Light and Momentary

Is it Thursday again already?

Blech, I hate driving in bad weather. We are having a storm here in our corner of the Midwest, and I had to drive home after dark in it. I am ready for bed but Petely had a long late nap while I was away, so we shall see how long it takes me to get there.

I have been meaning to post about last weekend, but it's been a hectic week. My schedule this semester is set up so that the weeks alternate being more relaxed and quite busy, and this was one of the latter. Last weekend we went to St. Paul, where we met Sarah and Erin and ate bacon for six meals in a row. Six! Bacon is a fine, fine thing. With that thought, I'll bid you goodnight.

Thursday Evening Mishmash

The woman whose check I lost has just learned that she has a mass in her brain. Please pray for her, if you would, because she is waiting to find out more and she is pretty worried. Sooo I think I am going to dig through the recycling, because she does not need anything else on her list of stuff to take care of. Stuff of which to take care. You know what I mean. Thank you for your comments. They helped me to feel less like a flake.

I haven't posted anything about this new semester yet but I'm excited about it. I'm taking a class in the psychology department that looks like it will be really fun. We're talking about early brain development. Today the prof played the most amazing recording for us. This researcher found a ewe that was very close to delivering twin lambs and put microphones on the heads of the lambs through a cesarean-esque incision. Then she was sewn back up and they recorded what the world sounds like to babies in utero. Or at least to babies in utero ovis. It was much, much clearer than I would have guessed. It made me feel guilty about the yelling at older children I did when I was pregnant, because it apparently came through loud and clear. At least the new baby got acclimated to a sound he would hear post-natally. [heavy sigh]

Did you know that babies  on the third day of life can recognize stories they heard in the womb? Isn't that mind-boggling? (Or did everybody know this except me?) Oh, here's another mind-boggling thing. I knew that researchers measured babies' sucking patterns with specially adapted pacifiers to assess their preferences, but I didn't know that they give the babies choices. Suck more slowly, and you hear your mom reading the story she read you at 7 months' gestation. Suck more quickly, and you hear a stranger reading the same story. For another set of babies, it might be that sucking quickly gets you mom reading the familiar story, and sucking slowly means you hear mom reading an unfamiliar story. The babies -- did I mention they were 56 hours old? -- learn how to elicit the recording of mom reading the familiar story, because that's what they like best. Amazing, huh?

I'm also doing an independent study focused on phonological theory. The reading so far is a little painful, but I'm hopeful that it will get better. The nice thing about blogging my way through grad school is that I can scroll back through my archives and say, "Huh, I forgot how that stumped me. It's not so hard after all." The professor and I are talking about alternatives to the theories I learned in grad school the first time. I have been trying to remember if those approaches seemed intuitively evident the first time, or if I found them difficult going. I know there was a time when I didn't have a clue about the classification system that seems like second nature now, but I can't remember what it was like, getting from clueless to clueful. Clued? Clueous?

Oh! Data! I have data for my early research project! Not very much data so far (n = 23; not all of those are going to be usable), but I'm optimistic that more responses will keep trickling in. I'm hoping for 60. We'll see. I'm looking at the effect of an environmental variable on a condition with a genetic basis. So far my results support my hypothesis, but I have laughably small numbers for one group. Still! My preliminary results support my hypothesis! Join me in a geeky little happy dance, please.

Asking the internets

Oh, internet, what would you do? I am mad at myself.

I used to spend a lot a lot a lot of time volunteering for a not-for-profit organization. Since I started grad school I have cut waaaaay back, but I am still treasurer for our local chapter. One of my fellow volunteers decided to donate some money to the organization and sent the check to me in the mail.

I lost it.

I have now searched through the kids' paper tray, the adults' paper tray, the loose papers, the knitting bag, the library bag, the miscellany on top of my dresser, the cubby where unpaid bills live, the treasury materials, the magazines, and a number of other spots where a distracted treasurer might stick an envelope. I can see her handwriting on the front of the envelope: CJ Most-Gladly, with the hyphen. I was in THIS VERY ROOM thinking, "How nice of her." Then it disappeared into the ether.

It might be in the recycling stack. I hope not. The recycling stack is pushing 3 feet high right now. Don't tell FlyLady.

Do I a) send a thank-you note and keep looking? b) bite the bullet and go through the recycling? c) apologize abjectly and ask for a replacement check?

Gah, I am grumpy. But hey, my filing is caught up.

Finally

Do you ever read the Little House books and feel like a useless slacker as a parent? I can't even keep the laundry folded (machine washed and dried, natch) and I open the books to see that Ma is making her own cheese. Maybe I would have less of a laundry backlog if my kids' wardrobes consisted entirely of clothes I made for them. Or maybe they would just run around naked and CPS would come after me.

Anyway. I want to know how much of the kids' obedience in the Little House was real and how much was Laura looking back through the gilded haze of memory and thinking, "I never talked to my ma like the kids these days." I mean, I recognize that obedience was valued more highly then ("Casabianca," anyone?), but I have to wonder if there was quite as much yes-ma-ing as the books suggest.

My kids are learning v-e-r-y slowly about not interrupting. Some of it, I think, is that they've never been exposed to the rule that children should be seen and not heard. Some of it is also that they're not going to be taken out to the woodshed for interrupting. But OH MY GOODNESS sometimes it frustrates me.

We try to be consistent. (I say, "Are you bleeding? Do not burst in on a grownup conversation unless you need stitches.") It's slow.

In addition to not interrupting grownup conversations, I've been trying to teach the kids that prayer time is inviolate. If I am sitting on the couch with my breviary or my rosary, they need a seriously urgent reason, like fire or flood, to interrupt me. This has been an equally slow process, perhaps the more so since I don't really want to bellow, "Stop interrupting me NOW! Can't you see I'm PRAYING?!" See the power of prayer, kids? Wouldn't you like to be an ogre too?

But! This morning I was sitting on the couch with the Office of Readings when Alex told Marty, "Go get Mom!" Thump thump thump came the 8yo's feet down the stairs. "Mom," he called from the stairwell, and then he caught sight of me. He said, sotto voce, "No. The house is not on fire." He ran back upstairs. "It'll have to wait, Alex," he said.

I did a little couchbound happy dance and turned back to Deuteronomy.

Plug, Pulled

Oh, UGH, I was most of the way through a post about coffee and taste memories and the start of a new semester when the screen went dark. Joe was bothered by the twist in the two cords plugged into an outlet, and unplugged them so he could untwist them. One of them, unfortunately, was connected to the octopus that all the computer plugs go into. So much for that post.

UGH again -- boys are fighting and Elwood is leaving town for the day. Better pull something out of my hat quick. Think of me. :-/

ZETZER

Sarah emailed to ask if I had any ideas about stemming the "tsunami of whining" that has invaded her home. In general, my response to whining is feigned deafness, with a healthy dose of goofy. "What's that? [furrowing of the brow] It... sounds... almost... like... English, but I just don't speak Whining." Or I will sing, "Oh where, oh where, has your pleasant voice gone? Oh where, oh where can it be? You can't get what you want if you whine, my friend, so try your nice voice out on me." (So, yeah, the scansion doesn't quite work. But hey, they're preschoolers.)  If the whining is tsunami-esque and you are pulling out your hair and they are whining even louder, I suggest a different strategy. I call it ZETZER.

I believe that most annoying kid behaviors are incidental -- they just go with the territory. Have you ever shaken your head at a rant from the ranks of the child-free? "Those kids! They were whining! And not listening! And-- and-- breathing to boot!" Part of the work of the early years of motherhood for me was getting it through my thick head that my child was usually not being deliberately annoying.

Occasionally, though, I found that a negative emotional reaction seemed to be weirdly appealing to my oldest son. "Hey, I can't get what I want," he seemed to be thinking, "but neither can you. Fair's fair." Out of desperation, ZETZER was born.

ZETZER stands for ZEro Tolerance, Zero Emotional Response. It started in response to hitting -- I expended so much energy trying to teach my oldest son not to hit. Say what you will about spanking in general, I think it's a bad idea for parents who are dealing with aggression. "No! We don't hit! Hitting is wrong! And to enforce that moral teaching, I'm going to...hit you!" But what to do?

In those days the consequence for hitting was time-out; now I usually require acts of kindness or service. Even a two-year-old can put away his brother's clean socks for him, and I think that right actions can nudge kids toward right thinking. The ZET- part of ZETZER is to be absolutely rock-solid consistent in following up, because the "ignore it and it will go away" approach is not your friend in a tsunami situation. To crib from Barbara Coloroso, what is a practical response to whining that leaves everybody's dignity intact? How can you best send the message that whining is a waste of time because it will never, but never, get you what you want? How can you handle it if they are whining about a need that is actually urgent, and not just a preference that you can safely ignore until they lose the awful torturous gouge-your-eyes-out voice? (It could be as simple as saying matter-of-factly, "You really need [fill in the blank] right away. Next time you need to use a nicer voice to tell me.")

The -ZER part is the harder element for me: I respond to infractions as if I am discussing something as remote and uninteresting as infrastructure improvements in Myanmar. If my negative reaction is feeding a behavior in a kid who enjoys a little chain-yanking, I'm going to starve it out. 

Do not underestimate the difficulty of -ZER. You cannot will yourself not to twitch internally when they do the same STUPID thing YET AGAIN. You can only choose to moderate your visible response, a practice I find exhausting when the problem behavior is at tsunami level. In advance, figure out a place to vent your frustration -- a friend, perhaps, who will not be alarmed by a Krakatoan cloud of invective. Don't try ZETZER when you've got a looming deadline, or when the weather is going to keep you stuck indoors for three days, or when you anticipate hormonal chaos. Nobody, but nobody, can push my buttons like one of my children. I wish it weren't so, but alas, it is. If it's true for you too, plan accordingly.

If you are thinking about ZETZER, I suggest a little preemptive problem-solving first. Are they whining because bedtime has been late and they're overtired? Are they hitting because they're bored watching you read blogs and negative attention is better than no attention? Are they disobeying flagrantly because things have been tense between you and your husband and they're trying to draw your fire to divert you from fighting? The fewer times you have to respond in a bland and neutral voice to this behavior that's driving you up.the.freaking.wall, the easier it will be for you.

Verb. sap.: I have found that I often see a temporary spike in the target behavior when I begin to work on it assiduously. "We do not hit." Oh, yes, we do. "We do not hit." You just watch me! "We do not hit." Tra la la, were you saying something, Mom? I'm busy smacking my brother over here.

Despite its difficulties, I have found that ZETZER can be really effective when I am caroming toward crazy and my kids seem to get a kick out of pushing the cart toward the cliff. Most of the time, patience and consistency will do the trick with annoying behaviors. But when they are creeping up (or exploding) instead of inching down, ZETZER is my secret weapon.

An Empty Space

"Are we having a new baby soon?" Joe asked us last night.

In the land of mortars where the chromosome's Y

(That was supposed to be a riff on the "one ring to rule them all" poem but maybe it's mutilated beyond recognition.)

Back in early December my friend Jenny said, "So what are you doing about Christmas shopping?" and I said, "Really, I'm letting Elwood do it. We have these mystery packages arriving and I don't know what's in them but he's great at giving gifts."

And he is great at giving gifts but for some reason this year he went with the theme of "Our Heritage: The Second Amendment" and now I am surrounded by guns. Guns! As guns go, they are pretty harmless: one giant water gun, one Nerf dart gun, two guns that shoot Nerf balls to great whooping battery-powered fanfare, and a set of laser tag guns with matching goggles.

Normally such a list of presents would cause me to say, "Shoot me now." I am not saying it this time, because someone will do it. "Nerf ball, Nerf dart, or would you prefer the cold-water dousing? Happy to oblige!"

The boys are thrilled. I wasn't really overwhelmed until the book arrived: Backyard Ballistics. Because there are not enough projectiles in my little house, I guess. "The problem," my husband explained to his firstborn, "is that this project [a potato cannon, I believe, because just eating potatoes is so predictable] is made to shoot for, like, the length of a football field. So we can't really fire it off in the basement."

I'll say we can't. But raise your hand if you'd be surprised to catch them trying. Cleaning tips for removing exploded potato from the wall would be welcome.

Tea party, anyone? You bring the teddy bears. Ours will be in the stuffed animal hospital -- target practice takes a toll.

Ways my children have made me laugh this weekend

Joe the 5yo: "Mom, what will happen when Pete grows into a regular kid and we don't have any more babies? What will you do with all the baby stuff?"

Marty the 8yo, in Tones of Gloom: "Then she'll probably die."

***

Joe the 5yo: "What are you knitting?"

Me: "A blanket."

Joe: "A blanket?? You can't knit a blanket. You can knit a washcloth."

***

I am sewing a new cover for our down comforter, and Joe hears the clackety-clack of my seldom-used sewing maching. He comes running in, his face alight. "Mom! Do you have a machine gun?"

Manners

Linda is writing about manners today and it reminded me that I meant to post about etiquette too. I took the big kids to see The Water Horse and I would have really enjoyed it -- good animation, good accents, great scenery, and only one moment that seriously strained credulity -- except for a woman sitting behind us who talked all the way through the movie.

I hate when people talk during movies. For the first half of the movie I was reminding myself of reasons why she might be chatting away. Maybe she was developmentally disabled. Maybe she had a hearing loss and didn't realize how loud she was being. Maybe she was from another culture where it's not regarded as rude. But she just kept talking.

She was there with two kids, and I understand that sometimes you have to talk to your kids during a movie. I understand that it takes time for kids to learn to sit still and be quiet for two hours in the dark -- I know all about that. But the kids were much quieter than she was. And it wasn't explanation aimed at them; it was just narration. "Oh, look, it's the boy." "There he is again." Finally, an hour or so into the movie, I turned around and said, "SSSSHHHHHHHH!"

She kept talking.

I should have gone to get an usher, but I didn't want to. It seemed to me like I would be saying, "Hi, I'm a demanding customer who can't solve my own problems, so come and do it for me!" By the end of the movie, though, I was furious.

At some point it dawned on me that she and I were working from different definitions of appropriate behavior in a movie theater. So now I'm curious: does chattiness in a theater strike you as rude? Are there situations where it's acceptable?

Here's my other manners question: I'm wondering if I'm behind the curve on tipping etiquette. When I was growing up, there were no tip jars in ice cream shops. I used to work behind the counter in a little bakery, serving up sandwiches and coffee and cakes, and tips were a once-every-month-or-two kind of occurrence. But these days it seems like everybody's looking for a tip. I mean, if you get a job in an ice cream shop, you expect to scoop up ice cream, right? Isn't that pretty much your job description? But yesterday I took the kids for ice cream, paid by credit card, and saw disappointment register on the face behind the counter when I didn't add a tip.

I am never sure what to do in a coffeehouse either. The one I frequent on campus was reputed, when I was in grad school the first time, to pay its employees a living wage. I make a point of tipping waitresses and cabbies well, but what about a barista? Is it different if I order a Giant Half-Decaf Hazelnut Chipotle White Mocha With A Shot of Worcestershire Sauce versus a plain old cup of joe?

Tell me what you think, please.

This Post Brought To You By My Oldest Son

"Are you going to post this on your blog?" the 11yo wanted to know.

    "I wasn't planning to."

"It just seems like the kind of thing that would end up on your blog. You know, 'I found my four boys in the floor wrestling, throttling each other, while chanting BROTHERLY LOVE BROTHERLY LOVE over and over.' Sounds blogworthy to me."