Category: Mothering without a licence

En français

It was only when I got an odd look from the man walking past me that I realized I’d been concentrating so hard on practicing an internal dialogue for my upcoming French exam that I had actually been speaking aloud. There I was, walking down George Street in the Byward Market in the pre-dawn gloaming, chattering away to myself badly in French along the lines of: “I work for the government of Canada in the field of public affairs, and I’m the team leader for the social media programs.” His half-smirk was priceless. Only in Ottawa is this not a mark of insanity but simply another beleagured anglophone in search of a bilingual bonus.

You might remember I spent most of my summer vacation in 2011 practicing for my reading and writing tests in French, which I needed to come back to the CRA from my stint with the Army web team. I passed those, but my oral exam results expired in October of 2011, so I’ve been taking lessons for the last year to gear up for it. When I last took the oral exam in 2006, I failed twice before getting the required B level result (B = bearable), so I am half expecting the same result this time. My exam is a week today – wish me luck!

I’m actually fairly confident. One thing I have going for me this time that I didn’t have going for me back in 2006 is two little French speakers to practice with at the dinner table. Tristan is in an immersion French program and Simon will follow suit next year. It both kills me and fills me with pride to hear their perfect little accents and the unselfconsious ease with which they speak in French. They’re more fluent after just a couple of years than I am after 20 bloody years of French lessons. Must be latent on Beloved’s side – his ancestors were apparently in Louis XIV’s court way back in the day. There’s no French on my side to fall back on, though, and I have a much easier time rolling a Scottish burr than rolling a French rrrrr.

It fascinates me how differently they are learning French than I did. No rote memorization of noun gender, no endless conjugation of verbs, no lectures on agreement of adjectives. They just Рspeak. And listen. And Рgasp! Рunderstand. They have no idea of what the pass̩ compos̩ might be, but they use it.

I had mixed feelings when the kids were wee about sending them through the immersion program at school. I was worried they wouldn’t be strong in either language. Clearly, I had nothing to worry about. They’re strong in both languages, and my four year old has a vocabulary that would make an English teacher proud. I have a deep envy of people for whom a second language comes easily and would love nothing more than to be unselfconcious when speaking French myself.

Alas, I think after 20 years of trying, that goal may be unattainable. I think I’m doomed to muddle along, translating in my head as I go and muttering to myself in an incomprehensible mix of both languages. So if you see me walking down the street talking to myself, just smile and say ‘bonjour!’

Best teacher feedback ever

Tap, tap, tap… testing? Is this thing on? You guys still out there? Oy, life. Sometimes I think mine is a little too full for my own good. As Martha says, though, it’s a good thing.

We had parent-teacher interviews last week. The boys’ progress reports were stellar and I wasn’t particularly worried about anything, but I always like to touch base face-to-face. This time last year, I was visiting one boy’s classroom to discuss with his teacher the ‘not satisfactory’ and ‘satisfactory’ he was getting in some of the behaviour areas — apparently he was of the opinion that if he didn’t feel like doing what was asked of him, he could disengage from the activity completely. He would also put in just barely the amount of work required to complete a task, instead of doing it to the best of his ability. He’d been having a rough time since changing schools the year before, but knowing how easily the academic part of school was coming to him (his grades have always been strong), I was rather alarmed (to say the least) to see these behavioural issues crop up and escalate through the year.

This time last year, his teacher and I worked together to explain to Boy in Question that his job is school, and he pretty much has to suck it up and do his job. (I love a teacher who takes no crap, I really do. She is awesome!) Through the year we noted steady improvement, but I was still elated to see on this year’s progress report nothing but ‘excellent’ in all categories. There’s a boy who has found his groove!

Anyway, happy as I was with ‘excellent’ across the board (and his brother not far off that mark), I still thought it prudent to touch base with the teachers. The boys’ teachers seem to genuinely like them and offered positive and constructive feedback that generally amounted to “great kids, no worries.” Phew!

My favourite comment was this. Obviously struggling for something more meaningful and perhaps more critical, the teacher paused for a moment before shrugging and saying, “Sometimes he eats his snack a little too early.”

I blog this not to brag, but to file away for future reference. The road is not always this smooth, and I am grateful with my whole heart for days like these, for boys like these, for this life of ours. Sometimes it’s good to celebrate when we get it right.

And we’ll work on his early snacking issues, too. Because a person needs goals, right?

Hi National Post readers!

Welcome National Post readers!

If you’re looking for the blog post referenced in Sarah Boesveld’s article in the weekend National Post, it’s here: http://danigirl.ca/blog/2009/09/21/no-strollers-allowed/

On the issue of kids being banned from public spaces, I love the quote Sarah pulled out of our interview. She wrote:

Danielle Donders, a mother of three boys in Manotick, Ont., near Ottawa, was offended when she was blocked in the doorway of a shop by its owner as he told her she couldn’t come in with a stroller —an experience she wrote about on her blog Postcards from the Mothership.

“I don’t think kids should be banned from any place because kids are as different as grown-ups. And you know what? There are some grown-ups who should be banned from public spaces,” she said. “If I have a really extraordinarily well-behaved child who likes sushi and who is able to make conversation better than the guy who sits next to me in my cubicle, then I should be able to make that judgment call. And I would hope that if my child is throwing the sushi around that I’m going to intervene — that’s my job as a parent.”

After flying from Ottawa to Florida with three kids ages 10 and under who were complimented not once, not twice but three times, and who earned a free meal from one Delta flight attendant because she was so charmed by Simon’s gracious manner, I think it’s safe to say that all kids have good and bad days, but to issue a blanket ban of all kids is a ridiculous idea.

What do you think?

Are camera-crazy families raising a generation of narcissists?

I read with interest an article in the New York Times parenting blog this past weekend: Why we should take fewer pictures of our children. The author’s premise is that we are making our children too self-aware with our incessant documentation. David Zweig says, “Like most everything, self-awareness is healthy in moderation, and problematic in excess. For adults excessive self-awareness has links to a host of ills from anxiety to vanity.” He then goes on to link this self-awareness to the fact that kids are seeming older (in their behaviour and attitudes) at a younger age now.

Hmmmm.

Maybe it’s because Zweig has a daughter, or because I am too invested in obsessively documenting my kids’ lives photographically, but I am not sure I buy into this one. I could give you a couple of good reasons why maybe I should put down the camera every now and then, and at the top of that list would be so I would be more in the moment and not so busy trying to document it. But whether those photos, in the taking of them or in the viewing of them, is somehow damaging to the kids’ self-esteem or gives them too inflated a sense of self? Um, no.

Zweig says, “So, both components of our photography obsession — the experience of parents and others regularly clicking away, and the regular viewing of the results of this relentless documentation — are making our children increasingly self-aware. And this is a shame because a lack of self-awareness is part of what makes youth so precious.”

I say the kids love these images now and they will treasure them later. I wish we had more pictures of our family growing up, and I especially wish I had more than a dozen pictures of my parents’ childhoods. The only thing we enjoy more than looking at the “old” photos of our young family together is watching the few hilarious videos of them that I’ve posted to YouTube over the years. There may be a couple of years when they reach the teenage years that they are not quite so enamoured by the photos of these years, but I’m guessing that if they’re anything like me (and so far they do seem to be) then they will love these photos more with each passing year.

257:365 Photographer-in-training

In direct counterpoint to Zweig’s article, if you have not already you simply must read Allison Tate’s beautiful blog post, The Mom Stays In the Picture, on why you should relinquish the camera every now and then (ahem) and get in the frame. Allison says,

I’m everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won’t be here — and I don’t know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now — but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.

And:

So when all is said and done, if I can’t do it for myself, I want to do it for my kids. I want to be in the picture, to give them that visual memory of me. I want them to see how much I am here, how my body looks wrapped around them in a hug, how loved they are.

So I suppose you’re not too surprised where I stand on these issues. When I first read Allison Tate’s blog post last week, I vowed while wiping tears from my eyes that dammit, I would hand over the camera to Beloved more often – and haul out that tripod so all five of us can be in a couple of frames as well. Because I will keep taking pictures of my family, and I’ll probably keep sharing them here with you, too, for many years to come.

What do you think about these very different blog posts? Do you see merit in David Zweig’s fears that the next generation will grow up to be narcissists? Or do you think that Allison Tate is right on the money, and what we need is simply more photos of the whole family, rumpled and wrinkly moms included?

Flashback faves: Snack Trauma

One of the joys of having more than two thousand (!) posts in my archive is the delight of stumbling on to an old post and re-reading it again. I’m pretty sure only my mother has read all of them, and if I’ve forgotten the content I’m pretty sure that most of you probably have as well – even those of you who’ve been here since the beginning. Also, recycling is chic, retro is in fashion, and everything old is new again. With all that in mind, I will shamelessly occasionally post some of the old gems from the archives: my flashback faves.

This was originally posted in September 2007. If you enjoy it, be sure to click back to the original post to read the comments – they’re often better than the post that inspired them!

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Although Simon’s new preschool isn’t a co-operative, the parents are asked to contribute a snack on a rotating basis. Given that there are 16 kids, and the kids go three days a week, our turn in the rotation comes up every five weeks or so.

Now, I should confess here that I already suffer snack trauma from dealing with just Tristan’s snack. At this time last year, I was happily packing him simple snacks like a baggie with some ritz cracker sandwiches and juice or a little dish of grapes and some water. I was always cognizant of the choices I was making, thinking myself quite the good mother for not simply throwing in a Twix bar and a can of pop.

One day near Christmas, I volunteered for a day in Tristan’s JK class and was gobsmacked to see what some of the other children hauled out of their backpacks for snacktime. We’re talking multi-course snacks here, with various containers and utensils. These kids were eating better for snack than what I usually managed to scrape together for a family meal.

Not that I managed to improve the quality, nor even the quantity, of Tristan’s packed snack after that. I just felt like a bad mother every time I sent him off to school and tried not to make eye contact with the other parents on the playground, knowing they were whispering behind the portable and pointing out me, “that mother, the one who thinks sending an apple – whole, and uncut, even! – constitutes packing a snack” with snickered derision.

And now, it’s not bad enough that I have to come up with a snack for 16 preschoolers, but we happen to be first in the rotation due to the fact that I was stubborn five and a half years ago and insisted on hypenating the boys with my “D” surname, instead of just being content to accept Beloved’s perfectly good “R” surname and a later turn in the rotation. Hmph. I figured that might come back to bite me in the ass some day, but neither so soon nor so viciously.

So anyway, I spent many days hours minutes perusing the Interwebs and considering everything from elaborate fruit-block renditions of the pyramids to mini-muffins baked into the shape of famous Canadian authors. I pictured myself standing in my kitchen, wrapped in a pristine white apron, humming church hymns while lovingly preparing a snack that met all four food groups, boosted brain power and would teach them the alphabet in French. Then I remembered I don’t own any aprons, let alone a pristine white one, and that was the end of that fantasy.

In the end, the pressure was too much for me. I capitulated to the dark side. For a few dark moments, I considered simply sending along the 6 lbs bag of Reese Pieces we got from our excursion to the Hershey Factory last weekend, but finally settled for a tray of pre-cut mixed fruit that I snagged from the deli counter at Loblaws, and a box of animal crackers. Well, they were organic animal crackers, at least. You know, to show how much I care.

Three boys on three bikes

For a while, it felt like our dirty little secret. Somehow, we’d managed to avoid getting my middlest son up on two wheels even though he’s now in the third grade, and I took it as an entirely personal parenting failure.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. We’d been encouraging him to get up on two wheels for years, but he was anxious and resistant and I never felt it was worthwhile to push him. I didn’t want to turn it into a power struggle or a thing for him, so we just kind of let it drift. Last summer we scoured the city for an appropriately-sized bike with training wheels on it (try finding a bike with training wheels for a 60 lbs kid some time!) and then removed the training wheels within a month. The boy was stressed every time we tried to get him rolling, though, and had a tumble or two and lost interest.

Every couple of weeks, we’d go back to it and try again with different approaches. For a while, I told him to just scooch around with his feet on the ground to get the feel of balancing on the bike, but he kept banging his shins on the pedals. It was turning in to a big deal, and I chose not to stress him out over something so simple, especially considering he was completely happy to putter around on a scooter instead. It doesn’t help that for living on an island, there sure are a lot of hills around our place. (I suppose the fact that the nearest intersection is called Hilltop should have given it away?) Between the death-defying slope of the driveway and the fact that the road slopes rather alarmingly after a couple dozen meters in either direction (let alone the blind curve just up the street), we never had a lot of room for him to practice without supervision.

But it bothered me. I’d see other kids riding their bikes and feel a pang of guilty regret. A boy in the second grade should be able to ride a bike, no? So when spring broke this summer, I was filled with new resolve and a reservoir of patience. This year, we’d get him up on two wheels. And that’s when his new bike broke. Something in the gears jammed up and the pedals wouldn’t turn. And in the way it sometimes happens with busy families, getting it fixed slid right off the priority list.

Still, the idea that he was not yet able to ride a two-wheeler bothered me. My eldest boy and I started taking bike rides together this summer, and while I was able to justify it as a priviledge for an older child, I still felt guilty. My middle boy did not seem particularly disturbed, probably because he’s a lot less inclined to adventure and activity than his older brother anyway. But with a littlest brother graduating from a tricycle to a two-wheeler with training wheels, I saw trouble brewing on the horizon.

All that to say, I was worried in a kind of distracted way about the fact that my boy had reached the ripe old age of eight without being able to ride his bike without training wheels. I’d worried about the other boys in other late-blooming ways, but was able to reassure myself that the youngest would not, in fact, still be gently sucking his soother as he spent his first night in a university dorm. I was not so sure that my middlest would not still be scooching along on a ten-speed with training wheels on his way to and from high school. Could it be possible that some children never learn to ride a bike? I was afraid we might be about to find out.

And then, miraculously, it happened out of the blue. Wee elves must have broken into the garage over the last few weeks, because the bike gears became magically unjammed when we poked at the bike yesterday. (Seriously, that’s what must have happened. I certainly don’t have the ability to do more than replace a fallen-off chain!) And so we decided on the spot to give it another go.

I honestly don’t know who was more surprised, me or the boy, when he wobbled off down the road, picking up speed and grace by the meter, leaving me cheering behind him. We practiced for a while longer, pinging back and forth between the blind curve and the steep slope, ever grateful that we live on a quiet street where people are always on the lookout for kids. And he rode merrily back and forth without my help, clearly as surprised and pleased with his newfound balance as I was.

3 bikes

I’m so proud. And relieved! And I think we’ve got a few good weeks of decent weather left, to start enjoying those family bike rides at last.

So, talk to me about skateboards

Bloggy peeps, I need some advice. There’s a 10 year old boy in my life who is dying for a skateboard.

I am nervous about this whole concept for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t know anything about skateboards. My childhood experience included many trips to the ER due to spills on toboggans, bicycles and falling up the stairs, but I have no experience with skateboards.

Second, we have a very steeply pitched driveway that dumps into the road at a spot well-hidden from oncoming drivers by a giant cedar hedge. I don’t worry so much about the 10 year old here, but I do worry about the four year old who THINKS he’s a 10 year old.

I don’t want to be overprotective. A skateboard is really not that different from a bike. Is it? But how do you get a good one and am I insane if I make him wear elbow, wrist AND knee pads in addition to a helmet? (And, erm, a full suit of bubble wrap?)

I have some serious misgivings, but I want to be convinced. Help me, bloggy peeps. Tell me what I need to know to make Tristan’s dream come true!

The kiddie “bucket list” – 50 things kids should do before age 12, with an Ottawa-centric twist

Okay, this? Best parenting advice I’ve read in a long time, and very in line with my ever-strengthening philosophy of giving kids room to be kids. Thank you to my friend and longtime reader Kim for sharing this article in the weekend Globe and Mail: Bucket list for kids: 50 things to do before they’re 12

I love this, because I think each and every one of these is an excellent activity — and yet it makes me sad and kind of tired. Do we as parents really need to make an itemized checklist of experiences our kids must achieve? Meh, maybe the grey Ottawa skies and cold, damp temperatures are making me cantankerous. It actually sounds like a road map to a pretty great summer, if spring ever decides to return.

Here’s the official list, editorialized with my own local spin:

1. Climb a tree

2. Roll down a really big hill (Mooney’s Bay has a great one for this!)

3. Camp out in the wild (did you know there’s a campground on Prince of Wales just north of Hunt Club? Practically downtown!)

4. Build a den

5. Skim a stone (I recommend Britannia Beach for this one!)

6. Run around in the rain (or puddles, maybe?)

7. Fly a kite

8. Catch a fish with a net

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree (we love Kilmarnock and Cannamore orchards)

10. Play conkers

11. Throw some snow (can we wait until December for this one, please?)

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging

16. Bury someone in the sand

17. Set up a snail race

18. Balance on a fallen tree

19. Swing on a rope swing (the rope swing is hands down the kid-favourite feature in our backyard)

20. Make a mud slide

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild (there are – or were – wild raspberries growing along the boardwalk at the Chapman Mills Conservation Area)

22. Take a look inside a tree

23. Visit an island

24. Feel like you’re flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet

26. Hunt for fossils and bones

27. Watch the sun wake up

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall (or maybe go caving?)

30. Feed a bird from your hand (bring some seed to the Lime Kiln Trail or Hogsback Falls for this one!)

31. Hunt for bugs

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net

34. Track wild animals

35. Discover what’s in a pond (Mud Lake is great for this!)

36. Call an owl

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. Catch a crab

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it

42. Go wild swimming

43. Go rafting

44. Light a fire without matches (um, no thanks)

45. Find your way with a map and a compass

46. Try bouldering

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling

49. Find a geocache

50. Canoe down a river (although you might want to wait until they’re older than 3 and 5 yrs old!)

I figure the boys have a good half of the items crossed off, and I can tell you for sure I won’t be taking them abseiling any time soon – although the zip-line at a local aerial park is not out of question. What do you think? Is there anything on here a child of 12 can or cannot live without doing? Something you’d add to the list?

A hypothetical question about an acorn that fell not far from its tree

So let’s imagine a hypothetical boy. He’s plenty bright, and gets reasonable marks in school. He’s a little scatterbrained, though, and a bit of a daydreamer. It’s quite possible that he has the same inability of his hypothetical mother to hold a thought in his head, except for when he’s exhibiting her other hypothetical tendency to obsess on things.

So our boy has just brought home his report card, which shows he’s doing well academically, but has for the first time been graded with a couple of “needs improvement” in some behavioural categories: responsibility and self-regulation. The hypothetical teacher has made observations along the lines of “difficulty assuming responsibility for and managing his own behaviour” and “he is encouraged to approach learning with a positive attitude” and “requires some reminders to fulfill classroom responsibilities and commitments.”

If he was having (hypothetical) trouble with academics, I would know what to do. Devote more time to study, help him, even hire a tutor. But what do you do with a child who can do the work, but only works hard enough to do the bare minimum required? How do you motivate a child to govern his own behaviour when you have to stand over him and nag to make sure the bare minimum gets done? And how the heck do you correct a behavioural problem that you yourself suffered through most of your own (hypothetical) academic career?

The hypothetical teacher and I will meet to discuss, but I’m thinking this problem may be inherent to a lot of boys. How do you work on focus and motivation and initiative? When learning comes easy, how do you get kids to put in more than the minimum effort required?

Any tips from the trenches on this one?