Light and Momentary

That would be a no

Ten months ago I wrote a post about plagiarism in which I really tried to understand my students' perspectives. But I have to tell you, it is still unpleasant to spend many hours grading a troublesome batch of assignments. And it is still jarring to get an email afterward from a student assuming that I am the one in error.

Knitting and reading

This is a Wednesday post about books and knitting. If you are looking for children's books to read, do check out Lissa's and Melanie's comments about kids' books and competence on yesterday's post.

In other reading news: tra la laaaa! I have FINISHED How Not To Be Wrong. It was well worth reading -- I really did enjoy it. It's just exceedingly rare for me to spend so long reading a single book. I dove right into the fifth Barsetshire chronicle, The Small House at Allington.

I am chugging along on my Metronome. I have 7 more purled rows of cream and then it will be time for the Bold Green Adventure Moment. Can you stand the suspense?

This project has taught me that I produce knitted garter stitch at a slightly different gauge from purled garter stitch. Who knew? I think it should all sort itself out in the blocking, though.

I did a fair amount of knitting and reading aloud over the weekend while we were traveling. Stella and I finished E. Nesbit's dragon stories. She wants to read them again right away. I might see if we can make a little more headway in The Book of Three. I am certain she will love Eilonwy when we get to Spiral Castle, but right now it's just Taran and Gwydion and Gurgi, before we know that Gurgi is a big softy.

I'm also sharing a picture of the back of my Metronome this week. Can you even believe that it's intarsia? It's magic intarsia, that's what it is.

There are lots more Yarn Along posts at Ginny's.

It starts with sidewalks

Miriel, whose comment turned a throwaway little post into a series that is one of my favorite things on this site, asked me to say more about teaching kids to be independent. Little did you know, Miriel, that I have been roughing out an answer to exactly that question inside my head.

I've been thinking about my Petely in particular, who is more cautious than his siblings. A year ago he was working on his /r/ in my building every Tuesday and Thursday at 4:30. I did not want to walk down to my house and then back to my building and then back home again at 5, but of course I did not want him to be fearful about a solo trip. I was trying to remember how it had worked out, exactly: I knew that he was very reluctant to walk without me in August, and that he was doing it fearlessly in November. "What helped you to feel more comfortable?" I asked him. He answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world: "You did it with me, Mom!" 

Later this week I'll share my thoughts on how that happened. Tonight I want to talk about context. Because here's the thing: if you want your kid to go places, you have to give him interesting places to go. You have to give him a way to get there, and it helps a lot if you can make the trip seem normal and not heroic.

Part of the issue is infrastructure. I've posted before about telling our realtor that our top priority in house-hunting was sidewalks -- specifically, sidewalks that would take us to places where we wanted to be. I did not realize at the time how nutty that probably sounded, but it was a great strategy for us. Virtually all of the new construction in our town requires a 10- or 15-minute drive to get to a walkable part of town. And if your own personal kids shouldn't get themselves anywhere until they're 16 (because it's against the law for them to drive before that), you just might infer that kids in general shouldn't get themselves anywhere until they're 16 (because think of the children!). Adult opinions about kids' capabilities are shaped by what they see kids doing. If you never see kids getting around town on their own, it becomes a novel and potentially hazardous situation. Quick, call 911 on these unleashed children! Tell the parents: Ur Doin It Wrong!

In observing newcomers to town, I have found that many of them want to buy newer fancier houses in newer fancier subdivisions. The closets are bigger, the home maintenance costs are often lower*, and the schools are a bit better. But I'll just mention this: in terms of nurturing independence, it has also been advantageous for us to live in a neighborhood that is economically mixed. This idea that good parents constantly supervise their kids is tied tightly to class privilege. Maybe in my ideal world the parents across the street would stop smoking and wear helmets while riding their motorcycles. But in spite of our differences we agree on something important: kids can explore safely on our little block. We can look out for them while they figure it out. 

*Keep in mind, though, that older houses were built to last in a way that many newer houses are not. You can't be certain that you'll pay less for upkeep in a newer subdivision.

Here's another unusual house-hunting requirement: climbing trees. Older neighborhoods are more likely to have lovely mature trees suitable for climbing; too many newer subdivisions are full of soulless stinking Bradford pears whose branches fall off if you sneeze as you walk by. Tree-climbing is something that most kids can do better than most adults. It teaches them to make in-the-moment judgments about risk and safety. It teaches them that they can get stronger and better over time if they're willing to keep showing up and putting in the effort. It gives them a space that's all their own. And-- it does all of these things for free! I have had the occasional hair-raising moment with my tree-climbing children, but I recommend the practice wholeheartedly nonetheless.

This paragraph is going to sound a little California-esque, so roll your eyes if you must. Kids who climb trees are often kids who notice trees, because that's how they find new territory to explore. I think this is an invaluable habit for nurturing a sense of place, for teaching kids that the walnuts come before the acorns and the horse chestnuts, that the locust pods fall while the catalpa pods stay. I think that feeling thoroughly at home on the streets of their neighborhood can give kids the willingness to explore what's beyond. 

[Here endeth the granola part.]

Whatever your neighbors are doing with their kids, you can define normal within your own house. I suggest doing this through classic children's books, which describe a world in which young kids routinely went places on their own. Have you seen this post on free-ranging in picture books? This could be a fun comments discussion, actually: what books do you recommend for teaching kids about competence? Beverly Cleary's books about the Klickitat Street kids are favorites of mine, as you know. I suggest reading books that you find a little eyebrow-raising, like Joan Aiken's Elves in the Shelves. (I get a little hyperventilate-y thinking about that one, actually.) Here is the image that springs to mind: reading about how kids occupied themselves in the 1940s and 50s and 60s feels like blinking in the sunlight when you walk out of a matinee -- both uncomfortable and refreshing. We have all been immersed in a constrained and artificial version of kids' abilities. It's time to exit that theater.

Oh, goodness, it's 9:11 and I am almost a thousand words in, and I spent a whole paragraph talking about the glories of trees like some sort of long-winded Ent on a mission to Free The Children. Look out, any Saruman wannabes telling capable children they should stay meekly in an iPad-stocked version of Orthanc, because I'm probably aiming another thousand-word missive in your direction on Thursday. Hroom hroom!

Part 2 Part 3 and some follow-up bits and pieces

Done is complicated

I wrote that Done post a couple of weeks ago, about how I'm just going to go with the flow for a while on the free-range kids question. Stella is the only Gladly child left at the neighborhood grade school, and it changes things. I do not want to fight the battle with the after-school program in which I say, "My daughter is going to sign herself out every day at 4:15 and walk home, and that's flat," only to hear them say, "But think of the children!" Although she is perfectly capable of walking to ballet, that would be pushing the envelope on our neighborhood norms. Kids run around all the time without adult supervision -- every day as I am walking home I spot half a dozen kids playing outside with no adults in sight -- but going more than a couple of blocks alone is something that bigger kids do.

It turns out, though, that my ideas about "going with the flow" are not super flow-y. And I have inculcated this brood of kids with ideas about what they can do, and they seem to have been thoroughly indoctrinated.

Over the weekend we made the trek to the Chicago area, where we visited the Fox Valley Folk Festival. I love the FVFF. It's held on a little island in the Fox River, with a playground at one end and waterfowl all around. There's a big stage and a number of smaller stages, and a kids' tent, and lots of little jam sessions that spring up under the lovely old trees. The seven of us got there yesterday afternoon and agreed to meet in two hours. I said, "Stay on the island; do not go in the water. Be very polite." Stella was hanging out with Alex at first.

(Alex is 19 now, and sometimes we have differences of opinion on selected topics. These have included Socks (How Often Must They Really Be Washed?), Wet Towels (How Long Can They Be Left On The Hardwood Floor?) and College Classes (How Frequently Ought One To Attend?). But he is the very best big brother that my Stella could ever hope to have. She brings out his most patient, generous, thoughtful self, and my heart beats glad and grateful whenever I watch them together.)

They prowled around for a while together, and then she wanted to listen to a storyteller who didn't catch Alex's fancy. He told her she could sit quietly and listen without him, and she was super-proud of herself about that. In my view this is an excellent thing, for her to hear from her adored big brother that he knew she could conduct herself in public appropriately, and that she had nothing to be afraid of, and that she should sit and enjoy the story until he came back. So she did-- a pleasantly creepy story about bones crying out for justice.

The sticky bit is that it wasn't just our immediate family on the island. 

We were meeting a bunch of extended family there, with a bunch of different opinions about how and when kids should be left alone. When I found Stella with some cousins and others a bit later, I wondered if there might be a waft of disapproval in the air. And then at the end of the afternoon, when I was alone on the island with my two youngest kids, I didn't need to wonder any longer. Pete really wanted to hear Lee Murdock, and Stella really wanted to color at the kids' tent. These two sites were maybe 150 yards apart. I told Stella that she could not go wandering for any reason (<- this is me attempting to dial it back) and that she should not take any grief from any adult (<- this is me failing to suppress my true self). Fifteen minutes after the Lee Murdock set started, I went to check on her and found a relative nearby. 

Stella tells me that this relative had asked her a string of questions about what she was doing in the kids' tent. Did she know where her parents were? Was she sure? Was she absolutely sure? Did her parents know where she was? Was she sure? Etc. "I'm fine," she said. "I'm perfectly fine. My mom is right over there and she's coming back for me. Yes, I'm sure."

We left about 20 minutes later, but the encounter lingered in my mind as we sped toward Gladlyville. "Elwood," I called from the back seat, where I was sitting between the two littles, "tell me to chill out about this." "Chill out," he called dutifully from the front seat. Joe turned around from the middle seat. "Mom," he said incredulously, "are you really worried that it makes you a worse mom because you're teaching your kids to be independent?" He was obviously thinking, Because that's nuts. I hadn't thought, until I saw it in action yesterday, about the extent to which my boys' opinions about kids' capabilities have been shaped by my opinions about kids' capabilities. I love it, and at the same time it complicates the decision to say, "Wait, now we are going to go with the flow."

This particular extended-family relationship has some long-standing complexities. I can't shrug it off as I might a stranger's judgment (we all know I am SO AWESOME at letting go of strangers' opinions, as attested by the 8000 or so words in this category of my archives); I can't talk it through as I might with a friend because there are many layers of crud piled on top, like the relationship version of sedimentary rock. Maybe the problem is that I want to foster my kids' independence and I want everybody to like me. And I suppose, if I have to pick one of those two things, that I am going to pick Option A.

In the bag

Today I ran with a different group. I've been running with the third of the four training groups, but I've been the slowest person in the group. 

Hm, I think I am going to put actual numbers in this post, even though I feel shy and self-conscious about my running speed. Here's the deal: to stay uninjured, I need to go slowly. If I work at it, I can train for a sub-30 5K. But it seems to be a certainty that my body will rebel along the way or shortly thereafter. I figure it's better to run 12-minute miles all year than to run faster ones part of the time and sit on the couch nursing my newest injury the rest of the time. So my plan with this half-marathon has been to do the long runs at about a 12:30 pace in preparation for a 12:00 pace on race day, or maybe 11:45 if the stars align. The third group is supposed to be people who are running at an 11- to 13-minute pace, but it's really the 11- to 12-minute group plus Jamie. I have felt guilty about holding one of the mentors back, I have been frustrated with myself about being slow, etc. You know a little about my brain by now, right? Give me a stick and I will beat myself with it. 

I've been wondering if I should drop down to the slowest group, but I wasn't convinced I wanted to slow down even further as a regular thing. Today was the perfect day to try it out, though. They were meeting at 6:30 instead of 7:30 this morning, which would work better for our schedule today. I thought a slower run would probably leave me a little less fried for our family goings-on later today.

It turns out, you guys, that I can go painlessly for a long time at a 13:30-14:00 pace. It was easy. I could have done another couple of miles (or more?), no problem. We chatted the whole way. I started feeling some muscle fatigue and hip/knee whininess about three-quarters of the way in, but NBD.

Two observations: I am much, much, much, much⁴⁹⁵ more comfortable in the role of encourager than I am in the role of struggler. As the miles wore on (this is the second observation) I had more and more trouble staying in the 13:30-14:00 range; my body wanted to default to its comfortable pace in the 12:30-13:00 range. (Isn't it weird that needed mental energy/attention to go slower, and my pace got faster as the mental tank drained?) I was running with a woman who found this difficult but doable. I enjoyed those last miles SO much more when I was not the person flagging.

I suppose that for effective training a long run is supposed to leave you flagging, but I'm not going to fret about that today. Next Saturday we are covering the actual race course, doing all 13.1 miles. I'll have to think about that.

11

I'm supposed to get up and run eleven miles in the morning.

That doesn't actually seem very plausible.

In which I cast a wary eye at gluten

I finished the Whole 30 again on Tuesday, and I've been pondering. I've had the same experience four times now: about ten days into the Whole 30, I start feeling like a MACHINE. The drive to Get Stuff Done burbles up inside me, and lo: I Get Stuff Done. The most striking example for me came on the night when I was dealing with my #1 Tailspin Issue, the thing most likely to send me into a navel-gazing Tizzy of Despair. On one of my Whole 30 adventures, the #1 Tailspin Issue turned into #1 Motivation to Slay the Mending Pile. My mental monologue was not the healthiest as I stood there at the sewing machine (because sitting? is for people eating grains and legumes and probably carrageenan), but I had zero desire to drown my sorrows while hunched over a pint of ice cream.

Whatever criticisms you might want to levy against the Whole 30 are probably justified: gimmicky, expensive, environmentally unfriendly with all that animal protein consumption, etc. I am not saying this is a sensible reaction set of rules. But DANG does it make a difference in my brain. My husband thinks it's the placebo effect, but I don't believe it. I cannot manufacture this level of motivation; I've tried.

I can't eat that way all the time, though. It's just SO restrictive. So I'm trying to figure out: what is it about the Whole 30 that seems to fire up an extra cylinder in my brain? It's not just the produce; I eat a lot of produce all year round. It's not just the sugar; I eat sweets about twice a year. That leaves...grains and legumes and dairy. And placebo effect, I suppose. I don't really want to go gluten-free, but I sure do love that extra cylinder.