Tires

There is a thing that is difficult for me that should not be so difficult, which is putting air in the tires of the car I usually drive. One of them has a slow leak, so I have to do this every so often, and it's ridiculous. The gas station air hose never seems to fit onto the valve; the best I can do is barely get it on so that air escapes from the tire but does not go in, which is totally maddening. Especially because I am usually in an uncomfortable position, getting my hands filthy black, with a loudly whirring air pump reprimanding me for the quarters I am uselessly plunking into the slot. The last time I did this I paid for four separate rounds of air and was no better off when I left than when I had started. This makes me feel like a total girl. Once I sheepishly asked Dale to do it for me. He had the same experience I did, which made me feel somewhat better. But the tires still need to be filled from time to time.

For example, yesterday when I got out of my choir concert, the front driver's side tire was flattish. Much as I wanted to ignore it, I knew that was a bad idea. I was in an unfamiliar downtown neighborhood. I found a gas station; but this gas station had no air. Hmph. I used my phone to find another gas station in the next neighborhood over. At this one, the cashier was reluctant to give me quarters, and the clientele was a little intimidating. But they had air. So there I was in my choir clothes and again, the blasted air hose would not attach to the tire valve, and the air was shooting out, and it was raining, and I'm in this absurd squat trying not to get my skirt in a puddle, and my hands are killing me from trying to shove the thing on and keep it there. I thought: There has got to be some other way. I looked around for someone else to do it for me, but there were no attractive options. I left with the tire no better than when I arrived; I was just hoping it was no worse.

And then, when I told this story to Jess and Jules that night, Jess said, "I have the solution for you." Apparently, if you go to any Jiffy Lube, they will fill your tires for you for free. Even if you are not having them do anything else. You just drive up and ask, and they hop to it. I did this at the Jiffy Lube at U Village today and it was exactly as she said. I didn't even have to get out of the car! It was wonderful! And no, I did not feel like a girl, having someone else fill my tires for me: I felt like a queen. What a life improvement.

Chant

Aaron and his friends spent some part of their time in the after-school program today chanting, “Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!” The poor head counselor was so distressed he was hardly able to tell Dale what had happened. This word is not distressing to me, and I was very curious about the whole thing, so we made it a subject of dinner table conversation. Actually, the first thing Dale and I did was re-enact the chant ourselves. We couldn’t resist! It was too good! And wow, did we impress the children. Jordan, having no idea why we would be doing such a thing, was stunned. Aaron unfortunately thought we were making fun of him and left the room nearly in tears. We got him back, and heard what he had to say about the chanting, but it was not a lot. He claimed he “wasn’t chanting very much.”

Well, a lot or a little, this is a word worth talking about, so talk we did. I asked Aaron if he knew what a vagina was. He said he did. I asked who has one, and he pointed at me. Check! I asked who else, and he said, “Girls.” Check! I asked if he knew where it was, and he indicated the general location of such. Check! Then I asked if he knew what it was for. He was a little blown away by this question. I said, “It’s for all kinds of stuff!” and Dale said, “For example, you came out of a vagina!” I think they know this, but prefer not to think about it. Okay. Still, though, we were going to have this conversation, in spite of the fact that both boys were obviously uncomfortable. Dale and I stated clearly that this is the name of a body part, like the elbow, and that it is very important to be able to speak clearly about every body part. We said that this is not a bad word. We said that because it is a word for a private body part, a lot of people think it should be a private word, and they do not want to hear the word. We disagree with this. People need to be able to use the right word for every body part, especially in case there is a problem, like if you got hurt. (I was also thinking about safety from sexual predators, but did not make that part of this conversation.) I said, “For example, what if a dog bit your penis? You would need to be able to tell Nurse Anita (the school nurse), ‘A dog bit my penis and it hurts a lot.’ If you go to Nurse Anita and say ‘Um, er, I have a problem, and I am too embarrassed to tell you,’ then that is not as good. You should just say the body part right out.” Of course the boys were laughing uncontrollably at this bizarre scenario, but that seemed good; it helped them relax.

I said that in the case of the after-school chant, I felt pretty sure there was not a need to say the name of the body part. Probably, Aaron and his friends were chanting this word in order to bother the counselor: they were trying to embarrass him and make him uncomfortable. This was not a good thing to do. Aaron said he would not do it anymore. (Personally, I think that this is in the category of things for which a counselor needs to have a well-rehearsed response. For example, in preschool, taboo words like poop were “bathroom words,” and were to be said only [and therefore incessantly] in the bathroom.)

I am tempering my language in this blog post in case any of my readers might be uncomfortable, but I tell you what, at the dinner table I was throwing around the V-word like it was my favorite word ever. After just a few minutes of this the boys were begging me to stop. They plugged their ears, they squirmed, they protested. Aaron wanted me to use a different word: his suggestion was “Mimimi.” I said “Okay fine, I will do it to help you be comfortable, but it is not a bad word.” Dale gave the example of our pediatrician friend, who, he speculated, would be happy to have joined us in our dinner-table chant. Then he remembered our friend the labor and delivery nurse, who surely has quite a bit to say about vaginas almost every day of the week. We gave the boys some examples of things she might say at work. They accepted this, but basically had to end the conversation just from sheer oversaturation. It was pretty funny.

The next morning, I said, “Since we were talking about mimimis last night [I said this with a dramatic flourish], if you like, I can show you a sculpture of a lot of different mimimis. Would you like to see it?” Aaron said, “I do not want to see that.” Jordan said, “Actually strangely I kind of do want to see that.” So I showed him the Great Wall of Vagina. He was fascinated, and asked some questions, including, “That’s a vagina?!” I kept up a pleasant patter about how all of these vaginas are different and all totally normal, that all penises are different and normal too, etc. After a minute or two he was finished looking at it and went back to horsing around with his brother. I am pretty pleased with this whole thing. There was some good content, and plenty of levity.

Dumb homework

Some of Jordan's homework is not a good use of his time, if you ask me. (Aaron has very little homework so it's not yet an issue with him.) For example, in social studies right now they are doing civics kind of stuff, especially about the state of Washington. This could be great stuff, but instead it is: On what date did Washington become a state? What is the state bird? State flower, tree, marine mammal, endemic mammal, motto, song? Ugh. There is so much worth learning about government and governance, and this is not it.

A friend of ours is a professor of political science, so I asked him what he thought fourth graders should be learning about politics. His answer: "Fourth graders should be playing a lot of competitive and non-competitive games. How to share. How to care. How to lose. How to win. Who to play with. Who to avoid. When to drop out of a game. How to get back in the game. If they are advanced, they can think about the nature and variety of the rules that structure a game. Play within the rules. Play outside of the rules. Solitaire. Games with two people. Games with lots of people. Games with two sides. Games with more than two sides. Games as a leader. Games as a follower. Games as a judge. Games where subterfuge is important. Short games. Long games. It's not a bad idea to watch others do those things, too, impartially, as it were. Maybe betting sometimes, too. And then: they should be able to explain which games are better for what and why." What a great answer. How awesome would it be if this was how kids learned about political systems? And instead, they learn the name of the state song. Seriously.

Math, which has historically been an area of fun success for Jordan, is also not impressing me lately in its homework form. There is a lot of drilling algorithms, like long division, greatest common factor, least common multiple, etc. I don't know whether this is just what this year of math is about, or whether it's attributable to Washington's adoption of the Common Core (a set of standards for math and reading), or whether it's because Washington adopted the Common Core without adopting a curriculum that complies with it so teachers have to fly by the seat of their pants. All I know is that I miss the old curriculum, Everyday Math, which seemed to me to be about the logic of quantity and number and shape, instead of arithmetic procedures.

Last night's math homework should have been an exception, because it was about word problems. Word problems should be a good thing, a tool to bridge abstract math problems to real-life situations. Too often, however, they just falsely couch abstract problems in contrived scenarios, making the whole thing silly and pointless. This assignment annoyed me even more than a page of silly word problems would have because it was trying to teach how to analyze silly word problems, so that what ought to be a bridge to real life became instead a weird little world of its own. For example: "The cook at the diner scrambled 1/2 of the eggs served. One-fourth of the eggs were fried, and 1/8 were boiled. How many eggs were left?" You are supposed to say that you don't have enough information to answer; you need to know the total number of eggs. But come on. What cook at a diner says to himself, "I'm going to scramble half the eggs that are served, and then we'll see how many are left"? It's incomprehensible. Another problem said, "The park has 10 swings, of which 2/5 are broken. Half the swings have metal seats and 1/10 of the swings have wooden seats. How many more swings have metal seats than wooden seats?" Huh? I think the answer is that there are 5 metal seats, 1 wood seat, and 4 broken ones; but don't broken swings still have seats made of something? And why would anyone possibly bother to express any of these numbers as a fraction, much less care how many more metal than wooden seats there are? The whole question is very distracting. There are too many great real-life opportunities to apply math skills for me to feel like I can support him putting his precious kid time into this dumb stuff.

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is something of a national holiday no matter what, but in Seattle this year, there was real dedication. At 3:30 this afternoon, I think you could have taken a walk down the middle of I-5 undisturbed. Fine friends of ours hosted a terrific party with multiple screens, a fantastic spread, and a friendly vibe that got friendlier and friendlier as Seattle's score continued to climb. The naturalized citizens among us were free to ask questions about the game. The children asked questions about the commercials... especially that Butterfinger "cup therapy" one, which was a mystery to them (and pretty funny to some of us old married folks). I admit that internally, I am asking questions about whether the whole football industry is morally supportable; but I mostly compartmentalized that, and enjoyed myself.

We were in "Feast Mode" all afternoon. There were Mackle-Smores (with Ryan Lewis): a chocolate chip cookie with melted marshmallow and Hershey bar on a double-Grammy cracker.

 There was a Marshawn Spynch (spinach) and Golden Tater Pie.

 There were football meatballs. (Foot-meat-balls?)

 There were blue and green cupcakes, for which the kids made "12th Man" flags.

And there were various other themed contributions... Lynchee (that is, lychee) Marshawn-tinis, guacamole with blue chips, blueberries and green grapes, Skittles, and so on and so on.

The kids were in fine form, and we grownups had a great time.

Book club books

Jordan's classmate's mom has initiated a "moms and boys book club," which sounds like a pretty good time. The idea is that moms and boys pick a book to all read, and we get together around once a month to discuss it and hang out. (As with most book clubs, there is a small amount of discussing the book and a large amount of socializing.) The hosting mom did this with her older son's cohort and loved it; it lasted for years. 

The first meeting of the book club was this weekend. Various boys brought books that they wanted to read, and voted on their choice. I had not heard of most of the books, but one of them was Ender's Game. Really? For fourth grade? I first read that book in grad school. I think it is at least middle school, and that it's too good a book to waste on younger kids. That whole thing where it's not clear whether it's a simulation battle or the real thing would either totally freak Jordan out or go straight over his head, hopefully the latter. And I don't remember how violent it is...? Even aside from the content, there is no way this book is at his reading level. Now, the hosting family has a middle school kid, so their fourth grader is probably reading his books, and I'm not going to judge that. Aaron gets stuff that we would not have offered Jordan at that age. But still... I was a little disoriented when it got voted in.

Fortunately there are terrific resources for parents to vet kids' media choices. My favorite is Common Sense Media, which reviews not only books but also movies, video games, apps, you name it. And thank goodness, because the boys' first-choice book was one I hadn't heard of called Maze Runner, and I was able to quickly look it up. Here's part of the review:  

"Parents need to know that the scenes of violence are stronger in this book and more graphic than those of, say, The Hunger Games, partly because at times it is adults murdering children, and not from a distance or out of sight. The teens stranded in the Maze have their memories wiped, but they are still aware on some level that they are being held captive and endangered by adults, not monsters or other children. Some of the teens in the Maze go insane from the fear, the attacks, or in one case, the memory of the world he had left behind. Main characters are conscientious and risk their lives to save others."

Whaaaat? That is so far from Jordan I can't even begin to tell you. There is no way I would suggest that he read such a book. I don't even think he would want to be present where such a book was being discussed. But none of the other moms had lifted an eyebrow. Are there actually fourth graders for whom this is a good book? Is our family so far from the norm? This is one of these things that is just really hard to know; we have had casual contact with these families for years, but don't know any of them very well. Instead of shouting "Who are you people?!" which would have been rather unhelpful, I wrote the other parents this letter:

Hello friends, 

I really enjoyed hanging out with you all yesterday, and would look forward to discussing books with you and the boys. Unfortunately, it turns out that at least two of the three are much too mature for Jordan. After reading the review of Maze Runner on Common Sense Media, which is usually pretty right-on for our family, I feel sure that that book would shock and frighten him; I wouldn't ask him to read it. I don't think he'd want to be present for a discussion of it whether he had read it or not.  

Ender's Game is a fantastic book but I think much better for a middle-school kid than a fourth grader; I would rather suggest that to Jordan when he is older and can appreciate it more. The Candymakers story sounds more matched to Jordan's maturity level, but at 480 pages, it's a lot more than he would read. 

Maybe Jordan and I can show up after the book discussion is over, just to socialize. If there is another chance to choose books, here are some that look promising to me: 

Infinity Ring: A Mutiny in Time, The Big Field, Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love, This Means War

Thanks!
Rachel

I am hugely relieved to report that various parents replied with shock once they found out something about the book. Everyone who spoke up does not want (and some would not allow) their fourth grader to read it. The one whose kid brought the book said her kid "can't watch the Wizard of Oz without covering his face with a pillow" and would never knowingly choose such a book. So it seems like like no one really knew what they were choosing.

Instead, we will be reading The Candymakers, which is a goofy mystery that takes place in a candy factory, aimed at 8-12 year olds. Phew. And we have agreed that next time, the moms choose the book!

I already did that.

In the car on the way home yesterday:

R: I think your homework tonight is to correct any errors on your math test.
J: I already did that.
R: Hm. It was written in your planner.
J: Right, but I did it at school.
R: I also saw the test in your folder, and it didn't have any corrections on it yet.
J: Oh. That must have been another test.

I can't tell whether this is evasiveness or forgetfulness. The chances that there was another math test that he corrected are small. There could have been some other math assignment that he corrected, or a test in another subject, that maybe he was absentmindedly thinking I was referring to. Maybe he just didn't know what I was referring to because he wasn't listening at first; that's fairly likely. As far as I know, Jordan is not one to just baldly lie, but if he was going to fudge something, it would surely be to get out of doing homework.

A few months ago, walking home from school, we had a conversation something like this:

J: Mommy I figured out a new strategy today!
R: What's that?
J: Sometimes we are reading and Mrs. Crawford calls on me and I am still reading so I don't know what the question was. No idea at all, because I didn't hear her, because I was still reading. But if I say, "Oh, I know that!, but what is it again? I can't think of it, it's right on the tip of my mind, um, what is it again...," and I do that for long enough, then she will call on someone else like Sydney and then Sydney gives the answer. And I don't have to.
R: Oh, really. Do you think Mrs. Crawford knows what is going on?
J: No, Mommy. I am very good at this. She has no idea.

I assume that Jordan is underestimating Mrs. Crawford, who has a lot of experience with crafty nine-year-olds. I am not really worried about that. But I was a little bummed to hear that he is needing to develop a repertoire of evasive strategies to cope with the consequences of his inattention.

Aaron and Finn

Aaron's friendship with Finn dates back to preschool, when the two of them, along with Emanuel, were a bit of an infamous trio among the four-year-olds. Now they both go to Wedgwood, and although they are not in the same class, they meet each other at every recess to play. As in, they have a meeting place. They also have a regular succession of playdates and sleepovers. They never tire of each other, rarely fight, and just really cannot get enough of each other's company.

They dress up as Batman and a clone trooper.

 A clone trooper, I'll have you know, can ride a scooter and play an accordion.

 Just the other day they had a good time with dry ice.

 Legos are the go-to.

 But at a restaurant, Uno is another good option.

Finn is also in Wedgwood's after-school program (KidsTime), which is a great thing because Aaron is there five days a week and that program is not what it used to be. Pretty much the entire staff changed over this year, and the new people are just not as skilled with kids, creative with activities, or as physically active as the former staff members (who we loved). It's a bummer, because we don't really have another option; but as I say, at least Finn is there.

Lately, Aaron and Finn have been having a little trouble getting along with their counselors. There are predictable problems like not cleaning up when told to, etc., which personally I suspect speaks to the counselors' skills in getting kids to go along with necessary tasks, but okay. The larger concern is the backtalk. Finn apparently makes liberal use of "the c word," as Aaron refers to it, and for those of you about to be shocked, the c word is "crap." Whew. Finn has also been known to tell the counselors, "Sucks to be you," which I have to agree is maybe a bit much to hear from a six-year-old. Aaron's role in this bad language is not perfectly clear ... he says that he does not say such mean things very much, and I believe him, but I don't think his conscience is perfectly clear, either.

(We have had a couple of lively family discussions about just how mean and angry certain expressions are, and what they really refer to. Yes, I did tell them what is supposedly being sucked when you accuse someone of sucking. Yes, they found this shocking and repellent, as they should at their age. Yes, this discussion made them never want to use this particular expression again or even think about it. Whee!)

The counselors asked Aaron and Finn to write down some "goals" for their behavior during KidsTime, like listening to the counselors and so on. I think this is a good thing to do, but there ought to be something in it for Aaron, too, especially since I think the counselors' lack of skill is probably contributing to the difficulties. So I suggested that along with the "goals," which are things that Aaron should do for the counselors, Aaron could make "requests" for things he would like the counselors to do for him. This document is the result. Aaron wrote the goals, and then I did the writing for the second half. I think it's great.

I hope this helps him have more fun with Finn and less trouble with the people supervising them.