Archives for posts with tag: education

Seasons, Traditions and Cultural Backgrounds

November 19, 2012 //
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I used the plural forms of the nouns for this chapter quite purposefully: especially “cultural backgroundS,” because we have, more than ever, many cultural backgrounds in the United States today, and successful adults in will be those who learned as children how to get along with people from countless backgrounds. A dear friend of mine who made multi-culturalism her specialty back in the 1990s, when many of us were preoccupied by such a thing, trained me about the concentric circles of cultural education: one begins with one’s own family history; then one broadens to one’s community; then one’s state and region; and finally, one’s country. In so doing, one encompasses not only one’s own heritage, but the heritages of all those with whom one comes into contact.

My children, through my husband’s family, are direct descendants of Squire Boone, Daniel Boone’s father.  Daniel Boone’s sister, Sarah Boone Wilcoxson, is their grandmother with too many “greats” before it for me to count accurately.  That provided a lot of interesting school reports and “sharing” moments, as A. and S. would bring in old family artifacts that showed something of like in Kentucky’s frontier days, including historical accounts of life at Fort Boonesborough in the 1770s. Old quilts, a replica coonskin cap, yellowed family written records, and paintings of the fort copied from books or printed from web sites were romantic artifacts that made their family history come to life.

At the same time, other classmates were bringing in examples of very different family histories, and discussing how what brought them to Kentucky, whether hundreds of years before, or in the last decade.  The tapestry woven by such diverse stories revealed the rich cultural landscape of the Unites States, and became the foundation on which A. and S. learned to view others’ stories with respect.

Different faiths can also be discussed  with respect, calmly and yet without losing the educational focus that many parents desire: to explain clearly why we believe as we do, and why we think our beliefs are valid. It’s quite possible to “train up a child in the way he should go” without communicating disrespect for other faiths, and to teach children that they can be friends with people from different faith backgrounds. Indeed, as nearly all nations take on less homogeneous  populations, preparing our children for life beyond the nest of home requires that we teach them how to get along with people from many cultures. What helps is that so many customs from the various people groups are linked to the changing seasons, providing a common thread.  Children love changing seasons and the traditions linked to them. Seasonal traditions are an anchor of  stability and joy through childhood.

As I write this, the air is gaining that autumn chill that evokes football, brilliant orange and yellow leaves, chimney smoke, and in that odd, inexplicable way, nostalgia. We have finished the fall arrangements on the front porch.  Tall bundles of corn shucks, bound together and stuffed into 19th century crockery lard jars handed down from my husband’s family, flank the front door.  In front of them are arranged piles of pumpkins in various sizes, squash and gourds.  On the front door hangs a wreath of dried leaves that each year I swear won’t last one more, but thus far, it’s holding its own.

Since our children are grown, we focus on fall decorations rather than Halloween: fall lasts through Thanksgiving, when everything comes down and is replaced with lit Christmas arrangements in the lard jars, the large, divided Christmas wreath on the door, and spotlights to illuminate everything as the doors grow short.

When we would go through this process as the kids were growing up, with each transition they would become excited all over again.  One is tempted to say, “as if they’d never experienced [fall, or Christmas, or spring, or Easter, or the Fourth of July] before,” except that it is their experience of a small bank of past years, and their memory of those, that fuels their exuberance.

What is it about seasons that bring out the child in us?  The changing air, the changing light, the changing colors, and with it, changing household traditions — all contribute to the evocative shift, harkening memories of years  past, and relationships with loved ones who went before. Indeed, the evocative nature of seasonal changes can overwhelm us with sadness, at times, until we can’t bear to mark the changes, and seasons and holidays become excruciatingly painful.  But children are seldom so stricken by loss. Just feeling the crisp breeze of fall and seeing the leaves start to change, or seeing the ice melt and the first crocuses pop their heads through the snow to greet the early March sun, is enough make a child skip home from the school bus.

We live in a house made for seasonal dress-up, like a beautiful women begging to parade her finery on the town square. It’s not a small job — especially for Christmas — and I have years when I’m not sure I can pull it off.  Many’s the November when I’ve picked up the phone and found help, and if I take the time to put on music, put out snacks, and make it a party where we all work together, as I do some years, those are the most delightful.

We try to restrict ourselves to seasonal decorations that are pulled from nature, or at least look like they were. Not eager to burn my house down, I gave up on fresh Christmas garland the year we had to travel to Florida to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary: using artificial garland and not having hands bloodied from wrestling with fresh holly and magnolia, and seeing the synthetic greenery still look as green and plump on January 3 as it did on December 20, altered something in my soul for the more convenient, if not the better. I’ll be the first to admit to loving the Old-World shabby-chic of the slowly drying and browning live greenery at old-fashioned, rambling country manors like the Greyfield Inn on Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia. As time marches resolutely toward New Year’s and Epiphany, the fresh garlands change, grow flat and dry, and the slow dissipation of “real” greenery becomes part of the evocative tradition. But I’m not in the country inn business, and Winchester’s Island is not a museum. We live here and it behooves us not to be exhausted, living in a tinder box in danger of spontaneously combusting every year between December 20 and January 6. It’s enough of a nod to tradition that we don’t hang a million and a half colored lights on our house. Indeed, when they were younger, my children were quite heartbroken about that, and thought me a terrible Scrooge.

The beauty of dressing your house in the artistic artifacts found outdoors, or a reasonable simulation thereof, is you can talk to your children as you decorate about nature, its cycles and symbols. Fall leaves, pumpkins and gourds become objects for talking any number of interesting topics from history and the natural world. You can discuss  photosynthesis and leaf oxidation; the summer and winter solstice and how that affects daylight hours; the fall harvest; how people once didn’t have artificial light and what they had to do to deal with that; how they had to provide food for themselves to last through the winter;  the original significance of Halloween, celebrated as it was by Christians to show the devil and all the specters of evil and darkness that those living under the protection of Christ had nothing to fear and could afford to mock them; the history and seasonal practices of Native Americans; the story of the Pilgrims; the first Thanksgiving; how our food traditions during October, November and December partake of all these things.  It’s interesting to point out, for example, that something like bobbing for apples would be that much more popular in a world where apples were available in the months from August through October, as was once the case.

During the December holidays, the rich stories available based on symbols of the season are almost limitless.  Regardless of which winter holiday your family celebrates, great lessons in multi-culturalism and mutual respect can be imparted — without having to do hard-edged moralizing — by simply talking about what different groups believe and practice during these months.  Thus, when December 6th approaches, you can talk about Saint Nicholas, who he was in history, and if your family is Christian, the children can put out shoes the night before and find foil-wrapped chocolate coins inside. (I’ll confess that since I frequently forgot the gold coins, I was always relieved that my children forgot to make note of December 6th and failed to put out shoes!) Similarly, when Chanukah is approaching, you can tell the story of the Maccabees and the drops of oil that lasted eight nights, and look at pictures of menorahs and talk about the eight-day celebration that culminates in the Eighth Night, with potato latkes, dreidels, singing and dancing.  You can teach your children the hymn Ma’oz Tzur, (based on acrostics, which provides another great lesson in that ancient form of poetry), ” The Dreidl Song” and “Oh Chanukah, Oh Chanukah,” make potato pancakes (any excuse to eat those delicious crispy treats!) and find Egypt and Israel on the map and talk about their histories.

Here is a modern-day loose translation of Ma’oz Tzur into English:

Rock of Ages, let our song, praise Thy saving power;
Thou, amidst the raging foes, wast our sheltering tower.
Furious they assailed us, but Thine arm availed us,
And Thy Word broke their sword, when our own strength failed us.
And Thy Word broke their sword, when our own strength failed us.

Kindling new the holy lamps, priests, approved in suffering,
Purified the nation’s shrine, brought to God their offering.
And His courts surrounding, hear, in joy abounding,
Happy throngs, singing songs with a mighty sounding.
Happy throngs, singing songs with a mighty sounding.

Children of the martyr race, whether free or fettered,
Wake the echoes of the songs where ye may be scattered.
Yours the message cheering that the time is nearing
Which will see, all men free, tyrants disappearing.
Which will see, all men free, tyrants disappearing.

Linked as holidays are to weather, we’ve never in our house been fans of the cynical creep of Christmas earlier and earlier on the calendar.  The public gratitude expressed to Nordstrom department stores, which doesn’t put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving, reveals that most people prefer to have autumn and Halloween in October, Thanksgiving in November, and Christmas in December.

For the really stubborn and historically minded, like us, “Christmas” doesn’t begin after Thanksgiving.  That four-week period is Advent, when we prepare ourselves and our homes, inside and out, for the joy of welcoming Emmanuel, “God With Us,” on Christmas Eve. Although decades ago the Christmas tree was not decorated until Christmas Eve, most of us include decorating our homes and putting up Christmas trees as part of our Advent activities — but the preparation is not just for one day, December 25, but for the entire twelve-day season beginning December 24 and concluding on Epiphany, or January 6th.  If we have a party during the Christmas season in our home, we usually have it after Christmas Day, and before New Year’s Eve, perhaps the on Fourth Night (December 28th).  We spread out our gift-opening, too, so when guests come to our Christmas party they still seen wrapped presents under the tree. I began that tradition when A. was nearly three, after seeing how too many gifts on one day was utterly overwhelming to a young child. We never even got around to cooking Christmas dinner, so pressured were we to open all the presents and call all the relatives. The focus for such a special day became the stuff, and it was simply depressing.

The following year I took a hint from our Jewish friends and Chanukah, and had twelve gifts — some special and high on the Christmas wish list, but many as modest as an inexpensive puzzle or box of candy — and each day’s gifts wrapped differently. I spent time matching the size of the gift for both children, so we would have no jealousy: never would one child open a Slinky as the other child open a space rocket. On Christmas Day they opened gifts from grandparents, aunts and uncles who didn’t understand or care for the concept of spreading out the holiday. If they wanted to, they could open one of their matching gifts from us.  Often they chose not to. Then, after Christmas Day, we said nothing.  Every couple of days they would come to us, “May we open a present?” “Yes!” and they would go to the tree together to choose which twin gifts they would open. If they had skipped a day, then there were days when they could open two. I didn’t have to supervise, because I had made sure that gifts of like sizes, values and pizzaz-level were wrapped identically — same paper, same ribbon. We also had, and still have, special meals on all Twelve Nights, keep the Christmas music going, and generally treat the season like an extended party — which it is!

Twelfth Night, or January 5th, is called “Little Christmas” by many who celebrate the Twelve Days, and can include its own evening celebration. The day after, January 6th, is Epiphany, “The Feast of Lights,” when the Magi came to worship the young boy Jesus. In my home, we always had a special dinner either on Twelfth Night or on Epiphany, with plenty of lit candles, more music, and we opened the last of the Christmas presents under the tree.  Yes, it’s true: I’ve never taken my Christmas decorations down before January 7th!

My children loved the languorous pace of the Twelve Days of Christmas, concluding with Epiphany. This kind of slower celebration might be hard to introduce with teenagers, but those with very young children can do so without much consternation from the lower ranks.  You might try it next year! If you don’t like it, you can always return to the standard Christmas Day orgy of gifts.

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Categories parenting

The Anchor of Time

October 8, 2012 //
2

In terms of created or natural attractions and the concept of “quality lasts,” a really fun long-term activity to engage in with your child is to make a timeline.  A timeline can include everything and be limitless in scope, or it can be topically focused and zero in just one episode of history, such as the interactive timeline of World War II (and many more) found here:

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/

The British Library has an online timeline resource that includes a central timeline beginning in 1210 and goes to the present day.  One can also choose timelines focusing on politics, literature and language, the arts, science, and other topical emphases. http://www.bl.uk/timeline

Another fascinating timeline project, focused on science, evolution, and the humanities, can be found online at ChronoZoom.

http://www.chronozoomproject.com/#/t55@x=-5.081114107674926e-11&y=4.744970943672262e-11&w=1.0379146920486675&h=1.3200491146606408

Here’s their description of the project:

ChronoZoom is an open source community project dedicated to visualizing the history of everything to bridge the gap between the humanities and sciences using the story of Big History to easily understand all this information. This project has been funded and supported by Microsoft Research Connections in collaboration with University California at Berkeley and Moscow State University.

You can browse through history on ChronoZoom to find data in the form of articles, images, video, sound, and other multimedia. ChronoZoom links a wealth of information from five major regimes that unifies all historical knowledge collectively known as Big History.

By drawing upon the latest discoveries from many different disciplines, you can visualize the temporal relationships between events, trends, and themes. Some of the disciplines that contribute information to ChronoZoom include biology, astronomy, geology, climatology, prehistory, archeology, anthropology, economics, cosmology, natural history, and population and environmental studies.

Less graphically sophisticated but comprising a wealth of information and  people biographies is the web site Hyperhistory, with timelines for a myriad of historical events and movements:

http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html

In our family, we happened to live in an older home – probably no accident, given my early attraction to historic architecture.  But since our house was built in 1850, it provided a very handy way to date many other things that our children saw or learned about: “This piece of music was written ten years before our house was built.” Or “This painting was painted 20 years after our house was built.”  We resounded that theme over and over – not anticipating that we would ever quiz our kids about the chronology of architectural of artistic periods and styles, but just using something with which they were very familiar – our hybrid Federal/Italianate Victorian house – as a baseline against which many other creative outgrowths could be marked.  Maybe it was pointless, but I had a deep belief that if we continued to mark everything we saw historically by something we knew so intimately, something of that chronology would soak in to our childrens’ understandings of art, architecture, style periods, and cultural context.

You can simply discuss events verbally using the timeline concept, as we did using our house as the pivot-point, but even more fun is to make your own timelines, whether computer-generated, or by hand.

Here are the top ten programs for creating timelines, as compiled by David Kapuler, an educational consultant with more than 10 years of experience working in the K-12 environment:

http://www.techlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=67&entryid=592

You’ll find that in creating timelines, both you and your child will gain a deeper understanding of the unfolding of events. You can include illustrations, photographs, sound clips, videos, and other links and inserts — and as you go out in your community or travel on vacation, you’ll find that any number of things you come across have pertinence and can launch an interesting conversation.

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Buildings, Part Two.

June 25, 2012 //
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So buildings and their history and construction became somewhat of a preoccupation in our home.  We would talk about them as we went places in the car, as we drove through other towns, as we traveled to new cities. We would talk about construction materials, historical styles, roof materials, what was durable and what wasn’t, what we liked and didn’t like, and why.

When Andrew was four and our godson was being baptized at a local Orthodox Church with a massive yellow brick dome, Andrew got out of the car, gazed solemnly at the enormous brick edifice, and proclaimed, “The big bad wolf sure couldn’t blow this church down!”  The dome has since been sheathed in metal, but I’m sure to a small child at that time, it looked something like this: 

Real building at home (as opposed to stacking) always started with colored wooden blocks, which, in spite of their low-tech nature, provided endless hours of joy. 

Another happy accident almost as pivotal as the blue table came the year that Santa Claus somehow shorted Andrew by one gift.  The line-up, when inspected on Christmas Eve, looked decidedly and unacceptably unbalanced.  How had it happened? It wouldn’t do. So dear father went out to Toys R Us for a late-night foray to even the score and came back with an off-brand castle kit of small Lego-like pieces.  “But — the recommended age is eight!” I said.  Andrew was not quite five.  “Don’t worry — I’ll do it with him.  It’s so cool — he’ll love it.” And he did.  And they did.  And it became one of the great activities in our house for several years.  That very intricate castle, with parapets and flags and knights and guards and a mote, was built and rebuilt, first by father and son, and later by son alone, and in the weeks when it was going on our whole house seemed consumed by medieval romance.

Who could forget Camp Hi-Ho? Twenty miles out in the country, where the kids had days of totally unstructured playtime, and dear camp owner Karen Lawrence always made sure they had piles of plywood, two-by-fours, hammers, saws, nails, and a sturdy tree on which to build their own tree house. Before each session when they were enrolled, Karen would call to say that she had their building supplies ready.

A few years later, when we were contemplating leaving our 1850s house for something with more modern amenities, we took both children house-hunting with us.  It seemed only fair that they should have a voice in the decision, since it would be their home during their most formative years.  One day after spending a great deal of time in a circa 1970s home with a large indoor pool, a lovely gathering kitchen, spa-sized bathrooms, an entire floor for the teenagers, a finished basement, and closets that would hold everyone’s clothes in-season and out  (in our 150-year-old home, we had to teach the kids what the word “closet” meant by showing them pictures in magazines), we walked back into our front hall flushed with excitement over the lavish social life we could enjoy in such a spread.  The next thing I knew, Andrew was lying spread eagle on his back in our vast front hall, arms outstretched on the black-and-white terrazo floor staring up at the ceilings 15 feet over his head. “What are you doing?” I asked.  After a few beats of silence his young voice emerged, oh so quietly.

“We can’t leave this house.”

So we didn’t.  We hired an architect, then a contractor, and created some of the conveniences that we had thought we would buy.  And during the process the kids spent hours designing their own fantasy additions. They drew floor plans that were unusual in their. . .unusualness.  Scores of rooms led one to another in dizzying spirals. Only a fire marshall imported from Ukraine and a very large bribe would have give us code passage. One design featured mile-long, parallel wings with special rooms for any number of particular activities: the board game room; the painting room; the doll room; the bouncing room; the sewing room, the music room, the movie room, the dancing room, the ping-pong room. (Actually, that floor plan might be used for executive homes to this day.)

Then there was the time during our construction period when we visited my first cousin in Vienna, Virginia.  As Tom and I enjoyed a quiet anniversary dinner at the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, my cousin John pulled into his garage with Andrew and Sidney in the car.  Sidney, age six, emitted a contented sigh and John caught her smile.

“What is it, Sidney?”

“A garage is nice.” And she added conspiratorially, as if she had recently been admitted to a very special club, “We’re building a garage.”

No one can live in Louisville, Kentucky without being aware of our city’s impressive collection of Victorian cast-iron store fronts — the biggest collection outside Manhattan.  My husband insists that we have the best Main Street on earth. And going regularly to restaurants and cultural events in that environment leaves one with a certain mental and spiritual imprint, as does going to a high school built in 1934, or going to a church built in 1888. And if your father works in a building designed by Michael Graves, well, that’s just the cream. 

We bought books to celebrate our fascination with architecture: the greatest, the absolute greatest, was What It Feels Like to Be a Building, by Forrest Wilson, published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, now sadly out of print, but still available used.

Housebuilding for Children by Lester Walker is still in print, and gives detailed instructions in how a group of primary-school children can build a small house using easily available tools and materials. Seriously, what child would want to play video games when he could build his own little house? This book was on the market when my children were young, and I’m dreadfully sorry I never knew about it.  They and their father set out to build their own house, which remained in our backyard for many unhappy months.  It was not an architectural gem, and the fact that a toddler potty somehow ended up inside, and the house didn’t have a door, rendered it. . .well, not the epitome of couth.

Another treasure was Dorling Kindersley’s Open House,  “lift-the-flap” book that revealed the behind-the-door secrets of a Roman street, a 16th-century Scottish tower, a 17th century Dutch home, , an 18th century English country mansion, an 1800s French farmhouse, early 19th-century Japanese house, and a mid 19th century  American country store.

All this must have soaked in with both kids, because when they were looking at colleges, the architecture became a surprisingly weighty factor in their preferences.  One look at the inside of student housing at Duke caused Andrew to change his mind about the desirability of that school forever, and sent him racing over to neighboring Chapel Hill for an admissions form.  And I think Sidney would have worked as a barrista for the rest of her life rather than go to a school without quintessential Gothic architecture.  Such hyper sensitivity to architecture seemed a little silly to me at first, but when I remembered that I once told a friend that I’d rather live in a tent in Mozambique than in a certain subdivision not far from my home, I had to admit being at least half responsible.

Thinking about your town and its architecture — whether built to last or not — what could you do to raise your child’s awareness of his built environment?

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Categories parenting

Lessons the Buildings Taught Me.

June 2, 2012 //
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(Photo Credit: Colin Dixon/Arcaid/Corbis)

When I first was taken with great architecture in my life, I began to reflect on great structures. It dawned on me that great structures last. In time, it began to dawn on me that not only do great structures last, but perhaps all great things last.  As I observed life around me, I could see a marked difference among that which had only been around a few years, that which had been around decades but was fading into disrepair or obscurity, or that which had survived centuries or even millennia.

Thus, my first observation about how to pursue a quality life was born:

To gain insight into the best of human life, study and absorb the things that have stood the test of time, and have lasted.

At first I thought primarily about the built environment, but as time went on, I realized that once could broaden that philosophy to include music, literature, art, and religion. And ever since that time, I have gained my great moments of spiritual exhilaration when learning at the feet of great masters of all these disciplines, whose work has had to endure a few decades of being buffeted by the course of events, societal distractions, even ridicule, and then emerged again showing forth a wisdom that people at first overlooked or even scorned.

But this is not a blog, or eventually a book, about my life, but about your child, and how you can broaden your child’s spirit and vision, as it were, to recognize quality in the midst of all the noise in our world.  I can give you a lot of practical tips, but underlying those has to be your bedrock conviction that there is something worth shooting for, high above the diet fed by the Disney Channel and MTV. You have to believe that some things, the really good things, are everlasting.  If they weren’t, it would be rather cruel to force-feed them to our children: I don’t think our goal is to create creatures of utter cultural anachronism, weirdos and nerds destined to be mocked and bullied.

What’s more, truly to raise a Renaissance child doesn’t mean sequestering him or her from all of the cultural junk food that comprises most of young Americans’ media diet.  If you do that, he will have no way to discern quality from candy, and once he gets his first taste of Cheetos, if you will, it’ll be good bye caviar (figuratively speaking). The allure of forbidden fruit is real, so a little bit of age-appropriate cotton candy  can be used to teach the difference between shallowness and depth, and the occasional joy of cuddling up in bed and watching one’s favorite prince or princess outwit the evil villain. Later you can find seek out the age-appropriate version of the real Pocahontas, who was not in love with John Smith but sacrificed herself more heroically simply from an inner sense of fairness. 

It all goes back to your own convictions, and communicating them calmly and respectfully to your child, trusting that if you can take the most advanced concept and put it into simple language and render it understandable.

So what are we trying to produce, if not weirdos and nerds? I think for me, my desire 24 years ago when my first child was born, was summed up in a documentary my husband saw about a Japanese woman raising her children in the aftermath of Hiroshima.  As she put her children to bed each night, she told the camera that she tried to teach them “to look beneath the surface of things.”  Above all, we will have prepared our children for life, and they will be better citizens of the world, if they know how to do that – and culture that has lasted through time is only a tool to teach our children to go deep, question the prevailing wisdom (which so often is only herd-think) and have the courage to stand alone if one must. I’m not sure one can do that without being inspired by stories of others who have, and by having the messages of courage and nobility instilled in us. So we expose our children to heroicism in the arts and history and the world – large things that capture their minds and hearts and inspire them to dream big dreams. Because one will never sacrifice without a dream as a promise to back it up.

But you can’t fake it: you have to believe at some very elemental level that the universe is on your side in this endeavor: that for all the seeming dominance of bedazzled plastic, it will ultimately turn to dust, and the good and the heroic will remain.  For some of us, this is not hard.  We believe it – we know it. For others, you may have to spend some time contemplating this concept and asking yourself what you really believe, and what is really important to you.  If you really believe that it’s more important for a girl to be popular at her school than for her to have self-respect, then you will never be able to persuade her that you aren’t just as devastated as she when she has been abandoned by the cool kids on the weekend. If you really believe that winning the football game is all-important, your son will know that when he misses the last-second field goal that you are ashamed of him and he will imagine that you prefer another child to him.

And above all, when it seems that your teenager is rejecting everything you have tried assiduously to teach him, can you keep from throwing it over yourself in your own mini-popularity contest with your own beloved child? Because although we can be flexible, we can’t be hypocrites and keep our childrens’ respect.  They will push and test and torment us, and we have to be stronger than they are.  We have to win their love by risking their scorn. We can’t tell them that reading Black Beauty is better than reading A Diamond for Tammy, and four years later ourselves be caught reading a dime-store bodice-ripper under the covers with a flashlight. 

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Categories parenting

Reading

May 22, 2012 //
2

Where to begin? Is there any way to describe the importance of reading in the life of a child? Can one start it too young?

I will confess that my mother thought perhaps she started it too young with me.  At least she thought she  caved to my desire to learn to read when I was too young.  Like every younger brother or sister, I wanted to do what my older brother was doing.  So naturally when he started to school and was learning to read, I wanted to learn to read, too. But I was only three, and my mother worried that if I learned too early, I would be bored when I reached grade school.  She had just cause to be concerned, too: in those days, first grade consisted of a rigidly constructed curriculum, and if it was repetition for a child, tant pis, as the French would say: tough luck.  Teachers had no idea how to adjust for individual needs, which surely has been the difficulty of teaching a classroom of diverse children throughout history.  But in the early 1960s, it was unheard of to alter curriculum for individual needs. So my mother tried everything she could think of to put me off.  She assigned my father the job of teaching me to read music and to play the piano, and I went along for a short time, but it wasn’t what I wanted.  They tried to distract me with art supplies, craft supplies, play dates, nursery school, anything, until my mother succumbed to my misery and pulled out the “easy to read” books and started in on phonics.

The inevitable happened, and for first, second, third and fourth grades I was bored, bored, bored — and spent much of my time sitting at a desk out in the hall, because bored, curious children. . .well, it isn’t a good thing. I think my mother decided that teaching me to read early backfired in all the ways she had feared, and in many ways she was right.

So I had a few trepidations about early reading when my children came along, but I suppose not enough, because as soon as I saw that little glimmer in their eyes — that intellectual connection between the words on the page and the words I was speaking — and they began to tilt toward literacy by learning their ABCs, and then learning to write their ABCs, and then writing books with titles like PREWEO REWO and reading them outloud, good old mom was right there, bouncing up and down with a nauseatingly goofy smile, bending forward in the way mothers do when they are terribly excited, nodding vigorously, and stage whispering, “Do you want to learn to read? do you want to learn to read??”

It was all over, then. Of course, the older child came first.  I think he was four. Lest anyone think this requires extraordinary intelligence on the part of the parent or the child, it does not. It’s really quite Pavlovian.  It begins with identifying the shapes of the letters, perhaps on wooden blocks or other toys, and repeating the letter sound at the same time.  Of course, today one can get V-Tech toys to do all of this, but I doubt there is any substitute for physical closeness with a parent or another trusted adult in the process.  (My daughter used to fairly pound the floor with her little fat hand as she played: “Mama, sit! Play!” as I raced through, invariably on the way to the washing machine. Would a V-Tech toy have answered that desire for human proximity? Of course not. Did I? Let’s just say that even “renaissance parents” have strains of guilt years later over various failings and personal propensities. And the kids are all right.)

But I do think that half of learning to read is about snuggling, lap sitting, or just being side-by-side on a sofa or in a big, cushy chair: which may have something to do with the decline in public school literacy in the primary years, but I am no expert about that.

Having a lot of books around is also critical. But they don’t have to be new books from the bookstore or Amazon, if the budget is tight.  They can be from the library, they can be from used booksellers, they can be exchanged with friends.  And of course, children will want to read if they see their parents reading — so even if you don’t have the habit, develop it.  Even if you find it the hardest thing in the world to do, fake it for your kid! Sit with a book in front of you and turn the pages in the child’s presence, rather than let him or her always see you watching television or playing on the computer.  I will be assaulted by parental feedback for that — for encouraging deception — and of course, part of me is being facetious when I recommend faking anything, but I am only trying to impress upon you how good it is — like Vitamin D and Vitamin C and broccoli and protein and fiber and baths and hugs and kisses — for your child to see you using books and deriving benefit from them.  A lot.

From there it’s really quite simple.  What does the “C” sound like? “kuh-kuh-kuh”  What is the next letter?  “A”  What sounds does that make?  “ah” or sometimes?  “ay” What is the last letter?  “T” And what sounds does it make”  “tuh-tuh-tuh” So we put it together to make? “kuuh. . .ahhhh. . . .tuh. . .CAT!!!”

Now, here’s the critical part: if there’s a picture of a cat on the page, the next time, the child will say, “CAT!” immediately, from the picture — BUT HE WON’T HAVE READ THE WORD.  So if you are really trying to teach him to read and not just to find reasons to load him up with empty praises, you have to force him to slow down, and repeat the whole exercise: dismantling the word letter by letter, sounding out each letter, and putting it together.  Because kids can memorize books very, very easily, and they and you can tell yourselves that they are reading.  There is nothing wrong with that, but don’t be fooled by it. Reading comes when they recognize the individual letters on the page, identify their corresponding letter sounds, and string them together to create the words.  And yes, it gets a bit complicated with short and long vowels and “e’s” on the end of words, combined vowel sounds, and similar English peculiarities. It requires a lot of faith and patience, but if your child really wants to do it, you can do it.

Should you? Oh, that depends. I would say it depends on the primary educational offerings where you live, and your willingness to advocate (read: fight) your way through them. In our case, I was pretty sure that I could find what my children needed when they entered school, even if they went in reading chapter books fluently. And I was even more certain of my own dedication to making sure that they got what they needed, smash-mouth mother that I was.  And I knew the law, which is vastly different than it was in the early 1960s. Today, special needs children have to be given the education they need in the public system. Is it wrong to make them outliers by teaching them past grade level, and then to insist that the public school system meet their needs? Well, let me answer that question with another question: Is it right to discourage one’s children from learning when they are ready to and want to, simply to save government resources?

I told myself that if I weren’t able to find a classroom that could receive them exactly where they were in terms of learning, and move them forward enough that they weren’t bored, as I was in the primary grades, then I would teach them at home.  I didn’t especially want to homeschool, because I’m independent by nature and have always enjoyed having my own life separate from my kids, and we were blessed that I never had to. I know that both of my children are grateful that they were able to go to “regular schools” (public all the way through for my son and parochial most of the way through for my daughter) and get a good education.  But I wasn’t going to hold them back academically because it might require homeschooling. If they wanted to learn, I wanted them to and was determined to facilitate or even lead the process. If we had to drive one beat-up car, if we had to forego a lot of other perks and pleasures, and I had to sell cosmetics in the evenings, we would do it. (Okay, I lied: I don’t think I could have sold cosmetics, or even plastic leftover dishes, or even encyclopedias. These days, some moms learn to pole dance. I would not be good at that. I guess I could have sung at weddings: “The Lord’s Prayer” and Paul Stuckey’s “There is Love,”  over and over and over and over and over again, Saturday after Saturday, $50 a pop, two per weekend, $400 a month: saved from a life of pink Cadillacs or cash tucked in a G-string. Whew!)

How did it all this early learning work? Remarkably well, for us. Yes, school shopping was a bit of a project at every juncture — kindergarten, primary, middle and high school. Much of that is due to our city and how the schools are organized, as people have told me who have relocated here from other cities, where you simply enroll at and go to the nearest neighborhood school.  I was glad we had a lot of choices; school shopping was a great pleasure for us.  People told me for years that we could have published and sold our “kindergarten notebook” to parents after we were done with the shopping process. I could always find a school that was offering curriculum at the right level.  In the primary grades, that was a Montessori school, which we were blessed to find in a public school setting.

Today my children are both avid readers. They seem to love reading, and to consider it part of their identity, their gestalt, almost their obligation in carrying out a cherished family tradition. They seem to know that reading is nearly as good as travel, and in some ways a good bit better: the water is potable, the bed is your own, there are no suitcases to pack and unpack, you don’t have to worry about forgetting your toothbrush, and you can always find a bathroom.

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Categories parenting

Talk

April 18, 2012 //
4

Image

The details of an NPR segment I heard years ago about successful parenting of preschoolers are long lost now in a brain stuffed through the years with whether we’re out of cat food, who regretted that invitation, is the science fair project getting done, and are you sure that brown stain in the ceiling isn’t larger today than it was last week. But one poignant example from the story has never left me: the topic was yet another academic attempt to trace the common home characteristics among successful elementary school students, beyond the old maxim, nevertheless true, about gathering for dinner.  And the pediatric authority being interviewed described a Mack-truck sized factor so simple that as I listened I was nearly brought to tears.  The fact is, she said, successful children have been talked to by their parents.  And an overwhelming number of others haven’t.  She said, “There simply isn’t any substitute for the mother or father who, when dishing up the peas to the baby in the high chair, says, “These are peas! Peas are round! Peas are green!”

Just talk.  In talk we’re saying so many things: we’re saying that our children are on our minds, that in the death-struggle between them and the cat food inventory in our frazzled consciousness, they have won.  We’re saying that they are worth talking to. And of course, we’re also saying all the things we are actually saying about peas, what “round” and “green” means, and spoons and plates and microwaves and when that first wave of desperate hunger has passed, not putting the peas on your head. (Actually, it was usually ravioli, for some reason, and I’m amazed that my daughter’s scalp isn’t still coated with orange grease.)

I wish I had more details from that NPR feature.  I would like to have a podcast of it  on my phone, push “play” and force young parents to listen when they pronounce on what their children couldn’t possibly understand at “this age.”  “He’s only [two, three, four]. I mean, I’ve pointed to babies and said I have one in my tummy, but he doesn’t really understand any of it.”

How do you know what he understands, or doesn’t? And is it not incumbent on you to try to translate into understandable terms something as world-shattering as the sudden arrival of a screaming day-and-night competitor for his mother or father’s attention? Can’t you try to imagine and do everything you might to help him come to an understanding of the rude changes coming in his young life?

But it starts long before the first sibling is on his or her way.  If you see your life as a series of choices, whether wise or foolish, good or bad, unfortunate or fortunate, those are things about which you can talk to your child: “We live here because long ago I [learned to love old houses] [decided I hated snow] [fell in love with an aspiring rock star] [couldn’t stand my mother’s Wednesday-night, pan-fried liver].” Okay, your two-year-old may not know the word “aspiring,” but she has an intimate connection to the concept  “I want,” and it’s a very small leap from “I want” to “I want to be.”  And that’s aspiration.  By the time she’s three, you can even teach her the word.

(One of the sources of amusement and joy in our house was the fact that every erect speaking mammal knew the phrase “deferring gratification,” and what it meant, and the concept was discussed frequently relative to any number of chores and pleasures. Why the philosophy seems to have fallen by the wayside now that we are all adults has more to do with the dissipation that comes from age or the lack of a regular paycheck, but thankfully, that is a different book.)

It seemed we talked about everything. When the house was built. When Abraham Lincoln was president, relative to when the house was built. Who
Abraham Lincoln was, and why he was great. What slavery is. What war is.  What the Civil War was.  (My son’s expression for the Civil War was that it was a “brother war of the North against the South.” We got out the map for that one, and then had to explain that a map was a drawing of where we live, or other people live, pictured from way up above in the sky.)

We talked about seeds, and why we plant them. What would happen after we planted them, if we did certain things or didn’t do them. What kind of seeds they were.  What was supposed to grow from them and what we could do with those things. (Although only one soccer-sized watermelon appeared. That was another discussion.) What rain was. Why it was good, but also why sometimes we didn’t like it.  Why we all had things to do during the day — things we didn’t always want to do, like preschool and work. What would happen if we didn’t do those things: not “I’ll get fired and we’ll be homeless,” or “I’ll go to jail for truancy and you won’t have a mother,” but “We wouldn’t have any money for the baseball game,” and “You wouldn’t learn to count or read.” We talked about the cats, and why Gabriel didn’t like it when we grabbed his stomach and twisted it.  But how nice he was not to scratch us when we did. We talked about friends, and the nice and not-nice things they did, how we could advocate for ourselves while still being fair to them, and when we needed a teacher to intervene. We talked a lot about advocating for ourselves with teachers, too — because we found ourselves in defensive positions with ignorant teachers quite a bit. We talked realistically about life and its challenges. We talked a lot about God, love, beauty, family, history, books, music, movies, sports, and, of course, the stuff that goes in the potty.  (Why do all kids love that so much? Why do all young parents think it belongs on Comedy Central, or, if not, Facebook?)

When you think of a young mind as an empty slate on which all this information is written, creating a very rudimentary Encyclopedia Britannica of life, a foundation of general knowledge on which is built everything else when he or she gets into “real school,” it’s no wonder that the child who knows at least something about peas, the color green, babies, seeds, rain, jobs, maps, sports, fair play, stupid teachers, Abraham Lincoln and poop has a pretty sizable and priceless advantage in life.  And it doesn’t cost a thing.

What adult-sized topics have you talked about successfully with your child? What surprising topics has your child brought up that challenged you to dig deep  before answering?

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Categories parenting

God is in the details.

January 5, 2012 //
0

Okay, so this is, to me, anyway, amazing: I found the banner image you see on the blog yesterday evening. It had all the qualities I wanted — too many even to be able to explain here. I downloaded it and cropped it and posted it, all the while feeling. . .not right, you know. . .because that little angel-on-your-shoulder statement was posted to the right of the image: “Copyright restrictions may apply.” I knew it had to be dealt with. I told myself that the artist might well be someone who does contemporary old-master-style paintings, and he or she might be simply delighted to have his or her work cameoed (is that a verb?) on a blog and a book cover. Instant publicity, right?  Sales, right? But if we had to pay, we’d pay; I was just hoping it wouldn’t be too much. The image was perfect.

So today, when the publisher’s representative called me about some other details, I told her about finding the image, “borrowing it,” and the need for us to find out about rights.  (And, of course, the need for rights to be affordable.) She quickly said that if I would send her the link, she’d get right on it and see what she could learn.

Of course, have I ever been about to wait for someone else to do something like that? Noooooo. I  sent Amanda the link, but I also did some digging myself, and learned — glory be! — that the painting “Four Children and a Basket of Fruit” was painted by Angelika Kauffman around 1800.  It’s on a myriad of poster and oil painting reproduction sites because (yes, it’s true) it’s in the public domain!  The image is perfect for Raising the Renaissance Child — okay, to me it’s perfect — if you disagree, please let me know — and it’s mine to use forever, for anything.  What’s more, the details of Angelika Kauffman’s life will resonate with Renaissance Child fans.  More about that in the coming days.

Just one more way that I feel the guiding hand of Providence on me in this project.

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Categories art, Family

Introduction

January 4, 2012 //
1

I’ve dreamed about this book for many years.: first when my two children were small, and I saw them responding to a certain somewhat contrived environment that I intentionally created for them.  Later, as they went into their teen and high school years, I grieved that I could no longer write it, because I had failed in the attempt: they seemed to reject everything that I had so assiduously taught them, and raced into the arms of popular culture in all the most horrifying ways, to my way of thinking.

But then, as older parents with older children always reassure, they came back. Gradually, mostly in college, they concluded that our home and family had provided them with special, irreplaceable, cherished wisdom and values, and they even began to celebrate the odd petri dish in which they had grown into cognizant beings, able to make their own choices.

And they told me to write this book.

Maybe, ultimately, that’s why I decided to write Raising the Renaissance Child, after all: because my own children said it was a book that deserved shelf space, and that I was the right person to bring it into being.

Recently there’s been a bit of buzz about the Tiger Mom’s book.  I haven’t read it, and won’t until this is done and safely in the hands of the publisher – too fearful that the Tiger Mom’s voice or ideas will seep into mine.  I might agree with some of her techniques, many of her goals. But I recall that even the Tiger Mom admitted that her child-rearing method wasn’t altogether successful: that at least one of her children rebelled quite seriously, and it caused some relational problems.

Creating a Renaissance home caused no direct relational problems – but that’s not to say we didn’t have any.  The relational problems we had were either because I adopted too much of a zealot’s mentality, and lost my friendly nature as I saw my children temporarily pretend to reject our teachings, or because I myself didn’t live up to the Renaissance values that I espoused. In the ways that I caved personally to popular culture, they felt disappointed and betrayed.

Any endeavor like this, raising Renaissance children through the creation of a Renaissance home, can’t become an overly dogmatic practice.  One can’t be fanatical. One has to bend, and there must be joy in it.  It must be an idea – not an ideology.  I think ultimately, good child rearing is a conversation between loving parents and ever-more independent children.  Maybe that sounds namby-pamby, loosy-goosy, and frighteningly undisciplined.  But in these times, children have too many opportunities to create a secret life about which parents know nothing – the conversation is our attempt to keep ourselves in the mix.  If it’s a monologue pronounced by the parent and unquestioningly submitted to by the child. . .well, Mom or Dad, you’re kidding yourself.  If you’ve raised smart children, Renaissance children, they are going to question, they are going to think for themselves, and they are going to push back when they perceive your mandates don’t align with the values that have been fundamental in your home.  That’s a good thing: the same questioning they do with you will become the model for the questioning they will do with the world.  And that’s what raising the Renaissance child is all about: teaching our young people to reject the tawdry, to seek and to cherish the truth, and to create for themselves lives of beauty, optimism and hope, comprised of things that have lasted centuries and even millennia, and will continue to last.

This is a book for parents of children still-at-home, especially young children, and for soon-to-be-parents, and perhaps for grandparents who hope to apply the suggestions to their interactions with their childrens’ children.  It is not a book for parents whose children are grown. The problem with making parenting recommendations is that one is bound to be met with defensiveness from those whose parenting lives are now, for all intents and purposes, over.  We care too much about our kids, and feel too responsible for the choices we made as we raised them, to be able to accept any critiques, even indirect ones, with equanimity.  So if hostile lobs come from parents who feel guilty about a time in the past, I will state outright: this book was not written for you.

For the intended audience, do not worry if adopting all the suggestions in this book doesn’t feel right.  Take what works for you, and ignore what doesn’t. Most of these tools were ones that my family found worked for us, or other families found worked for them, but a family is a living and unique organism.  Your children will end by loving yours if you, and they, grow to embrace what distinguishes it from every other family on earth.  That’s the miracle of family life, and any true renaissance person knows how to cherish it.

Enjoy the quest.

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Categories Family

About Vivian Ruth Sawyer

January 3, 2012 //
0

I’m a professional writer, wife and mom, Anglican, sports fan (especially college football and basketball), music lover, book reader, frequent traveler, more often irritated than I care to admit, more indulgent of others than perhaps I should be — until I think how I, too, want to be indulged.

I think most problems in the world would be solved by laughter, prayer and taking baths instead of showers. Bourbon helps, too.

I’m writing a book about raising children to gravitate toward life-affirming things that have stood the test of time, and to choose those things independently, as young adults.  In my view, the things that last centuries or even millennia tend to be the things that we would want our children to recognize, learn from, absorb, and celebrate. The title of the book is Raising the Renaissance Child, and it will be published by Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson. My plan is for the book manuscript to be completed by June 2013, and for the print version to be launched in late November that year.

I would be grateful if you would follow my blog and contribute your thoughts and suggestions.

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Categories book, Family
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