Do Unto Others

I got a whack on the head the other evening. I was reading Kim Stanley Robinson's book, Forty Signs of Rain, and one of the characters noted that being a good person to work for was possibly the ultimate test of a man. I don't even remember anymore, exactly, how this led me to the realization about parenting that it did, but the upshot of my train of thought was that if I wanted P to be helping out more willingly around the house, it made sense to help her first, to show how a loving family member can just help, without it being a big tit-for-tat deal.

So the next evening, when P was cleaning her room before bed, I offered to help, without putting any conditions on it except that T needed to be allowed to come in, since I was in charge of him at the time. And the next day, she helped me in the kitchen without being asked. She still doesn't want to help every time it's needed or every time I ask (I'm experimenting with not insisting unless I actually need her help, which occasionally happens but isn't super-frequent), but I seem to be building up a slush fund of goodwill by helping her when I can and not expecting my requests to jump to be answered with, "How high?" Sometimes, when she's been no help to me during the day and I have more to do in the evening as a result, I don't end up helping her with her room; but more often than not, I help at least a little.

So far the resulting trend is good. P went from resisting helping clean up one morning, to sweeping and scrubbing floors later in the day. Today I asked P if she'd clear the table for dinner, since I was cooking a more elaborate dinner than usual and expected to be working on it until the moment we sat down to eat. At first she said no, and I expressed mild frustration about that but let it go without trying to force the issue. Very soon after that, she said that if I'd let her set the table with things in the order she wanted (yesterday I tried to show her a standard place setting arrangement, but she wasn't interested), she would clear and set everything. And she did a very nonstandard but thorough job of it, even finding a candle for a centerpiece and dressing in a fancy dress for dinner. We'll keep trying to find our way, as I try to be a better person to work for, in a mom sort of way.

School starts Monday at P's former elementary. Our notice of intent to homeschool didn't get processed before class lists came out, so P was placed in a class with several friends, and she had a brief change of heart, but soon decided again to continue unschooling with me. Play dates for long stretches on weekdays will be a thing of the past soon, but some of her friends are available for after-school play dates, and we live very near the school, so it should be pretty easy to keep seeing them.

UnschoolerDad strewed a copy of the Calvin and Hobbes book, Scientific Progress Goes "Boink," in P's path recently. As with many things, she wasn't interested at first, but a few hours later she was buried in it. That evening I ran across, and showed P, a web site focused on photos from around 100 years ago. Of course nearly all the photos are black and white. P remarked on the Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin asks his dad why all the old photos are black and white. This is a classic strip, so I did remember, and simply replied, "And his dad gave him a pretty bad answer, huh?" She laughed and agreed.

Both kids still enjoy watching old Pink Panther shorts, but I get tired of that being what they always ask for, so I look for new things to suggest. Recently I ran across the series, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That. This discovery has been a mixed blessing. The show's aimed at a pretty young, unsophisticated audience -- more appropriate to T's level of knowledge about the world than P's -- but they enjoy it, and it feels better to me than watching the Pink Panther and Inspector Clouseau chase each other around with guns and bombs yet again. The Cat has mostly eclipsed the Panther in the kids' requests for videos, and they've watched episodes about bees, bird nests, desert oases, whale songs, and other topics. Onward and upward.

I keep trying to make more sophisticated media available, and sometimes the kids are interested. P really got into a BBC science web site, where she enjoyed interactive games on classifying materials, the parts of flowering plants, marine and land-based food chains, and many other interesting topics. I was impressed with the quality of the activities, compared to some other "educational" web sites I've seen. The BBC site's not everything I could hope for, but it's far more engaging than many, and P's enjoying it a lot. Today I found a made-for-IMAX film about beavers, which have been a recurring theme with both kids lately, and they watched it with me, with stops to explain things and talk about what was going on. There are several similar films on different topics, so we'll probably get back to that thread soon.

I've been on a Grey's Anatomy kick for a while, and sometimes P ends up watching part of an episode with me. Recently this has led to good questions from her and ensuing discussions about the relationships between brain function, heart function, life and death; the fact that hypothermia can allow drowning victims' brains to recover from long periods with no heartbeat; the existence of crystal methamphetamine and its hazards to users and manufacturers; and more generally the phenomenon of drug addiction and the harm it can do to the body and to lives and relationships.

On the literature side of things, we had a great trip to the central library this week, shortly after P announced that she is done with all her Magic Tree House books and is ready to give them away (I'll keep them for T to read when he's ready). I figured we'd better start looking for other books she'd enjoy, and the library didn't disappoint. P came home with a few different flavors of chapter books about fairies, and we found some DVDs we're looking forward to watching together. T also found lots of books he wanted to bring home, and I added some to the bag for further strewing.

T continues to blossom into early reading. He's noticing and looking for rhymes and other similarities between words, actively learning letters and numerals, and asking to play and enjoying a phonics game on my phone that used to go frustratingly over his head. Getting to play games on my phone is something he always enjoys, but it's great to see him enjoying and understanding the content, rather than just wanting phone games because they are phone games. He's also eagerly absorbing just about anything I'll tell him about the letters and words in books we're looking at together. Today when I popped in to keep an eye on him in the bath while UnschoolerDad went to get something, he pointed out and identified a foam letter X that had been stuck to his back, and then asked me questions about how dolphins sing and swim (Dolphins IMAX film on deck!). It will be fun to see where he aims his curiosity next, and how reading develops for him.