My very first interview…

And I can’t be more pleased with it. My Exploration Station blog and I have been featured as the first in a series of weekly interviews by Starr Weems de Graffenried for the online publication, Examiner.com.

Besides writing education articles for Examiner.com, Ms. Weems de Graffenried is a “teacher, artist and educational activity designer. She holds a M.Ed. from Auburn University and is CELTA certified through Cambridge. Starr is the author of Teach Your Child Spanish Through Play and Brain Child“.

I must say I’m absolutely thrilled to be featured and it was an honor and a pleasure to share with Ms. Weems de Graffenried. It was wonderful to share my philosophy about education and give tips to other parents and educators of young children and see my own words somewhere other than in my own blogs. This article is definitely being saved in my scrapbook!

Creating a life I love

In March of 2008, I wrote this introductory post called, Who Am I?
I was coming out of a really dark place when I started this blog…I was often depressed and in despair. Prior to blogging I felt hopeless and completely lost and some days could barely get out of bed because I just couldn’t face the day. Every morning I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be long before my intense middle daughter would wake and start her series of meltdowns over seemingly inconsequential things (like when I opened her granola bar package the wrong way).

Here I sit, 16 months later and I’m very happy for many reasons. I recently read a post from A Mouse in France called Moonwalking. The last sentence is a quote that has echoed in my ears the last few days:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
~Mary Oliver

I had an epiphany. I am doing something pretty special with my wild and precious life with my children and through my blogs. I’m thrilled to be reaching out to people online and getting feedback that what we are doing is inspiring others.

I’m participating in an online learning cooperative for young children with my other blog, The Wonder Years. I also participated in a Carnival of Play, and contributed three posts to the carnival and I won a book called Play, by Stuart Brown, MD.

Not too long ago, my Exploration Station blog was featured on Wired: Geekdad’s 6 Great and Geeky Homeschooling Websites.

Just last week, I was contacted by an online reviewer for the opportunity to have that science blog featured in a series of interviews she is going to write for an online publication about interesting children’s activity blogs. My interview is going to be the first in a series. Needless to say, I’m tickled and I can’t wait to post about it.

My oldest daughter (7.5) is the most thrilled with the experiments we do, but all of them enjoy participating. My personal favorites:

Growing crystals – Rock Candy

Forensic Chemistry – identifying the mystery substance

Coffee Filter Chromatography

Jello Fiber Optics

Cabbage chemistry – ph indicator out of red cabbage

I’ve had a blast doing these experiments and I’m really excited about the things we can do with common household items.

I’m reaching out to people with the Raising Smart Girls blog. I’m deeply honored to have made online friends and have given cyber-support to others. I think my most favorite of all is when I hear from people who have felt like they have gotten commiseration or helpful suggestions to cope with their highly sensitive, highly gifted children or their own sensitivities and giftedness. It’s this huge relief to know someone understands what it’s like to live with intensity (either their own or that of their children’s). And it goes both ways – I have felt less alone and more encouraged in my efforts to work with my intense middle child because others face similar struggles and because I get some really good encouragement to keep working at it.

Many others have benefited from the Kids’ Problem Solving Binder for my intense, explosive, highly sensitive, selectively mute daughter I put together to help with emotion coaching. It really has helped spark an number of discussions with my daughter and help her understand her intense emotions and deal with them in more constructive ways. She has come a long way and can articulate her emotions now so much better than she used to.

It wasn’t too long ago, that I was lamenting that staying at home wasn’t really achieving much that was tangible. Or that I’d have to wait many years to see the fruits of my labors. But I see how my two oldest daughters are really doing well in school and their teachers have many good things to say about them.

I realize now that I have achieved a lot in the last 16 months by sharing what we do at home, and what I’ve learned about the intensity and complexity of the gifted individual.

A wise friend recently told me this when I lamented I was doing things as a stay at home mom that I couldn’t quite put on my curriculum vitae.

The phrase (in Latin) means “the course of life.” There is a HUGE difference between a CV that I would prepare and present to a potential employer and my biographical CV. [“Biography” is basically the Greek equivalent of the L. “curriculum vitae.”]
…
I have to protest your assertion that you are “not achieving a whole lot right now…to add to a pretty extensive CV.”

He’s right, you know (but then again he’s right about most things ).

All the above, which might not amount to a hill of beans in the professional sense, means quite a bit in the course of my life. I may not be achieving professional goals, but I certainly am achieving a tremendous amount of personal goals. I’m creating a life I love right now and even though I’m reaching out to others only online, one day I hope to create something where I can bring my expertise to others in real life again.

Update on the disturbing little incident.

Well…after knowing how much my highly sensitive daughter was traumatized last night by her sister’s friend, this was one of those things I couldn’t let slide under the carpet. But before I confronted his mother, I asked my daughter’s first grade teacher that we see every time I pick her up from science summer camp at school what she thought about the friend taking a pocket watch and waving in front of my oldest daughter’s face and saying “I’m going to hypnotize M to kill [her sisters] K and E at midnight tonight”.

M’s former teacher told me two things about it: 1) that some kids say things for the shock value of it, and 2) that if he said that at school and a teacher overheard it, he would be expelled (no tolerance policy for that kind of talk).

I’m grateful to know that M’s former teacher agrees that for a child like my highly sensitive, anxious daughter K, I’m not overreacting. No child should not have to go to bed terrified that her sister is going to come and kill her in the night.

So…with that in mind, I confronted the boy’s mom, and fortunately, the boy’s father happened to be home as well. Of course the boy denied it at first, but my oldest daughter did indeed confirm the story. She hesitated a little, but only because she knew he’d get into trouble for it and I know she doesn’t like to rat out her friends if she could avoid it.

And of course, the mom told me, “Well, I asked K if anything was wrong when she wanted to go home early and she said, ‘no’”. (I know my K, she always wants to be wherever her sisters get to go to. She would never want to go home unless something was really wrong).

That’s when I said, “um…she has SELECTIVE MUTISM…she’s not going be able to tell you if she’s terrified to do so.”

I also mentioned what the former teacher told me about how he’d be expelled for saying that in school. So, the mom agreed that a break was needed between the kids. She said, “what, like a week?”. In my mind I was thinking that was not enough, so I said that “I’d have to check with my husband first, but I would think at least that much followed by making sure the kids are always within earshot”. She replied, “well, then maybe it needs to be longer, because I’m not about to be supervising them that closely”. So much for expecting the parents to help me build back trust.

And of course another friendship is going to bite the dust. Since she lives on my street and our kids had been close friends, we had done quite a bit of kid-related activities together – brought our kids to the park, gone to school related events together, and she even brought me to her Girls’ Night Out at her church a few times. Towards the end of our conversation, it was becoming clear that she was getting angry with me.

If it weren’t for my blogs and my internet friends, I’d really start thinking I’m not meant to have any.

An exercise in trust

Today I’ve done something I never would have thought I’d ever be comfortable doing until any of my girls was oh, say about 12 or so. My almost 6 year old daughter K is being shuttled, at this very moment, an hour away from me in the care of two friends of mine, C (a police officer) and A (an ICU nurse) to join them and their daughter O on a small excursion. O is the only child K bonded with in her first year of preschool and the only child K worked up the courage to whisper to when she thought no one was looking (K was selectively mute in most school situations for about a year and a half).

They are going to a local zoo and an outlet mall. C called me up yesterday to extend the last minute invite for my daughter to join them. Knowing that he took good care of her when he invited her to a movie with his daughter helped me feel confident that she’s going to be okay.

There once was a time when this paranoid, over-protective mother would have said no. But because I know these two friends well (C is quite a bit like me in the overprotective department), and because they have been very good to our family in the past, and because of my daughter’s anxiety-based selective mutism, I have to choose opportunities that will give her confidence that she’s going to be just fine without me…I’ve learned to nudge my little bird a little bit to expand her comfort zone. And well ultimately…if you can’t trust a police officer and a nurse to know what to do in an emergency, who can you trust?

After what happened yesterday, I’m a little concerned, but not too much. I actually said a little prayer over my daughter like my Protestant MIL would do, and almost decided to send a rosary like my Catholic grandmother would do when we’d go on trips, but forgot at the last minute.

I have to trust that my baby will be okay (even though it’s supposed to rain today – I hope it won’t be a summer storm). I have to ignore the what-ifs and trust that my friends will treat my highly sensitive baby as carefully as they would their own.

As this beautiful quote goes

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Happy Birthday Tesla

Google Honors Nikola Tesla’s 153rd of his birth with a new logo:

Google.com

Nikola Tesla: Google commemorates birthday of pioneering electrical engineer

Tesla Master of Lightning

Pretty coincidental that I just was reading Tesla’s Man Out of Time this month.

YouTube video of Musical Tesla Coils Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, shared by my friend Jennaviere.

A disturbing little incident

I had a disturbing little incident happen with my highly sensitive, highly anxious almost 6 year old daughter K who struggles with selective mutism.

Earlier in the day, she and her sisters were playing at my 7.5 year old daughter’s friend’s house. This doesn’t happen often, as I like them all over by my house so I can keep an eye on things. About an hour later, I get a phone call from the boy’s mom, saying “nothing happened, but K said she wanted to go home”. This was really unusual, since K always wants to be where her older sister is. But I didn’t pay it much mind and just popped in Jumanji for her and made her a snack.

But much later in the evening, K had a strange question. She asked me if hypnotism was real. I wasn’t entirely certain where she had heard that, but I said I didn’t believe it was real. She seemed to be satisfied with my answer, but about an hour later, asked my husband the same thing.

He said “Yes” and my daughter got really upset and started crying. I thought that was peculiar, but I thought it was because maybe she wasn’t happy with the different responses.

Once my husband explained how hypnotism was supposed to work, she seemed a little better, but soon got upset again. She said that their friend M (who’s 7) hypnotized her older sister. My husband explained M would have better luck at flying an airplane than hypnotizing anyone. While she got better for a while, she began getting upset again. I re-iterated to her that I didn’t believe that anyone could be hypnotized, while dad said that well, there was a possibility that someone could be hypnotized, but only if they believed in it and if the person doing the hypnotizing really knew what they were doing. [note: He actually believes in it and feels the person doesn't really have to believe in it, but I told him to modify it, knowing how upset K was getting about it].

As I was laying down with her before she fell asleep, she told me this disturbing bit of information: She was crying and told me “ M said he was going to hypnotize [my oldest daughter] to kill me and E. . . He said it would happen at midnight.” I was shocked and LIVID. K asked me through her tears that if her sister came in to hurt her and E, if I would protect her. I said yes, of course I would, but that nothing was going to happen because M did not hypnotize her. At all.

I did ask her if this was the reason she came home early today, and she said yes. I asked her why she didn’t tell me about it before, and she cried harder and said she was afraid. This is the thing I worry about the most with her SM…that something bad will happen, but she will be too afraid to talk about it. This is also the reason I’m glad I work hard to keep her firmly secure with me, because she finds her strength in me. I’m going to have a conversation with the boy’s mother and figure out what to do.

This boy has been my oldest daughter’s friend for two years, and this has not been the first time he’s done something to hurt my kids. He poked my oldest daughter in the face “just to see what she would do”, about a year ago. And he sometimes is aggressive towards them, and sometimes does take something and “pretends” to hit them with it, only it sometimes actually does connect, though usually not that hard. He’s very possessive about my oldest daughter – he gets a little miffed when he has to share her with other friends or her sisters. And he’s one of those kids that always calls or rings the door, and also one of those kids that most other kids pick on. Then he’ll turn around and pick on my girls. It’s so frustrating and I stop it as soon as I see it. But he never seems to get the point.

I know I can’t shelter my girls, but we need some time away from him (the girls see him daily), I think, so that he knows he will not be allowed to continue to do stuff like that to them.

Sigh. I know this is going to bother my oldest daughter. But this is something we (meaning my husband and I) are getting more than a little concerned about. It needs to stop, now, even though it might mean I put a strain on the relationship I do have with his mother. She probably will understand, but I’m not sure. I keep giving the boy chances to behave and he keeps “forgetting himself”.

Argh. Wish me luck that I’ll come up with the right way to say to her that we won’t put up with this anymore.

Oh, please return our trilobyte!

I came to find out yesterday that one of my oldest daughter’s classmates in her summer science camp possibly took our treasured trilobyte. The teachers asked students to bring something in from home to examine under a microscope, and like last year, we sent the trilobyte in to share with the other children. Only this time, we didn’t get it back.

I came to find out from my daughter’s friend that he saw another classmate take it off the table and not return it. He told the teachers and they searched everywhere for it but didn’t find it. After giving the students a day to return the fossil (if they, indeed, actually took it home), they are sending letters home to the parents.

This trilobyte, other than being a wonderful fossil specimen from millions of years ago, was a gift from a former colleague and dear friend/mentor/father-figure of mine at the crime lab. He is an amateur geologist in his spare time and he sent me some specimens from his collection, including the trilobyte, for my children to enjoy. I am heartbroken that this might be lost to us forever.

The black fossil in the middle of this picture is the trilobyte.

I was going to send in other things from our mineral collection to share with the other children, but I decided not to, having my trust broken.

I’m hoping that it turns up, and that it was lost in the classroom somewhere. Even if a child took it, I hope that they return it. I also hope the teachers don’t punish the child too harshly. I know it was too good of a treasure to not want it for oneself. I blame myself for sending in something that had a lot of historical and sentimental significance.

Wah…Trilo come home!

This is how I want to be rememebered when I go

I recently read an incredibly poignant essay from a wonderfully articulate writer, Laurie Kendrick as she remembers and pays tribute to her friend on the second anniversary of his passing. I’ve been thinking of this essay ever since I read it a few days ago. To mean that much to your friends is priceless.

This is how I want to be remembered in the hearts of my friends and loved ones long after I die:

For Walter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

~Dinah Maria (Mulock) Craik (often attributed to George Eliot)

Walter (what a handsome man you were), I hope you know that you were loved and how much you meant to your friend Laurie. I wish we could all have that kind of friendship.

Is this really what mothers want for their daughters?

I’m reprinting one of my older posts because I’m fresh out of new material and now that I actually have a readership, I’d be interested in feedback about it.

This was written when my daughter was in Kindergarten. She’s now 7 and going into second grade.

*****
I have real trouble understanding the culture we live in here in the America. I went to a birthday party for 6 year old girls two weeks ago. The theme of the party was Hannah Montana. I didn’t know much about her, except that she is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, the character is 14 years old, and she is apparently idolized by every 5-6 year old girl in my daughter’s kindergarten class.

They spent a small amount of time at the party singing Karaoke of a Hannah Montana song about having “the best of both worlds”. All the girls (11 of them) knew the words to the song except my daughter. I felt a slight pang of sadness that my daughter noticed that everyone knew the words except her. The sadness lasted only a moment, when I realized just what the words were:

You get the limo out front
Hottest styles, every shoe, every color

Yeah, when you’re famous it can be kinda fun
It’s really you but no one ever discovers

In some ways you’re just like all your friends
But on stage you’re a star ….

You get the best of both worlds
Mix it all together and you know that it’s the best of both
(You know the best) You know the best of both worlds

Pictures and autographs
You get your face in all the magazines
The best part’s that you get to be who ever you wanna be …..

It just totally blew my mind that these little girls, barely out of the princess dress up phase are well versed in this song (I know this because the girls not around the Karoake machine sung the words without seeing them).

And then there was my little girl, who knew nothing about Hannah Montana, who wanted to sing along too, but couldn’t because she didn’t know the words. And while all the singing was going on, I noticed the birthday girl sobbing in the corner with her dad giving her some sort of lecture. I had to wonder if it was just all too much, and the little diva was having some sort of nervous breakdown because she just couldn’t cope any more. The father finally snapped her out of it (by what I’m not sure, but I could guess a bribe or a threat), and the girl stopped crying and went on to have cake and ice cream and open presents.

The birthday girl received lots of Hannah Montana things – about 4 Hannah Montannah dolls and a Hannah Montana toy guitar, and some other barbie dolls that had rockin’ outfits on. [For the record, I'm not against Barbie - in fact I have a few sets - Dr Barbie and Dr Ken, and Veterinarian Barbie and Teacher Barbie that the girls and I play with from time to time].

From us, she got a set of lip glosses and a sticker set with Disney princesses as a theme. I know, I am making my daughter so uncool, but in the end, the birthday girl still screamed just as shrilly as she did with all the Hannah Montana stuff.

But I really don’t get it. Why do mothers encourage their girls to grow up so fast? While my girls are still into princesses and dressing up, they aren’t into being pop-stars or Hannah Montana clones. While her counterparts have Bratz dolls, my daughters have Groovy Girl dolls.

While other 6 year old girls apparently come home from school and memorize the lyrics to Hannah Montana songs, my girls come home from school and are learning about math and science. We explore the natural world in our neighborhood, plants seeds, play math games and do science experiments. My daughter talks about being a teacher when she grows up – not a pop-star. I don’t have specific goals for my girls – just to be innocent for as long as possible, to enjoy their childhood, and to go into adulthood with their eyes and minds open to the world around them.

What has happened to America these days, that six year old girls aspire to be Hannah Montana clones? Is that what parents want for their girls? To raise bubble-headed girls with their eyes set on being stars? What happened to feminism and the push to raise independent-thinking women? It’s not that I’m all that impressed with the feminist movement in America either because they went too far in the other direction at times, but at least working hard at establishing independence gave us women choices. (Don’t worry, I’ll elaborate more some time about what I mean in a followup post). What kind of choices do girls have when you allow mass-marketing to tell you what a girl wants?

Do mothers really think this is “harmless”? To aspire to become the next pop star? Are American mothers just too busy to care? Are mothers too weak to buck the tide of hyped-up mass-marketing?

I just don’t get it. I really don’t. It’s appalling that mothers in suburban America have so little respect for girls and womanhood that they are willing to allow their daughters to be reveling in such materialistic and unrealistic things.

Why not create a female Doogie Howser. MD type of character? How about making a TV series for girls with a smart, strong lead young female role for girls to aspire to be? When I was growing up, we had plucky little Laura Ingalls Wilder to model.

I dare to be different. If my daughter ends up being the class nerd, I can handle that. I’ve been there myself, and I grew up to have a lot of choices I wouldn’t have had if all I was ever interested in was the latest trends.

*******

Since I wrote this post, I have to update how things are now. That very same daughter is now 7, and she’s in her second year of science summer camp and having a blast and she loves doing science experiments with me at home. She’s reading at a grade 5-6 level and obsessed with the Harry Potter series (though she’s currently reading an adapted version of Tom Sawyer) and she does third grade math problems at home for fun because the math in her first grade class was too easy.

She prefers to play pick-up games of baseball with the boys down the street, and I’m lovin’ that they like to include her and feel she’s one of “them”.

She’s an awesome kid and I love that she has her own mind and isn’t afraid to be herself. I admire that about her. She’s an awful lot like me in that regard and I am so grateful that she puts learning new things above keeping up with her friends. I hope she continues to have positive school experiences, though I’m still waiting for the day she will be criticized for being different. I will be ready for it though.

[Oh, and yeah...I could make a follow-up post to this about how the very bright young boy down the street just commented to me how he was going to be a highly paid baseball player when he grows up, so I know the unrealistic, materialistic goals the kids have these days are not the sole province of one gender or the other. It really saddens me to see these views in our young children].

Do I want to teach science?

Every once in a while I get the idea that I’d make a great science teacher. I have a great background for it, having worked in microbiology, forensic DNA analysis, and medical genetics.

From time to time, the fond memories of some of my favorite science class experiences come into my head:

My 8th grade science teacher, Mr P, inspired me first in science. I ended up choosing for my science fair project Rollercoaster Physics and used a hot wheels race car track to show demonstrate the forces at work needed to keep the car on track when they looped in a circle. It got first place in the school fair and I was able to go to the state finals and got second place there.

Then I was encouraged by my high school biology teacher, another Mr. P, to join the Scholastic Bowl. It was an academic quiz competition and we participated in tournaments among other high schools. Of course, there were the math and history specialists, but I did really well in the science areas. I also got the highest score in biology for the National Science Olympiad in the school. It was pretty neat.

You can say when it came to science, I was fairly consumed by it and while I never had a competitive bone in my body when it came to sports, when it came to science, I was thrilled by the possibility of winning.

In college, I focused on biotechnology, because it had the most hands-on labs. I loved my summer intensive course on microtechnique-where we learned to mount mouse organs in paraffin and make slices using a microtome. I also loved the microbiology labs where we played with bacteria and molds and the biotech lab where we DNA typed our own cheeks cells and karyotyped our chromosomes.

From time to time, I get this pull towards teaching. Especially when I do science experiments with my kids, like I do at my other blog The Exploration Station. And I think I’d make a fantastic and inspirational science teacher. I don’t know of any of my science teachers in elementary school or high school that actually worked in the fields they taught. I have such enthusiasm for my field, that I think I’d be really good at inspiring kids to go into science.

Every once in a while, I really get excited about the prospect of teaching. The biggest drawback, the bureaucracy of public schools and the lack of effort on the kids these days and the parents who make excuses for their kids who don’t want to work hard in school.

I have a sister and two friends who are teachers in the public school system. Not one of them really speak highly of what they are doing, now that they have been doing it for 10+ years. They only speak of the amount of grading they have to do after teaching kids who don’t want to learn and having PT conferences with parents who blame them for their kids not learning. Of course, it’s gen elementary teachers who teach under 5th grade, so they don’t specialize in one thing. And that’s all they’ve ever done.

A friend of ours who studied engineering in college ended up working for a while, then some time after having her kids, decided to become a high school math teacher. She complains a little too. In fact, it worries me quite a bit that more teachers than not complain about their classes. I have had some positive feedback from two elementary school teachers – my daughter’s kindergarten and first grade teacher, who still seem to have retained their enthusiasm for their jobs after being in it for a number of years. But I’m afraid they might be in the minority.

Still, I have this idea in my head that I can reach some kids and inspire and encourage them like my science teachers inspired and encouraged me. In my head, it all plays out pretty well. In reality though, I worry about making a huge mistake and having my ideals be trampled by bureaucracy and my enthusiasm for science being snuffed out.

This is where I wish I knew the homeschooling circles around here or wish there was alternative educational choices nearby. I have been told on a mother’s message board a while back that they were looking for a science teacher for their charter school and my background would make me an excellent candidate.

I don’t know what to do. I’d hate to spend the money on going for my teaching certificate if I’m going to end up hating it when I have to jump through the hoops and play by the rules and be constrained by the system. But I also hate the idea of turning away from a dream I’ve had for a while (being the kick-ass cool science teacher that everyone hopes they get in school).

Any thoughts out there?