management fees

Once I ask my children to do something I may (or may not) give one free reminder, but after that I charge management fees for my reminder services.  Management fees are payable in small acts of service (fetch things for me, make my bed, etc.), nothing too dire, but enough to make them wish they had just done whatever it was in the first place.

If nothing else, it gets my bed made on most days.

The Power of a Good Scolding

My bff is visiting us later today. She is famous for giving marathon scoldings, full of detail and rational reasoning and quite endless. She'll pretty much bore a child into compliance. I am getting so much mileage out of this:

Child starts to misbehave.
I say, "Hmmm, shall I ask [bff] to have a little chat with you about this?"
Child straightens out immediately.

I've tried her techniques, but I am not boring enough. It's an art I aspire to.

privacy

I haven't been blogging, as I am torn between these two: sharing what is happening and maybe getting some help and support versus protecting my children's privacy.  So, I have made a new blog.  If you would like to read it, please post a comment here or send me an email, and I'll send the address to you.

I'll be moving all the old TMI posts over to the new blog, so don't be surprised if a post that was here disappears and/or the new blog shows old material.  

bits and pieces from Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov -- #1 No Opt Out

So, I am reading this really good book on teaching -- Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov -- and hoping to share its wonders with you, though I know full well that I will lose track of what I wanted to say by the time I finish the book, as I get to read it in 30 second intervals between words on the spelling test or between innings or between going to bed and falling asleep.  So I'm going to share little tidbits for you.

The book is a collection of 49 techniques that Doug Lemov observed being used by master teachers in successful classrooms, success being measured mostly by how many of the kids go off to college.  I am finding it useful in parenting, in home-schooling, and in teaching, even though I teach exclusively on-line these days and to students who are in college.

#1 - No Opt Out -- Say someone says "I don't know." Find someone who does know, have them articulate it, return to the would-be quitter and ask again.Obviously, Mr. Lemov had an academic setting in mind, but it works at home too.

Me: Why is this milk on the counter?
Chickadee: I don't know.
Me: Dandy, why is the milk on the counter?
Dandy: She spilled it and left it there.
Me: Why is there milk on the counter?
Chickadee: I spilled it and left it there.
Me: Yes.  Thanks for telling me. Please clean it up.

Soon she realizes that it is even more uncomfortable to get her brother involved than it would be to just answer in the first place.  Because she recognizes that she will have to answer eventually, she may as well get it over with.  She's not allowed to opt out.

Here are the three merits of this technique, according to Lemov: " . . . it empowers you to cause all students to take the first step. [. . .] It reminds them that you believe in their ability to answer. And it results in students' hearing themselves succeed and get answers right. This causes them to grow familiar with successful outcome" (p. 31).

I had to question the apostrophe on students in the above passage.  It results in a thing (hearing themselves succeed) that belongs to the students, so it is the students' thing. I think I'll send this sentence in to Anne Lobeck of Discovering Grammar: An Introduction to English Sentence Structure fame.

Pop Quiz: What Book Have I Been Reading?

Chickadee has been assigned lines: I will not barge in when Mom is typing. x10

Chickadee: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA

Mom: That noise is hassling my ears. Would you like to quiet down? or would you like to take it upstairs?

(She takes it upstairs and has a right good screaming fit. Comes back down and sits and glares at her lines. All 10 of them.)

Chickadee: Mom?

Mom: Do you have a question about your lines?

Chickadee: No, but I . . .

Mom: We'll talk about it when your lines are done. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA

Mom: That noise is hassling my ears. Would you like to quiet down? or would you like to take it upstairs?

(She takes it upstairs and has a right good screaming fit. Comes back down and sits and glares at her lines. All 10 of them.)

Chickadee: Mom, can I have lunch?

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things.

(2 minutes pass)

(I put on some Chopin -- which she usually loves.)

Chickadee: Mom? Can you turn the music off? It's bothering me.

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: Mom? Can I have a snuggle?

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: Mom? My toe hurts.

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: Mom?

Mom: Honey, I keep asking you nicely to please don't talk to me unless you have some questions about your lines. I need to focus on my work, so now I need to ask you to please not talk to me at all.

Chickadee: WHAAAAAAAAAAaa. What if I have a question about my lines?

Mom: That will be a bummer.

Chickadee: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA

Mom: That noise is hassling my ears. Would you like to quiet down? or would you like to take it upstairs.

(She takes it upstairs and has a right good screaming fit. Come back down and sits and glares at her lines.)

The Stall Question

Do your kids drive you crazy with The Stall Question? Of course not, for you are a paragon of patience and loving-kindness. Me? Not so much. They drive me nuts with the lame-o unnecessary already-know-the-answer-and-we-all-know-that-you-know-the-answer questions that they ask to put off the inevitable for one more second, or that they ask for the sheer joy of watching Mom's head explode. I suspect the latter.

Obviously, if I could remain calm, cool, and collected, the Crisis of the Stall Question would dissipate on its own. Until I can arrange for a personality transplant, however, my new strategy will have to do. Lines. For every ridiculous question, the child can scribe the answer.

Mom: Please tidy up the playroom.
Child: Do I have to?
Mom: Please bring me paper and pencil.
(Mom writes "When Mom tells me to do something, I have to do it." on the top of the paper and numbers the lines 1 though 5.)
Mom: Please copy this out five times.
Child: Do I have to?
(Mom adds some numbers to the paper.)
(Child whines and stamps feet.)
(Mom adds some more numbers to the paper.)
(Child resigns self to the task, does the copywork; reads each and every line out loud to Mama; we check it for capital letters and end punctuation; we make tidy corrections as needed.)

Mom: Please tidy the playroom.
Child: Yes Mama.

We'll see how that works. It has to be better than our current pattern.

Mom: Please tidy up the playroom.
Child: Do I have to?
Mom (crossly): Yes, of course you have to. When I ask blah blah blah blahbity blah blah blah blah blah blahbity blah blah blah blah blah blahbity blah blah blah blah blah blahbity blah blah. Now go tidy up the playroom.
Child: Do I have to?
Mom (more crossly): No, you don't have to. You may go sit in the little chair until you are ready to tidy the playroom.

Now this did work, but I was always at risk of being pushed into crabby-land and a great deal of time was wasted on the little chair which has no redeeming benefits, other than ending the conversation and removing the child from view for awhile, and there was great potential for stewing to occur in the chair.

But scribing has some great benefits. It puts the positive message in front of the child's eyes, through the brain, and out through the fingers and the mouth multiple times. It models sentence patterns. It provides fine-motor skills practice. It is, by its repetitive solitary nature, a calming task which yields something they could (theoretically at least) take some pride in at the end.

not one of the difficult kids

Yup. That is what Dandy's day camp counselor told us at the end of the week. That our son, the one that is usually the Difficult One in other contexts, did not make the naughty list at day camp. We are so pleased. I can't possibly share with you how many hours of coaching and parenting and intervening and fretting this accomplishment cost us, nor how pleased we are to -- at least not on this occassion -- to not be the 'in-trouble' family. Yeah Dandy!

In other camp news, he got to go knee-boarding and inner-tubing and roll in the dirt and sing and romp and came home filthy and exhausted. It was a great week.

love notes

I've been writing love notes on the children's napkins each day. This morning they made their own sandwiches and finished packing their lunches, including the napkins. As they were finishing up I came in to do the love note part. Too late. They had already written the love notes, from one to the other, and apparently in secret, as they wouldn't tell me what they had written.

dogs and kids

Have you ever lived with a dog from an dominance-oriented breed? One that -- though it loves you -- is always angling for the take-over? Our beloved Akita is like this and every 4-5 years I have to take her on and reestablish that she is not in line for the position of beta dog. (My husband is -- in doggie eyes -- alpha and I am beta).

With a dog, I know how to do this. If they are sleeping in your path, don't go around, but poke them until they get up. If it's really bad (and you are sure they won't bite you) hold their muzzle to the ground until their body languages shows that they submit. Our Akita is a senior citizen now, and has not made a bid for my spot for quite awhile.

My son, on the other hand, has apparently decided that I am ready for retirement. And I don't have any idea what the parenting equivalent is of holding his muzzle to the ground.

crazy she makes me

I am so ANGRY. I shouldn't blog while angry, but GRRRRRR

My darling daughter just revealed to me she does not argue and sass and backtalk her science teacher at our co-op, nor her gymnastics teacher, nor her art teacher. Why not? Cause she doesn't like to get in trouble in front of other kids, she reports.

So, she recognizes what is unacceptable and controls it for these other people, but dishes it out at home.

Because the consequences in public (humiliation) matter. And the consequences at home (scoldings) don't. So obviously I have to up the consequences at home. What would be fitting? I'm too ticked off, and too Lexapro-tweaked to judge.

timid and mild

Okay, help me understand our daughter.

On the one hand, she appears to have very little self-confidence in that if she doesn't know how to do something, she will just freeze until someone bigger than she comes and tells her. Her 'try' muscles are virtually non-existent. (This is particularly hard for me as I don't understand and generally dislike a 'quitting' attitude.) She displays -- in most areas -- a desire to be led, to follow someone else and to please them.

Yet, on the other hand, she has no qualms about contradicting someone in authority. If she thinks blah-blah and I think bluh-bluh, she doesn't -- even for a second -- consider that she may be wrong. She just flat-out boldly contradicts me.

Her cheekiness is appalling, and this in spite of fact that it is on our "hit list". With Dandy we are working on integrity issues; with her it is respect issues.

Anyway, it seems odd to me, that she is so meek about things that she really is capable of, and so impertinent about things that she really ought to be silent on.

Any clues?

ouchy eye drops

We had to do the ouchy eye drops at yesterday's eye doc visit. I basically have to sit on her and wrap her arms in a straight-jacket style while the nurse drops the nasty stuff in. She opens her mouth to get a lungful for the scream, and Dandy pops into it a chewy caramel chocolate. Dandy and I get chocolate too, for enduring the trauma of seeing her so distressed.

Friday Poetry Where Children Live by Naomi Shihab Nye

I am teaching World Literature this quarter for Washington State Community Colleges. I've not taught this before and am having a lovely time reading the anthology and selecting the readings for the quarter. Here is one of my recent finds, which appeals to me both as teacher and mother.

Where Children Live

Homes where children live exude a pleasant rumpledness,
like a bed made by a child, or a yard littered with balloons.
To be a child again one would need to shed details
till the heart found itself dressed in the coat with a hood.
Now the heart has taken on gloves and mufflers,
the heart never goes outside to find something to do.
And the house takes on a new face, dignified.
No lost shoes blooming under bushes.
No chipped trucks in the drive.
Grown-ups like swings, leafy plants, slow-motion back and forth.
While the yard of a child is strewn with the corpses
of bottle-rockets and whistles,
anything whizzing and spectacular, brilliantly short-lived.
Trees in children's yards speak in clearer tongues.
Ants have more hope. Squirrels dance as well as hide.
The fence has a reason to be there, so children can go in and out.
Even when the children are at school, the yards glow
with the leftovers of their affection,
the roots of the tiniest grasses curl toward one another
like secret smiles.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Here is the coding if you want a button with a link to this week's round-up. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://6traits.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/poetry-friday-red-sled/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://lh5.google.com/image/chndlrsblog/RmBFj-SN_DI/AAAAAAAAB34/at3HZsHcKd0/poetry%20friday%20button%20-%20fulll.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a> :: this post is part of the Friday Poetry roundup hosted by Picture Book of the Day.

Yours in pleasant rumpledness (wouldn't that be a great blog name?),

overheard

upstairs:

Chickadee: G'night, I love you.
Dandy: I love you too.

THINK!

I am so excited about one of Dandy's Christmas gifts. One of the tools we use with him is the idea of THINK wherein each letter is linked some criteria which ought to be considered before one starts to speak. He has some issues with blurting out really weird, hurtful, or meddlesome thoughts.

My blog-friend Kim, over at Bookworms Bookmarks, has made our THINK into a beautiful piece of wall art which we can hang in his bedroom.

She also does a beautiful Engrosser script (a style of Copperplate) that is written with a pointed pen instead of a broad, flat nib. Kim can do all sorts of different lettering styles (called 'hands' by the calligraphy crowd). Go take a peek at her work: Bookworms Bookmarks.



:: one year ago today: works for me: allowances and Belgium
:: two years ago today: trees and more

works for me: candy fairy

With Halloween coming up, and with two sugar-sensitive kids, and with me already tired of debating with eye-rolling strangers as we try to decline the sugar they are foisting off on us, it is time to start talking up the Candy Fairy!

You know, the one that visits in the early morning of November 1 and swaps your bag or jar of candy for a new game. Yes, that one. The more candy you leave for her, the happier she is, so it pays off to gather as much as we can, eat a discreet amount, and then get it out of our house.

Gospel according to Chickadee

Chickadee is working on her AWANA verse:

John 3:16

For God so loved the world he gave his one and only Son whoever believes in him will not paralyze but have eternal life.

So, I wonder if she thinks her Grandpa was lacking in the belief department.


:: one year ago today: school updates

comfort zone

Feeling like challenging some preconceptions? Go read about Why I Can't Be a Foster Parent . . .

Iguana Club

The kids are doing Iguana club on Wednesday evenings this year. You know, the club where they learn Bible verses and get badges -- like Scouts for religious people?

Do I have to correct their pronunciation?

mean mama confessions

We've all heard people talk about what their kids won't eat or what the kids complain about, or read posts or comments or even whole blogs devoted to the theme of picky eaters . Usually I bite my tongue, as no-one wants to hear me at the moment, but what I want to say is burbling around and I have to vocalize it.

"What do you mean?" I want to ask. "This does not happen at my house."

If my kids complain about the food, they get an additional helping. If they refuse to eat, I ignore them, clear their plate along with everyone else's, and serve them the same plate at the next meal. We have only done the recycled plates once with each child and the extra helpings a couple of times.

If my kids complain about the food they get an additional helping.

When they like the food they speak up about it, so I know by their silence what they don't care for. When it is time for seconds I just serve them whatever it is that they have sweetly told me that they do like.

I am giving them incentives to be polite (quiet) about the foods they don't care for and for being polite (pleasant & complimentary) about the foods that they do care for.

This does not seem unduly harsh or difficult to me, so why do I hear about families that struggle with picky eaters. What am I not getting here? Or am I just a big meanie?

picky eaters, parenting