I've started a new Blog

Hello Friends,
It has been a while! I've been focusing on creating two new children's books and also spending a veritable ton of time to promote them. Self-publishing is easy. Selling books is another story altogether!
Now that my head is above water, I want to write and create a platform for promoting my books. I am inspired by The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, and have started a similar kind of blog, focusing a little more on the Homeschool adventure.

www.ohmygawdess.com

I hope you find it interesting and relative! I've also created it on Facebook, so look me up and share with your friends.
Diana

Our Story is Published

I decided that there is just too much to write in my little blogs without having some kind of background "whole picture" view.  So I wrote a little book:

My hope is that our story will help other families with their gifted or anxious child.

It is on the Kindle, Nook and soon will be available in paper on Amazon.com.

Anxiety and My Gifted Child: A Glass Half Full

My son has anxiety. He isn't even 9 and he has more worries than a 21 year old college student paying for their first apartment and living on Top Ramen. He thinks about all the different diseases he read about in Horrible Science books, he worries about poisonous spider bites and has a fear of heights (with zero incidents to cause it) and when I tell him that he can only go up to his ankles in the big waves breaking on shore, he deducts that if he isn’t careful, he’ll be pulled out into the ocean and never seen again.  Seriously.

This is not something I anticipated when I thoughtfully and passionately planned on having children and being a mother.  It is painful and scary (and oftentimes annoying) and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

In January we started therapy for a second time.  The first round a year ago was with a standard family therapist who looked at me with horror in her eyes at the story of being “pulled out to the ocean and never seen again.”  She believed that I said that to my 7 year old!  She didn’t understand what “GIFTED” means.  (And in case you, the reader, do not, here’s a perfect example of what the gifted mind does:  it is thinking far beyond the literal and drawing conclusions most wouldn’t even see; it is visionary and can sometimes be fantastical).
 
Our new Gifted therapist is guiding us to discover the root of the anxiety.  We have “play” sessions where T is creating and drawing and discussing.  We have very rich sessions and he seems to be making progress by identifying his anxieties and coping better with them. This week we created “worry boxes” and wrote down some of our worries and sealed them into our individual boxes.  We talked about how Mom and Dad’s worries are not for him to worry about and there is a difference between grown-up worries and what worries the kids should have to deal with.  He wrote about getting a spider bite and I said, “Well, would you like to hear what Mom would do about that?”  He wasn’t interested in hearing about going to the hospital to be treated.  He just wanted to worry about the possibility.

Does my son revel in the negative?  Does he enjoy the worry, in a way?  Today T realized his computer had to be wiped out and reloaded because he downloaded a virus. He was in tears because he felt that he would never get his computer back to the way he had it setup before. Through a painful exchange of my trying to explain that everything could be re-downloaded, I had to stop and take a breath (and raise my voice a little.) “Son! Listen to what is going on here! You are choosing to think the worst instead of listening to my telling you it can all be put back and fine!”  As he does so often, he was choosing to see a glass half empty and here I was, pulling my hair out trying to make it all better. We've discussed recently how you can either be part of the Problem or part of the Solution. I sent him to his room with paper and pen to write all the applications we needed to put back onto the computer once it was restored. He calmed right down and started to be part of the solution. Hells to the yeah.

There are a couple of lessons I have learned recently:

1.  I can't really make it all better, but I can provide empathy and comfort.  In all of my frustration, the loving comfort just disappears.  The therapist explained that it's okay to set the limits, but if you validate the feeling and offer comfort to them, the limit is alot more palatable.  I was immediately reminded of the toddler years.  "Toddlerese" is Harvey Karp's method of speaking to a frustrated toddler.  You learn to speak their cave-man language and you really can have "The Happiest Toddler on the Block" per his successful book.  I just have to pull those skills back into play with my 8 year old.  Cool.

2.  My anxious boy is trying to create a sense of fulfillment, similar to that of a comfort-eater or a shopaholic.  He's trying to fill a need



I told my son that I believe you have a choice in life:  You can be a Worrier or you can be a Warrior. I told him“Mom is a Warrior and I will do anything I can to protect you and your brother” which is why I think it’s important to be prepared.  That really seemed to resonate with him because, really, what boy doesn’t want to be a Warrior?  He lightened up immensely with this idea.

Maybe the anxiety is getting better?  God, I sure hope so.  Clearly, we are growing; we are getting it together.  I'm learning about triggers and how to keep his nosey self out of the grown-up worries.  He's learning that life doesn't have to be half-full and he doesn't need to worry about everything.  I'm thinking age 9 is going to be a lot better and will be happy to leave age 8 well behind us. 

Video Games and the Gifted Child

I stumbled out of bed this morning greeted by two bright-eyed and bushy-tailed boys, rearin' to get the day started.  They had already done all their chores and were playing happily with a chain of rubber bands, sharing with me Finn's latest trials on Adventure Time.  (cringe)  My eldest, nearing 9 years, announces to me "Be there no video games, be there no life."  I took this as a cue that he was ready for some gaming time.  It's 9am.



yet another attempt at a schedule

Popping in another dark blend K cup, I steel myself for the coming battle, "Okay Guys, let's get some learning done and then you can get to your video games."  Little PJ pipes up, "I already did my math, Mom! Three pages!" (seriously?) and the two of them start piping out with math problems.  PJ says "Mom, what's 15+15+15?" and I say "What do you think it is?" T says "45!" (I'm impressed because he really hated math for a long time.  I query "Wow, T, nice work!  How did you come up with the answer?" He replies, "Well, there are three 10s so that is 30 and then there are three 5s and that is 15 and you add them together."  I am smiling and thinking alrighty, we've definitely passed the 2nd grade. T spouts "See, I don't need to do math, I've got it down."  I reply, "But you're in 3rd grade and you need to master multiplication and division."  He smugly explains to me that multiplication is just addition and that "division is just multiplication backwards."  I am promptly put in my place.  I said, "So what you're telling me, boys, is that you are really quite ready for some gaming time."  Cheers and a one-hour window is assigned.

And this is a very happy house today.

I grabbed my cuppa and headed to the laptop.  I have to write this stuff down.  I've been struggled with the game/learning/life balance in this house, as I have written about before.  I think we found a pretty happy medium. A couple of weeks ago I had dinner with a mama friend, who is starting out her unschool adventure with her two boys, ages 6 and 4.  She explained that she hasn't restricted their gaming at all, because she is confident that it will run it's course and they will move on to new learning adventures and desires.  I had to agree there is logic to that, but my boys and their ability to play for hours on end without reaching boredom, scares the wits out of me.  We know that the T Man has some issues with anxiety and finds his escapes in television and games.  That is where the free-for-all may not work for us.  But what I did get out of that conversation (and numerous others with dad and gifted-mom cohort/coach Amy Harrington) was that perhaps it is just too long of a day to wait for some games, and tossing in an hour during the day might work out well.  It has.  So instead of having to work all day to get to 4:00 pm game time, the boys now have an hour or so thrown in early in the day which seems to satisfy that eternal craving. 

 

Buffalo Mama just posted this week with similar concerns for her son, titled "But What If All The Kid Wants to Do is Play Video Games?"  She has nailed it.  Video games can become everything to our gifted anxious children, but life simply is not one big game.  Life is full of obligations, such as brushing your teeth and washing dishes (or maybe even knowing how to write a decent English sentence so as to not embarass yourself in your professional future). My kids have to earn their screen time, just like their dad has to go to work all day before he can come home to play with them, and just like I have to clean, prepare food, do laundry, etc before I can sit down and enjoy my Kindle.  While allowing kids to follow their passions is very important and we should feed those passions, we do have to be the Parent and teach them the self-control and life skills they are going to need in the real world.  It ain't always easy, but I know in the long run it will be worth it.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, excuse me while I go do some parenting... which will for the next hour or so may look a lot like doing school work.... ;-)

Hitting a Low Note

It has been a while since I posted anything.  It's hard to feel inspired to write when you are just plain in-the-dumps.  Once I had a wonderful 2 weeks with the loving support of hubby at home, I finally pulled myself together and I'm shaking it off.  New Year, New Beginnings, and all that good stuff.

The Dumps

The T Man progressively became more anxious over the past couple of months, getting sick to his stomach going to a playdate and eventually even refusing to go to the park.  He almost skipped out on Halloween! ( Luckily he pulled it together and got some good trick-or-treating in.)  By the end of December, we were seeing a weekly occurrance of nausea and vomiting at night time before bed.  Hm... manipulation to stay up late or??  I began to get not only frustrated, but sort of hopeless. And then a teenager in Newtown, CT brought me a startling wake-up call: Would my son become this broken if I don't do something immediately to fix this??  By mid-December I yanked money out of my retirement account in order to finance the testing to figure out what is going on with my little boy.  That will not be my teenager!

Keep on Keeping On

Even with all of the drama of these months, the kids are relaxed and happy at home.  I can't even imagine how stressed our life would be if we attempted school this year.  Little PJ has made strides in his sensory issues these last couple of months: he began to wear jeans and even socks and underwear! He hasn't worn anything like that in well over a year!

Our learning continues, and as does our chasing of happiness. We've been spending a bit of time on our workbooks and they have both boycotted their online math program, Dreambox.  It's way too repetitive for them.  There's a wonderful line of books called "Math for the Gifted Student" by Flash Kids that I picked up at Barnes & Noble and it keeps math interesting and brain teasing  - perfect for my two curious boys!  T began to see the connection between multiplication and division and is just starting on fractions; PJ is starting to appreciate word problems and his reading skills have tripled in the last months.

We're still struggling with "screen time" and it's an overpowering impulse for these boys.  We have to earn it by doing chores and doing our learning time.  I just wish I didn't have PJ asking me for Xbox, PS3 and Wii games ten times per day!  It gets really old, really fast.  This weekend I compromised - as long as PJ read all the dialog, he can play My Sims Agent.  It's pretty fun watching him read all this stuff!

Television is T's addiction.  We recently upgraded our cable package so the Hubs and I could watch The Walking Dead. (I mean, who doesn't love Zombies?)  Well, along with our show, we were graced with Cartoon Network.  I could go off on a rant here, but will try my best to hold off.  Some of the shows are just plain stupid.  I do not want my kids watching this stuff, but my gosh they want it - badly!  Adventure Time and Annoying Orange are big annoyances, one for the content, the other for it's language.  Adventure Time is rated 10+ so that helps my argument on why they can't watch it.  The problem is that T is mentally about 13 years old.  He wants humor at that level.  He relates to Disney's "Austin & Ally" and "Jessie," but he isn't ready emotionally for most of these shows.  Le sigh.  Plus, anything he watches, little PJ watches too.  Double sigh.  When we next move, we will not be getting cable television at all.  That is my resolution. I hope hubby agrees.

The Recovery
Armed with several thousand retirement dollars, I have taken the first steps to recovering my son.  We saw an Allergist and T suffered through 65 pokes on his back to eliminate any food allergies that may be causing his nausea and vomiting.  The Allergist, an expert in his field, was extremely alarmed at the description of what we have been experiencing.  He referred us to a Pediatric Gastro-Intestinal Specialist and also to a Psychiatrist that he believes to be an expert in the field of anxious children.

We scheduled with the GI guy who turned out to be a very quirky guy himself.  He has an Asperger teenager, and was highly entertained by the T Man.  As we discussed our experiences and issues, T pipes up with, "What is this Asperger stuff?  What are we going to do, make a sandwich out of butts?"  The doctor and everyone just burst out laughing.  (That's life with my boys!)  The doctor explained that sometimes car sickness can indicate an ulcer and asked T if food ever felt stuck halfway down his chest.  He was scheduled for an Upper GI barium x-ray for the next week.  (that's a whole other post)  Long story short, he did not have an ulcer (thank God!) but does appear to have a viral infection in his stomach, causing swelling in the lining/folds of the stomach.  We started medicine twice a day last week and we are already seeing a more reasonable, happy child.  No vomiting since, but we haven't added any cause for anxiety to the mix since then.  We are crossing our fingers. 

In the meantime, we began to see a gifted-specialized Psychologist, www.drvula.com for therapy.  She began working with him just a couple of weeks ago and will be talking about her findings very soon.  He has enjoyed both of his sessions, as they are play-based.  Last week we began to map out his life in order to pinpoint what may be causing his fear and anxiety.

Looking Forward
I have contacted a Psychiatrist locally, as referred by the Allergist.  It turns out he is the resident doctor for a school that is just down the street from us, specializing in special needs kids like mine.  I am hoping he will do a full work-up/battery of tests and be able to determine the cause of T's school anxiety. 

PJ has been asking to go to school and since he has improved so much in the sensory stuff, I believe he will be ready by Fall.  By then we will probably have relocated, as the job in Los Angeles may be coming to an end for the Hubs.  Hopefully we will be in a place where there is a school that is affordable and understanding of quirky smart kids like mine.

I recently attended a talk by the esteemed Gifted Psychologist, David Palmer.  Aside from all of the reaffirming information I already knew about dealing with gifted kids, he gave us some really wonderful information that I wanted to share.  First, he said that K-12 online schools will allow children to work quickly through curriculum and finish years of study at their own pace.  This is something I plan on looking into for the Fall.  In addition, there is an Early Entrance Program at Cal State Los Angeles, where a kid can begin working on their Bachelor's degree as early as 11.  I guess I found this hopeful because right now we have little in terms of a learning Goal.  If we can get healthy and decide on a goal, we may have a more motivated child!

As a last minute deal, I was able to attend a parenting workshop by the author of "Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids" Dr. Laura Markham on Emotional Intelligence, or "EQ."   She outlined her strategies and tools to "Stop! Drop! (everything) and Breath when things get tough and emotional with your kids.  She gave us some "Power Tools" like Empathy, always make sure your child feels heard and understaood; Special Time, always have a bit of special time with them each day and Roughhousing, every single day should have a moment of physical play that will get their giggles out.  She explained that Laughter is the best cure for Anxiety.  That was an excellent take-away for me!

What really stuck with me was her parenting style definitions and where we fall on the "Strictness" line and the "Support" line and how kids are affected in the long term by our style. The Support line is how much you can support them (be there for them) emotionally and in other ways. She talked about how people that are in touch with their emotions are much more successful with life; and how marriages work better when people are emotionally intelligent.  I had to draw out the parenting chart so I can hang it on my bathroom mirror as a reminder. Plus I wanted to share it, as I think many parents could be interested ;-)

So our lives are currently filled with doctors, analysis and goals, with the hope that things will turn around not just for T, but for us all.  I am feeling hopeful and see a light at the end of that tunnel we were living in for the last couple of months. :)

Unschooling? Chasing happiness

Are we Unschooling? I really don't know. The way I understand it, Unschooling is about letting the child direct their learning, not making them do school work they don't want to; providing them the means to learn what they want to learn, when they want to.  It definitely takes away pressure and adds a lot of joy to our lives.  Our unschooling looks like this:

I've given up on "structure" in general. We have "learning time" in my bed, reading Life of Fred, doing MadLibs, and for my little guy, doing Language Arts from a "1st grade everything" kind of worksheet book. I don't force writing on PJ, but I compromise with "I'll write this sentence, you write the next." He does all right with that and seems very happy with an approximate hour per day of studies. He's only 6 and pretty brilliant, so I'm not too worried. Especially when Daddy comes home and goes to give them kisses and PJ pipes up with some comment about what comes at the end of Daddy's sentence. Or when he's adding 8+8+8 while driving to meet friends at the beach. Clearly we're learning.

I am wishing for more social time. We haven't had enough. This past week we were able to spend time with PJ's BFF, Henry and his sisters Keely and Sadie. I had to share this picture because they are just so freaking cute. They were winding down to a little Scooby Doo on a Friday afternoon.



"Essay" on Sea Monkeys

As for the T Man, age 8.5 and going on 14, trying to tell this little bugger anything is a challenge. He shut me up in the car the other day when I asked if he knew where the word "riviera" came from. He said "No, and I don't want to know. I'm just not interested in it." Well alrighty then. I think he's being a disrespectful brat, but then I guess he knows what he doesn't want to learn about. I just wish we had a better, clearer idea of what he does want to learn about so I could feed his thirst for knowledge. I'm pretty sure that he thinks he knows everything already: just like a bratty teenager. (sigh) The boy's reading and Science is middle-school level, he has an amazing grasp on History, his sense of humor and understanding of the world is outstanding. His math is coming along - Dreambox just moved him into pre-algebra, so he's definitely on the right track.

T will do a minimal amount of formal study time without a fuss: a couple of lessons on Dreambox, rapt attention to Life of Fred and MadLibs, and will occasionally do a paragraph of writing. Outside of this, he's doing what he wants. He reads voraciously, researches things on the web, and does any kind of web games he can find that are free. These past couple of weeks I rebuilt a couple of old desktop PCs for the boy's exclusive use. (T had already broken my laptop screen hinge and downloaded malware and I really need to make this laptop last for another 6 months or there's no Christmas gifts under the tree!)   So now they each have a PC that is fast enough to accommodate Dreambox, Ooka Island and whatever kind of malware or virus they wish to experiment with. I can easily wipe and reload.

Lately T has figured out how to download maps for Minecraft and load them, he has been downloading Google Chrome apps, and then he found Wizards 101 which has turned out to be fairly educational. The important part is that he become comfortable with the computer and confident installing software, learning the file system, and also researching fixes on the web. This is where the future is, barring zombie invasions or the loss of electricity ;-)

I'm feeling so much better, so much more confident that this new direction of less formal study is the way to go.

We are happier. Shouldn't we chase happiness? I am sure many agree that chasing A's is better... just maybe not for us. My loving
sister, Aunt Mimi, says "This is OUR TIME NOW."   She's right - we need to make the most of it. So... in case their is an outbreak, a Zombie invasion or the lights go out and all hell breaks loose on 12/12/12... we've certainly had a good time while it lasted. ha ha

So, what do you think? Should I be worried that what we're doing is enough for now? I'm just curious if I'm delusional... 

Hellacious Weeks 5 and 6 of Home "School"

Something broke last week.  We lost our groove.  T is punching his brother.  PJ is asking to go to school.  T is getting anxiety over thinking about a family trip mid-October.  Just shoot me.

We started off the week last week with optimism and some drive.  They each took a turn on Dreambox for math.  T was struggling with sorting 10s and 1s and the all the possible combinations of that.  I reached for the base 10 blocks and showed him how they could group.  He resisted even looking at the blocks, and then conceded that it made sense.  Whenever he hits something that he doesn't know, the boy freezes up!  Ugh.

PJ asks to play math games on the tablet and the next thing I know he's playing Angry Birds.  Busted.  He's grounded from screens for the day.

By mid-week we were bustling around getting ready for PJ's 6th birthday party.  He just wanted to have his few friends over for a "messy party" that consisted of a dinosaur dig (sand+plaster of paris), silly string fight, shaving cream play, cornstarch and water and flour and water stations, and a slime center.  It was messy.  His cake was a custom Mommy Creation - Minecraft.  He loved it.

I also had to use up those beautiful apples we got up in the mountains the week before.  While I peeled and sliced, PJ searched for recipes on the tablet and read me the ingredients.  He learned cup, tsp, tbsp.  I was quite impressed he had the patience to review it with me.

The T Man was assigned a fact-finding mission.  I asked him to choose a country and find five interesting facts about it on Google.  First he chose Asia - and I explained to him that Asia is not a country and we walked over to the World Map on the classroom wall for a quick review.  I think he was embarassed, but isn't this what "school" is for?   In the end he chose Brazil, specifically Rio.  Here are his findings: 



 

We did this video, because T really hates writing anything down.  This is apparently pretty typical for gifted boys.  Even so, during the last few weeks, I have been able to coerce some writing out of him.  He tries to get my requirement from 5 sentences down to three.  This week's writing wasn't from one of the prompts in his book.  He just wrote some lines down on the back of the book and wrote:

"One day i was attacked by a ... taco.  It tried to eat me. {wait shouldn't it be the other way round?}  lucky me I had a knife. {I don't know why}  Then I sliced him (or "it") in half.  I had defeated him.  

the end 

Note: The braces were conversation bubbles on the opposite page.  

I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified.

PJ produced this little beauty today.  He flipped through his First Grade workbook after studying sentence formation, "naming words" and periods, did a little math and decided that counting the dots and decoding the colors was an awesome idea.  Ohhhhkay, I'll go with that.  T would have cried if I asked him to color anything at age 6!!

    

This week PJ and I moved onto double digit addition.  There weren't any tears because we quit 12 problems into the lesson, after seeing the horrified expression that came over PJ's face at the problem:  23 + 37.  We'll see those again in a day or two.  Ha ha

 

PJ has asked several times to go back to school but I refuse to put him into the local LAUSD school just out of sheer fear of what could happen.  (In case you are wondering why, you can check out the earlier blog on our experience with the school system here).  I was feeling so down about our effort to homeschool, I did actually try to place him in his best friend's school this week, as much as I didn't think it was a great idea for the whole family.  But I was turned down for financial aid and I don't think it's SUCH a great idea to turn our lives upside down trying to pull the money together for it each month.  These are the days I shake my head and wish we actually had a CHOICE of where we put our tax money.  And I question - if we aren't using this money for my kid's spot in school, where does it go?  And then I move on.

 

It hasn't been easy to motivate these two lately and I am wishing they were more self-motivated to do anything other than play video games. There are days I want to just want to look at job ads. But maybe tomorrow will be better?   I am ever hopeful.  I am not afraid to change my strategy.  And I also happen to really like my boys, so that helps. A lot.  

 

Week 4 of the "School" Year: Nature and Lessons Abound

Oh dear, where to begin?  We had a LOT of nature this week and frankly I am feeling every one of my forty-two years.  Chasing after little boys and trying to weave educational opportunities into our every day lives can be a bit tiring.  But I am NOT complaining!  This week has been a whole lot of awesome.

We packed a lot of learning in on Monday because we had a big Geocache Expedition on Tuesday with our Gifted Kids Meetup friends at the Botanic Garden on Tuesday.  It was hot.  It was a trek.  But we finally won our little (nano) prize on our third cache attempt at the garden.  Viola!  A nano log!  Woot!  I think we hooked our friends on this fun little hobby.

Wednesday we packed the car and the pup and headed to the San Bernardino Mountains to Aunt Mimi's Family Cabin.  It's a hidden little valley owned by a small group of people for about a hundred years with a wonderful history attached to it.  It is cluster of cabins nestled between two streams and separated by fields of apple trees.  It is my version of Heaven.  I had visited the cabin when I was my kid's ages and this orchard contains some of my fondest childhood memories.  Now my children are very privileged to get to experience it too. 

We arrived, unpacked our cooler and headed directly to the stream to play.  The weather was perfect, around 78 degrees and the fresh stream water chilled our feet.  Of course the boys have to go neck deep whenever possible.

My original plan was to build rafts and huts for GI Joe, to test speed and flotation, to make bows and arrows and test speed via bow tension... Lots of plans for these trips to the river.  You know what they say about Best Laid Plans?  Yup...the kids had their own plans, which included doing what they do best: playing.  And who am I to try to force them to do this stuff anyway?  Ha ha, jokes on me, Teacher Mom.

There was lots of learning happening anyway.  Aunt Mimi surprised the boys with Golf Cart driving lessons, which must have turned out to be pretty funny but I missed the lesson and that's probably a good thing for the state of my heart health.  Apparently T Man nearly rammed them into an apple tree!  He got better on the next lesson :) 

We gave Aunt Mimi a lesson in Geocaching and we were all happily surprised to find an awesome cache within a mile of the cabin. It was an old ammunition case filled with lots of toys.

On the way back to the cabin, we got one of our greatest lessons of the week: finding a baby bird that fell out of its nest.  T was vehemently against taking the baby home and thought we should leave it flailing in the dead grass next to the road.  Mimi and I were all for attempting to save its life.  We put him in a shoe box and immediately queried our Facebook Friends to see if they could help identify it so we could feed it.  Duckling?  Heron?  We were given a number to a volunteer organization that works to save wild birds and got some very valuable advice on finding baby birds like this:  Put it back in the tree it fell out of, watch for an hour and hope and pray mama bird finds it.  Essentially my little T was right.  We shouldn't have messed with it.  I found this out too late.  By the next morning the baby couldn't peep anymore and was quickly on his way to birdy heaven. I feel awful about it, but isn't that how we learn lessons?  Today Mimi said her son thought he was a Vulture.  I'm pretty sure that is correct.  (sigh)

Near the end of the day, it was clear that the golf cart was the boon of the visit.  They boys obsessed on it.  T pointed right at Mimi and said "You need to take us out in the golf cart."  This got an eyebrow raising!  Mimi explained that she is a Communication Expert and that she's pretty sure that this is not the way to convince someone to do something for you.  She coached him on how to properly ask someone for something.  This was an invaluable lesson and I am so grateful to have her do this because it doesn't matter how much mama harps on her kids for their behavior, coming from Mom it sounds like a regular nag session.  Coming from Mimi, however, makes all the difference in the world. 

I am, for the most part, solely responsible for the complete education of my children. Not just reading, writing and arithmetic, but life skills, communication, social skills, manners, self-care, reproduction, respect, love, logic and common sense, caring, you name it.  It is a daunting task that I often try not to think about, but live in the moment and make every situation count to the education of these boys.  It is a wonderful gift to be given when someone steps up and helps in this journey.

We got a little sit-down work done during our full day at the cabin...the kids use dice to do addition (PJ) and multiplication (T) and they wrote on their Favorite Thing about the Mountain Cabin.  (the golf cart, of course)  We started reading Life of Fred Butterflies and it covered the life cycle of the butterfly, and moved onto Astronomy and the Orion constellation, specifically Betelgeuse, the super-sized star that makes up Orion's left shoulder.  Apparently this star is the size of a football field compared to our Sun, if you can imagine our Sun as the size of an orange.  Crazy Big. 

One of the awesome things about getting to visit the apple orchard in September is that it's Harvest Time!  Mimi took us into a separate orchard where we got to bag up all kinds of apples.  And of course, in the Harvest tradition, we had to bake a pie.  By this point in the day, around 4:00, the kids were pooped out, so they watched TV and I poured a glass of wine and started to peel apples.  I'm proud to say, it turned out to be one FINE apple pie :)

 

On our way out of the mountains on Friday, the kids were able to jump out of the car and play in a real, honest to God, mountain waterfall.  What a way to end an amazing few days in nature.   

Home Sweet Home brings us pictures of the Shuttle Endeavor flying piggy back on a 747 on it's way to LAX and its final resting place, the California Science Center.  We are looking forward to visiting it when it opens.  During the week without the crowds, of course, because we have that freedom now that we homeschool.  Just like the freedom to explore nature whenever we are invited to the Heaven that is the Mountain Cabin.  And the availability to spend these precious times with Aunt Mimi and learn from her too.

Week 3 and Off Track...or are we?

 This week we tackled Daddy's Birthday.  I give that a huge font and emphasis because this is Daddy's Special Day and we must make it super specials for him.  If he had his druthers he'd get the entire Month of September to celebrate, but since he's in Crunch Mode, had to settle for his Special Day as 24 hours.  To add insult to injury, his Special Day is September 11.
So we do our best to make it Big and Important regardless of that sad fact.  I gave the boys some butcher paper and asked them to make some wrapping paper for presents.  As you can see by this picture, it evolved into something much bigger and important:  a Happy Birthday Banner.  Minecraft-style.  Daddy was pretty darned impressed!

On a trip to our favorite store, Barnes & Noble, to find a treat for dad, the kids each wanted to pick out a book for themselves.  I think we already own Splat the Cat, so I asked PJ to read this one at the store, out loud to me.  This is PJ's reaction.  LMAO

Monday we did our usual studies and then spent the afternoon at the park with a lovely homeschooling family of 3 little boys.  The older boys tromped around the park in full discovery-mode, into the nooks and crannys of a dried "creek" and up to it's pond.  I looked at my fellow mama and told her I gave the TMan 10 minutes before he was up to his knees in that murky water.  20 minutes later he approached in sloshing tennis shoes.  Haha.  It's what boys do. Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails! 

After removing the offending pond fifth, the boys went after some climbing trees and and found a huge patch of mushrooms.  T explained the "gills" of the mushroom and disected it and named it's type.  (I still need to go look it up, but I'm looking forward to getting an iphone just for an app I heard about that does object recognition) I can't locate anything about it on the Web except back to 2009.  But gosh, I need it so I can take a picture of something and give it a name. 

Speaking of apps, look at this one!  It's Geocache Navigator and it's directly linked to the Geocaching.com website.  It's amaaahzing and I can't wait to use it.  
Wednesday we met up with our GHF friends, Amy, Liam and Sutton for a geocaching expedition at the South Coast Botanic Garden.  Mission: FAIL.  All 4 of the boys were either hot, bored or obsessing about Minecraft.  I stupidly left my phone (with previously mentioned awesome app) at home.  We are going try that again next Tuesday.  We went home and let the boys have some quiet play time.  Much more relaxing.. 

I had a wonderful Aha moment this week with little PJ.  He has been practicing writing the alphabet in a little Lakeshore Learning writing book.  For some reason, he wants to always start at the bottom of the line and move upwards, so I have sat down and review each letter, explaining to start at the top line and moved downwards, then add the other features of the letters.  While at the park the other day, he got too hot and decided to rest across my lap.  So I began to trace letters on his back.  He guessed every single letter correctly!  I am thinking this whole teaching thing might just be working out.

We had a playdate on Friday and got to go to their pool.  Many thanks to them, as it was 104 degrees in the harbor area of Los Angeles.  Holy Cow.  It must have been a record.  Before we could go outside, however, the boys had to be shown their friend's latest interest: www.coolmath-games.com  There are some excellent brain games on this website, perfect for 5-7 year olds.  PJ is positively obsessed now and has been playing since we got home yesterday.

With this summer heat, we are getting lots of bugs.  We had to pick bees and termites out of the pool yesterday.  We also got a strange little visitor that we couldn't identify.  I called over to T to have him check it out and see if he knew the name.  "Ah! It's a Weevil!" he exclaimed.  Having never seen a weevil in my life, I just didn't believe him and pulled up the trusty browser on my phone.  WHY did I question this kid?  It was a weevil.  When I asked him how he knew this, he credited "Ugly Bugs" one of the Horrible Science books.  Ah, it really IS working!

So I am okay today with a morning of cartoons and relaxation.  It's gonna be another hot one!  Next week we get to visit the San Bernardino Mountains with my sister.  We have planned some community gardening and a little history of the area.  Should be lots of fun.  And Educational.

Socialization: Age Peers and Intellectual Peers

This is an iffy topic for me.  I could really come off like a snob, but those of you who know me, realize that I really am earnest in these thoughts. 



Tulip fields with BFF Ally - 2009

I've always had good friends, but finding friends hasn't been all that easy. I'm considered outgoing and friendly and I have had many many acquaintances in my life.  Facebook reports 189 Friends on my Profile, the list including friends from grade school, junior high, high school, work friends, relatives and lots of mommy-club friends. There are a couple handfuls of "friends" that I have met only once, but have formed an intellectual connection with: those I admire for thier thoughts, activism or ideals.  I don't mind sharing my intimate thoughts with these people because I feel like they get me.

It took this past year of research and discovery, a journey of diagnoses and pain, to realize that there really is something to this concept of "gifted" and there are neurological differences that effect social and emotional development, that these differences must be recognized and handled in a different way.

Looking back, I realize that I spent most of my working career surrounded by smart people.  I worked for lawyers and then moved into information technology and capped off my professional career working for a billionaire genius who, of course, surrounded himself with smart people.  I took all that for granted.

I have come to appreciate the concept of Intellectual Peers and Age Peers.  While my T-Man is only 8.5, he is intellectually more of a 12 year old, his interests and humor and thoughts on the world are all more mature than a typical kid of his age.  I remember when he was 4 he wanted to hang out with the 8 and 10 year olds in the neighborhood.  In public school he had to deal with age peers that one day he would be "best friends" and the next day they aren't friends anymore. For my emotionally intense sensitive boy, this was devastating.  He just didn't understand them.

Now that we are on the Great Homeschool Adventure, socialization is almost totally within our control.  It's like when you have a toddler and find a playgroup or schedule playdates and you get to choose the kind of kids your kids (and you!) do well around.  It's not completely in control - you still have typical interactions with the public and new people.  It's almost like an office social environment: the usual players, understanding what your co-workers are like, who you can depend on for what you need, etc.  And for a gifted kid who likes routine and predictability, it is ideal.  Now the challenge is to find other kids near his age that have similar interests and intellect.

BFFs Tylan & Brayden - 2009

I think it's important to actively seek out intellectual peers and to put energy into the care and feeding of relationships that have potential for such a deep connection and understanding.  I hadn't realized how good I had it up in Seattle with all my smarty mommies and co-workers until I moved to Los Angeles and had such difficulty establishing friendships in its massive and diverse socio-economic landscape.  Nearly three years later, T and PJ have only a couple of friends that they connect with on a deeper level and that are available to be with us on a regular basis. 

I have been spending time seeking out friends for us. I've spent many hours on the GHF yahoo group and found a couple of matches.  I've even created a Meetup group in an attempt to draw out more families like us.  (If you aren't careful with "The G Word" you may get the hairy eyeball, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.)  It feels like a constant effort that is well worth it when you see the smiles on your child's face, when you get to have stimulating mommy conversation and enjoy full belly laughs, with people who get it.

2nd Week of "School"

First of all, why the heck am I calling this "school"?  I am beginning to realize that it's a bad word around here, a bad word I'm telling my kids to use.  Silly mom.

We started our week off on Labor Day Monday.  Dad had to work (no irony there) and so we decided to be couch potatoes.  Mr. T parked himself on the coach with my laptop and proceeded to spend the day studying his favorite topic:  Minecraft.  He had discovered a nice guy named Paul Soares, Jr., a dad of boys who is quite funny and clearly gifted, and who does some very nice tutorials on youtube aimed at the child audience.  Am I a big fan of the game?  Not so much.  But since my son is studying it with the voraciousness of a groupie to a rock band, who am I to complain?  The fact that my son was finding an actual goal within the game helps me to cope with it.

In the meantime, I discovered that Rovio, famed game designers of Angry Birds, has a new release called "Amazing Alex" a ""whiz kid who turns everything into adventure. From cleaning his room to battling cardboard robots in his backyard.  Alex creates amazing chain reactions..." another awesome physics game to challenge my little PJ's puzzle brain.  This gave me time to look at our Moving Beyond the Page and make a strategy, as well as investigate some new history books to order.  T Man loves his history.

Tuesday started off with nightmare battles trying for some cooperation to do some school work.  (There's that WORD AGAIN, Mom!)  After the usual threat of zero gaming, things turned around.  T wrote out our grocery list, emptied the dishwasher and offered to join PJ for a game of Scrabble.  PJ and I had worked our way through the day with Life of Fred, Boggle, Dreambox and were just pulling down the box for Scrabble.  I decided to give them each 10 tiles and we actually finished a game, the boys nearly the same score of 140 and 144.  PJ beat his big brother.  I, of course, found the word FOUNDER on my tile holder and was able to play FLOUNDER for a 50 point bonus, but they didn't seem to mind ;-)

Wednesday was much nicer and we moved through our day with wonderful cooperation, working on our Map of the Community, doing some Ooka Island and reading Horrible Histories.  At one point the house was too quiet and I found these two taking over Life of Fred and finishing the first book.  I'm feeling a little bit of a loss over that; I wanted to see how it ended!  :)

Liam and T tutor each other on Minecraft

Thursday featured a playdate and nature hike to Temescal Canyon with our gifted homeschooling friends.  It's always such a treat to be with this crew because they are as funny, interesting and quirky as us.  We hung out at their house on the Westside for a bit and the little ones played board games and the big ones played Lego Hero Factory and then tutored each other on Minecraft.

Our trip to the Canyon was a lot of fun.  The weather couldn't get any more beautiful and the kids couldn't be a better match.  The boys separated off in their little teams and explored the creek and ravines. 

We moms watched, amused to see how well the kids got along.  Little Sutton just turned 4 but is a great intellectual peer for little PJ, almost 6.  That is one of those funky "gifted" things that people have a hard time understanding.  T could go play Scrabble with a couple of college students, but don't put him in a classroom with twenty average 8-year-olds, because he just can't relate.  

On the other hand, put this kid in a giant play structure with a bunch of 4 and 5 year-olds during the week and he's having an absolute blast. Go figure. 

Friday we met up with another gifted friend just to let the boys run and play.  Kid's Concepts in Torrance isn't cheap, but it was just the kind of physical outlet these boys needed.

It's now Friday at the end of the day and T is waiting for the use of the laptop.  While he's waiting, he's sprawled out on my bed reading the 8th book in the Life of Fred series.  The kid just slurped up the other 7 books since Tuesday.  Sheesh, I really need to pay my library fines and get back over there... ;-) 

If you want to read more about our friends Liam and Sutton, you can find them on Amy's blog, A Voracious Mind.

  

Back to School Angst and a Food Revolution

Okay, I admit it: I have a little of that Back To School Angst everyone on the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum is talking about.  It was about a week ago; a very, very long thread dedicated to feeling kind of sad, kind of like you are missing out on something now that school has started.  At the time, I mostly shook my head because I was happy to not be returning to LAUSD on August 14th and as I heard the local school bell ring from my desk, I was relieved to know my kids wouldn’t be going back to that.  I mean, WHY would you miss something that was so terrible for your kids?

Today all my Seattle and Torrance friends started back to school, 1200 miles apart, but sharing the same experience.  Facebook is filled with darling photos with smiling children and notes of what grade they are beginning, I’ve watched them grow taller over the years.  There would be no “back to school” photo with backpack in our photo albums, no formal class picture, no spring picture to compare to the fall.  We are no longer part of that community.  Today I felt the loss.

Today was also my presentation for the local MOMS Club Chapter about bagged lunches versus school lunches.  My goal was to tell them about my experience with school lunches and to try to inspire them to pack a healthy option for the little ones entering elementary school.



I was brought back to three years ago, where T was dropped off at the local school for his first public school experience.  It took me a couple of months to get situated, to get into a preschool program for PJ and then be able to volunteer in his class.  On my big volunteer day sometime in January, I walked with the kids out to the “cafeteria” to find a service window with a lunch lady handing out plastic wrapped lunches in brown paper baskets.  All the food was brown.  Brown potato “smiles,” brown breaded chicken breast on a whole wheat bun and a brown ice-cream looking thing called “Chocolate Launch! Frozen Whey Protein.”  No fruit, no veggies.  I later discovered that “ketchup” and the potatoes covered that food group.


LAUSD 2011 lunch of "Sweet & Sour"

 Along with this discovery was the milk choice.  Strawberry, Chocolate or plain in a “bladder” bag (not pictured here) the Kindergartners were required to puncture with a straw in order to drink.  The strawberry milk covered the chicken sandwich of T’s classmate, who shrugged helplessly, probably grateful to get that free meal.

I. Was. Mortified.  All the literature from “Café LA” and their website advertised “healthy meals” for our children.  I bought it hook line and sinker.  These meals were positively disgusting and I had trusted that the second largest school district in the country had my back, my kid's best interest in mind.  Grrr.

I packed lunches after that.  I did "bento" style using Laptop Lunches.  I became an expert and an activist.

 

In Spring of last year I was contacted by Jamie Oliver's people about the Food Revolution coming to LA.  I had signed up as an activist on his website after watching the 2010 television series where 1st graders couldn't identify the name for a tomato.  I began to work with the grassroots team to tell LAUSD that this kind of meal is unacceptable.  Flavored milk was unnecessary.  I attended a rally to ban flavored milk, attended the filming of a demonstration of how much sugar the kids in LA drink in a week of flavored milk, met with Jamie and his team, interviewed for magazines and the nightly news, met with the food services director and the deputy-whats-his-name right hand guy to the Superintendent. It amazed me that we could affect change so quickly, but then that's what you get when you have a celebrity backing the effort.  Thanks Jamie!  We got the flavored milk removed.  The menu was changed as planned.  John Deasy promised late night entertainer Jimmy Kimmel he promised to see this through. 

 

The bigger fish to fry is really the USDA who thinks it's okay to call "ketchup" a tomato, but these things are coming clearer every day.

But the point is, it was a fight.  Everything within a school district is a bureaucracy and even a simple thing like getting a healthy square meal for a kid is a freaking fight.  Can you see where these thoughts were headed?
 
And so, my successful talk concluded, I headed home to my boys who were hanging with their favorite sitter.  I was greeted with relaxed smiles and they reported they did some math and played Uno.  Happy Kids. 

I found this magnet on my refrigerator last week.  It's the 1st Grade School Picture for the Fall of 2010.  This is my little T Man and it was very clear that he wasn't happy.

So angst-schmangst.  I know it's all good.  Even if I need to sit here and spill the beans to you to make myself feel justified.  I know you know, and I know you support me.  I'm feeling pretty grateful.  Thanks for that.

The First Week of School

Wow, this has been a long week for all of us. Our transition into the school year could have been a little easier, but I still feel compelled to be the "teacher" and my kids do, in fact, need a little more hand-holding than they really want.  For example, we started Beast Academy 3A this week and lemme tell you, it ain't easy.  I have never been a geometry lover and memorizing different shapes' names and attributes is really not all that fun.  We made it through the first 3 chapters this week, but honesty, I'm really not sure we need to know the term "rhombus" or that a Square is actually a type of Rectangle in the future. I call these "cocktail party facts" that only your favorite show-off Geek may actually mention in conversation. Perhaps I'm wrong about that - please post back if you know where that info is potentially helpful!

On the other hand, Life of Fred - Apples has been so delightful.  We worked through the first seven chapters this week and BOTH kids can't wait for the next one, even though this is the very first book of the Elementary Series, meant for kindergarten or 1st grade.  We learned that the first day of the week is Sunday, some basic algebra, and that Archimedes estimated that the universe could hold 1 vigintillion grains of sand, among many other interesting things that included basic addition.

Dreambox online math has turned out to be a success.  Ooka Island reading is kind of "eh" for PJ.  We worked in some writing books to practice our letters and T wrote some fun paragraphs, even though getting either of them to write is sometimes like pulling teeth...

We played The Allowance Game, that earned a big Thumbs Down from The T Man but little PJ loved it so much he had to get dad to play every morning.


We visited the Cerritos Library (wow!) and found some fun reading there.  PJ is a very big fan of "Biscuit" the fictional dog.  He read a couple of those to me while T discovered a graphic novel about "Ug" the stone-age boy genius.  P.E. followed in the fountains in about 90 degrees.  Very fun.  Thanks to my dear friend Claudia for taking us along!  We all have so much fun together.

We are lacking in hard physical activity this week.  It's so hot outside, we're staying under fans!  And while we've had two playdates this week, I'd like to improve on that as well.  Baby Steps...

Moving Beyond the Page is barely moving.  The kids are not crazy about the "Community" topic because they have 1) studied it before and 2) don't find it all that exciting. We reviewed Rural life versus Urban Life.  It was a little lost on the Peej.   I'll be picking out the fun bits and moving right along in it next week.

I never realized that Slime, aka "Gak," could be so much fun.  T was using a straw and blowing it up into different shapes of human organs.  Wish I had caught a photo of that.  He also created a Minecraft scene and made a pretty good looking "Steve" and "Creeper" character out of the awesome non-drying modeling clay from Lakeshore Learning.

Are you exhausted just hearing about this week yet?  I'm not even done!

Life skills were folding and stowing laundry and putting away dishes for little PJ while T was getting handy in the kitchen.  He used the microwave to heat something and then made a new creation: a peanut butter pickle dog with mustard.  I didn't think he actually would like it, but low and behold... he did.  Perhaps it was just because he made it himself...  He also tried his hand at hand-washing dishes since our washer went kaput a few weeks ago.  A green-tinged face appeared at my desk exclaiming "I can't do it! There was CAT food on a bowl!  It just grossed me out!  I'm just too sensitive for that!"  Inwardly I sigh, but I was the same way at that age.  Maybe next year... :-)

It's now almost 5:00pm on Friday and Mama is tired and we are starting our long weekend.  Thank. Goodness.

You are probably thinking about now... Wouldn't it just be easier to drop them off at school?  If you have been reading my blog from the beginning, you know that it wouldn't.