that kids could travel with their parents on business trips, hang out with local DTOs, and then explore the area with their parent over the weekend.  It’s not quite what’s known as World Schooling, where families travel the world freely instead of going to school.  It’s a middle ground.  From the kid’s point of view: Mom or Dad are travelling, there’s stuff I could experience, I’m going with them.  There were two issues though, one was vetting DTOs.  The other one, the one that led me to thoughts of life-skill testing was vetting kids, in order to qualify them to wander around towns with D...

I recently read about a couple who, while waiting for their table in a restaurant, were allowed to sit at the bar, but thanks to Victorian style child ‘safety’ laws, their five and seven year old kids had to stand against the back wall two feet from the bar.  Kids weren’t allowed to sit at bars in that state.  You know, because safety.   On our last two trips to New Mexico, we’ve had similar experiences.  On our most recent trip, seven year-old No. One and I were told we couldn’t be seated at the bar even though they served food there, even though we were in a restaurant., because the state of New Mexico has deemed it Wrong.  The trip before that a waitress warned us away from the high-top tables.  Once again, it was for safety’s sake.  On our current trip to DC, the kid vaulted onto a bar-stool, so yeah, I guess she can handle it. Clearly I think kids should be allowed in bars.  I think it builds both social and real-world skills....

Wanna know what I have yet to succeed at as a parent?  Teaching kids to drink through straws.  All of the gang here—7 y.o No. One, 5 y.o. No. Two, and 3 y.o. No. Three—learned how to drink from cups immediately after they were weaned with the exception of an intermittent bottle or two.  Sure, there were spills on the table, yeah, occasionally a cup without a lid was knocked to the floor, but much like my quest for the kids to walk with me everywhere rather than resorting to a stroller, we just kept on plugging along.  Consequently, when the kids do try to use straws, straws brought to them by people who really did mean well, it’s been a disaster.  To them, straws clearly work in the same fashion as cups: grasp it with your math, tilt your head and the cup back, and, and, disaster!  For the occasional cup that has a lid perhaps there’s only a small leak.  For cups with open tops… whoops!  There went the whole drink into the lap. As a result, I ...