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...

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...

 Part of our unschooling plan has always been for the gang, 10 year-old Daize, 9 year-old Mota, and 6 year-old Tawnse to get themselves from place to place. The fact that we live in San Franicsco where a major metropolitan transit system exists that doubles as a school bus system has made this easier. Still, practie makes perfect, so we entered into a new phase of our tranist-readiness program today: preparing to ride BART trains solo. The kids have gone a few cars ahead of me before with no issues, so it seemed like a good idea today for the gang to try heading out one whole train ahead of me. On top of that we found ourselves in the perfect scenario with two trains leaving to the same destination, one just a minute behind the other. And so we tried, but I gotta warn you, our results were interesting but mixed in my opinion, and yes, it was my fault. Finding ourselves with the perfect temporal spacing, I decided we could just 'go for it' even though we were headed to a station...

 The kids just headed out in the 39 degree F weather, in the dark to walk the dog. It’s there thing. The do it every night. They have for years. My dad watched them go. It’s killing him. He tried to stop the whole thing.  It’s killing him. I value their independence above just about anything else. I love watching them do things. Not the things I chose, but the things they picked for themselves. I’ll do what I can to keep them doing those things even if it means other folks might have to sit with their  discomfort.Even—especially—when I have to sit with my own discomfort.   And, I wonder if that’s always it? Do people try to shut the kids down ala   “Do your parents know where you are?’ Or by charging a child balanced on a bike rack with exhortations of  “Are you al right?!” Yeah, they sure were alright before somebody started anxiously coming at them. I wonder, how much of ‘keeping kids safe’ is just about not being able to tolerate personal disco...

 This morning, while practicing my fronted adverbials, I came across this from Idaho Bill allowing free-range parenting, the "Reasonable Childhood Independence Act", introduced to Idaho House - would mean kids allowed to engage in independent activities, like walk to the park, won't be considered "neglected" https://t.co/oRTBsSsCyE — Dr. Jacqueline Kory-Westlund (@jacquelinekory) January 15, 2021 Which—as often as the kids here are out and about—sounds great to me. But, having read the bill’s text, I’m both excited, and concerned.  First, the details. The bill was proposed by Rep. Ron Nate. It is H0003, and it’s full text can be found on the Idaho Legislature web site at  https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2021/legislation/H0003.pdf The purpose of the bill is to redefine the definition of negligence so that it does not include activities that kids typically perform independently of parents, (or at least activities that kids typical...

My week in the education literature continues. Tracing through the references from the article I mentioned yesterday, I wound  up at Social Behaviors and Gender Differences Among Preschoolers: Implications for Science Activities To be fair, I did read through the entire article, but these two gems in the abstract caught my attention immediately: Findings indicate that the social behaviors of boys and girls were stereotypical and During free time, preference for same-gender peer interactions was observed The authors go on to discuss the aggressive, at times violent behavior of boys, and the generally more caring behavior of girls.  Per normal, these assertions run  contrary to my experiences. I believe the institution the kids are being studied in—public schools—can very easily instill these messages. I do not believe, however, that they have to be the norm. My most recent  experience with the concept that institutions can teach stereotypical gender behavior came almo...

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...

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. ...

If you only buy one parenting book, it should be “ Small Animal, Parenthood in the Age of Fear ,” by Kim Brooks.  If you’ve grown up anywhere near children, chances are you’ll parent just fine.  Sure, you could buy a copy of Dr. Spock.  I did.  I made it as far as Spock telling me that my daughter would envy me for my penis.  I snorted, set the book down, and promptly ‘misplaced’ the tome a few weeks later.  You could also buy a copy of Sears' Baby Book.  There are some good tidbits from place to place in this massive volume.  He’ll tell you that babies spike fevers—just like the rest of us—and that it’s the body's natural way of staving off infection; that made me feel better during pretty much every baby fever we endured.  He’ll suggest you babywear, co-sleep, and attachment parent in general.  So will I.  Where Sears lost me was when I realized that in all likelihood, his wife, did all these things with his children rather than h...

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...

Screens in public… do kids need them?  I suppose a screen per kid could have led to a more blissful early childhood for my partner and I with us maybe having conversations at dinner, perhaps getting chores done more quickly, but I’ll never know.  We lucked out.  Early on, we had no way to provide the kids with screens.  We were poor grad students so buying the kids a screen of their own was out of the question.  In retrospect, our lack of screens provided more opportunities than it took away. Yeah, we did miss going out to eat for the first six months or so, (we couldn’t eat out all that much on our budget anyway).  Here’s the thing though.  As the first kid learned to sit up on her own and learned to crawl, all of our problems started to fade.  When we went out she involved herself with us, the condiments, her silverware, her napkin, her food, and ours.  She quit screaming.  Not all together, and not all alt once, but over time ...