Copasetic Flow

I like reading parenting blogs because they make me think. They make me think so much that I often times wind up copying my blog posts here from my original contents there. If you don't read Evil Witches by Claire Zulkey yet, it's a lot of fun. Anyway, here's my comment to her interview with Cara Goodwin about research based parenting. (Probably not a huge shocker to anyone here, but I tend to go with the research I already agreed with, you know, I'm.... data based... yeah, that's it.... Snort.) Wow! So much of this is so familiar. Thanks for doing this interview, I think it makes for a very much needed buffer against the impressions that I see people get about atttachment and respectful parenting. tldr; I did most of the things, but probalby, per the books, I did them wrong? I did them because I was selfish and they were easy for me in the not-even-slightly common situations I had. We did 'attachment parenting' because strollers just looked like so much w...

Twelve meteors! I saw twelve meteors in the Quadrantids shower at the start of the week! I promised the 9 year old—Daize to regular readers; all the gang’s names are aliases—I’d wake her up if the meteor shower looked promising. I went outside on my own to check it out just before 4 AM. Sure enough, in just a few minutes, I saw four meteors. None of them were super impressive in and of themselves, but there were so many! I headed back in to wake up the kid.   While I was waking up Daize, her 5 year old—Tawnse in these pages—and 8 year old—Towser, as he’s sometimes known here—sibs woke up as well. I asked if they wanted to come watch  meteors. Tawnse was in. Towser decided he’d rather get a bit more sleep. A few minutes passed while jackets and snow boots were collected, then Daize, Tawnse, and I headed back outside. The kids sounded like miniature astronauts, their snow boots plodding down the sidewalk in the cold, clear, silence of the surrounding desert. I'll give her this, ...

A bit of a conflagration took place in the unschooling portion of twitter this week.  The discussion revolved around whether or not children have power and whether or not we as parents ‘have to’ coerce them. As an unschooling dad, I like to believe kids do have power.  I like to back off as much as I can, and I’ve discovered the more I back off, the better things go.  And, therein lies the rub, I think.  Yes, I do have power, both based on my size, my ‘status’ in society, and money.  Choosing not to use that power however is what improves my life and the kids’.  As an unschooling parent, I think the kids should be learning what they want to learn when they want to learn it.  I also think that the thought that I could coerce the kids into learning things by applying my power is wrong-headed.  Let’s take, for example six year-old No. Two’s efforts to read, or perhaps I’d be more accurate in phrasing it as his lack of effort to read.  Fo...

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...

“Watch me!  Watch me!” The bicycle rack seemed innocent enough in its simplicity, three metal tubes about the width of flag poles that had been bent into flat bottomed ‘U’s which were then inverted so their legs could be bolted to the concrete below leaving the flat bottom for bicycles to lean against.  The rack was innocent alright, but the gang had attacked it anyway.  Now, having suitably pacified the beleaguered bike rack, they were all demanding attention.  Each of them had turned upside down supported only by their hands, their legs lying flat back across their bodies, feet beyond their heads.  The older two, seven year-old No. One and five year-old No. Two had started seated on the horizontal cross bar, then swung themselves back hanging on with their hands.  The youngest, three year-old No. Three stood about head level with the cross bar, so she started from below, squatted down a bit, took hold of the bar, swung her feet up to it, and finally lai...

The gang has been remarkably chill this week; they’re working with each other instead of squabbling; they’re taking time to make big decisions, weighing out the pros and cons; occasional disappointment have been taken in stride; and at bedtime, they’ve zonked right out every night.  Trying to figure out the secret of their success, I asked my partner what she thought.  Her immediate response: “They went camping last weekend.” Even though I don’t’ have copious amounts of data to back me up, I think the camping hypothesis is exactly right.  Our camping trips look far more like the free-range, unschooling ideal we shoot for than our everyday life does.  The kids are responsible for almost all of the logistics: they know the bus route to get to the campsite; they carry their own stuff; they setup the tent.  They also get to engage in far more independent, sometimes risky play.  The campground is theirs to wander around as they please.  On our hikes, they...

And We Went the Other Way My life has been punctuated of late with various utterances of “No,” and “That’s not allowed,” regarding our day to day unschooling activities.  These admonishments have touched on topics including sitting on bar-stools, participating in museum classes, and  even helping out at volunteer soup kitchens.  It’s been kind of exasperating to say the least.  For the longest time I found myself sinking into a pit of embitterment.  I almost wrote about my negative feelings a time or two, but then narrowly talked myself out of it after jotting down a few notes.  Each time I’d giggle, and admonish myself with one of our local idioms, “What would Tatum do?”  If you’ve never heard of JB Tatum, he’s a physicist from Vancouver, Canada who may have never impolitely uttered a negative word, as especially illustrated by this, his most vehement of scientific diatribes. I wondered and wondered how Tatum would handle these situations. ...

Unschoolers love to say they don't follow curricula.  I've noticed though, that you can define an unschooling curriculum backwards in time by what the gang, (three year-old No. 3, five year-old No. 2, and seven year-old No. 1), has accomplished in the last week.  It's kind of awesome, going in, we had no goals, nor any idea any of this would happen! 3 developed a love of cooking! 3 asked to attend a pick-up cooking class for kids at the Noe Valley Rec Center.   (I love that San Francisco kids can drop into Parks & Rec classes if there's room.)    She had a blast!  About four days later, when she and I went to the red-hat for our weekly meat and egg shopping, she insisted that we get squid.  She asked to hold the bag while I levered the squid into it.  (This led to an amusing confusion.;  unable to see 3 below the seafood ice tray, one of the workers was concerned I was dumping squid onto the floor.)  When I was ready to...