bearing blog

Playgroup attachments.

I fielded a question on one of my lists today from a mom who wanted help with her four-year-old's social skills.  The situation:  a homeschoolers' group that meets weekly in a grassy area.  The moms chat and the children play; her son, in that situation, becomes needy, begs her to play with him, shies away from the other children, throws fits, interrupts her and the other mothers constantly and tries to dominate the conversation.  Is it normal?  All the other kids appear "fine" --- why not him?  Should she insist he play with the other children?  Should she trust that "this will pass" and try to generously give herself to him for now?   Or is that too child-centered?  Should she insist on having her conversation uninterrupted?

I remembered this happening some with Oscar too, interrupting adults and wanting to dominate the conversation.  I always felt torn because, on the one hand, it is good for a child to participate in conversations with adults, good for developing social skills and vocabulary and for feeling welcome and worthy, but on the other hand, we owe it to the other adults to gently deflect our kids from dominating the conversation.  It's a tough balance to strike.  I want to model "we don't interrupt" and so interrupting the child seems counterproductive.  Gently pulling him aside and reminding him feels better.  But it's tricky to do.

I typed a lot of advice before it occurred to me to try to answer the "Why does this happen?" in terms of attachment.   The mother had assumed, and so did I at first, that the child's stress came from having to be around so many other children.  I realized that the tension might come as much from the presence of other adults, because they are potential attachment figures.    His mom is focused on these adults -- maybe it sends a sort of message to his attachment mechanisms that "these adults are important" -- his attachment mechanisms are firing up to get these "important" adults to see him and notice him and form an attachment to him.  Perhaps it is a safety mechanism, born, I think, of the expectation that an "important" adult might without warning be the person left momentarily in charge of him.  (It happens... "Watch my kids for a minute while I go get something out of my car?")

Viewed in this light the child's reluctance to leave the group of adults, and attempts to be heard by them,  seems understandable --- even reasonable.

I suggested she firmly present the choice "You can sit with me quietly while I talk and listen with the other mamas, or you can play."  And that she make both of those choices as attractive as possible.  For sitting quietly, bringing quiet activities, snacks, etc., and taking a break now and then (without leaving the circle) to read to him, with a murmur in his ear, from a favorite book; for playing, bringing something that he would enjoy (and plenty to share), like a box of beach balls or something along those lines. 

I also suggested she give him a chance to meet other people from the group in a lower-pressure setting, perhaps by inviting one mom and her kids for coffee.  My first thought was that this might help because it could give him practice playing with other children.  But it occurs to me now that it might help, as much or more, because it might forge greater connection with another adult.

And so maybe the first suggestion, about firmly presenting the choice and helping him enjoy either of the choices, though it could help, doesn't really address the root cause of the problem, because it doesn't deal with attachment.  Maybe what the child is really seeking is to make a real connection with the adults in the group to feel more secure.  I wonder if it would help him if his mom made a point of connecting him briefly to each one --- perhaps by being the first to arrive and then individually greeting each mom in a short conversation that included her son.

Missing loveys.

Finslippy left Minty Bear in Montauk.  Be sure to read the comments. 

Archimedes and history.

This fall we'll start a year studying ancient history, drawing from the History Odyssey curriculum (Level One).   I say "drawing from" rather than "following" because there's far too much packed into that curriculum for us to actually do -- I'll have to pick and choose a little.  Now in the last couple of months of summer I'm reading aloud from a few books chosen to whet the kids' appetites.  Last night we finished Archimedes and the Door of Science, a wonderfully written biography written by Jeanne Bendick.  Oscar loves biography, as we discovered last year.  (Which gave me the idea for a whole American History curriculum based entirely on biography, but haven't had time to work on.) 

We finished the Archimedes book very quickly.  It is engaging but avoids too much speculation and made-up dialogue, and as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, sticks pretty closely to what is known about Archimedes.  Ms. Bendick is careful to mention from time to time which discoveries are known from Archimedes's surviving works and which are known only from accounts written by others, the Archimedean work being lost.  One bit that delighted me:  Instead of writing herself about the Roman general Marcellus's assault on the city of Syracuse, which is said to have been foiled by various Archimedes-designed war machines, she quoted Plutarch at length, letting him tell the story.   When I read this aloud to my family, Oscar wriggled with delight and shouted "Yay Archimedes!" and Mark laughed aloud at the line "deriding his own artificers and engineers."  Here is the excerpt in full, which can be found here:

When, therefore, the Romans assaulted the walls in two places at once, fear and consternation stupefied the Syracusans, believing that nothing was able to resist that violence and those forces. But when Archimedes began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all sorts of missile weapons, and immense masses of stone that came down with incredible noise and violence; against which no man could stand; for they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all their ranks and files. In the meantime huge poles thrust out from the walls over the ships sunk some by the great weights which they let down from on high upon them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand or beak like a crane's beak and, when they had drawn them up by the prow, and set them on end upon the poop, they plunged them to the bottom of the sea; or else the ships, drawn by engines within, and whirled about, were dashed against steep rocks that stood jutting out under the walls, with great destruction of the soldiers that were aboard them. A ship was frequently lifted up to a great height in the air (a dreadful thing to behold), and was rolled to and fro, and kept swinging, until the mariners were all thrown out, when at length it was dashed against the rocks, or let fall. At the engine that Marcellus brought upon the bridge of ships, which was called Sambuca, from some resemblance it had to an instrument of music, while it was as yet approaching the wall, there was discharged a piece of rock of ten talents weight, then a second and a third, which, striking upon it with immense force and a noise like thunder, broke all its foundation to pieces, shook out all its fastenings, and completely dislodged it from the bridge. So Marcellus, doubtful what counsel to pursue, drew off his ships to a safer distance, and sounded a retreat to his forces on land. They then took a resolution of coming up under the walls, if it were possible, in the night; thinking that as Archimedes used ropes stretched at length in playing his engines, the soldiers would now be under the shot, and the darts would, for want of sufficient distance to throw them, fly over their heads without effect. But he, it appeared, had long before framed for such occasions engines accommodated to any distance, and shorter weapons; and had made numerous small openings in the walls, through which, with engines of a shorter range, unexpected blows were inflicted on the assailants. Thus, when they who thought to deceive the defenders came close up to the walls, instantly a shower of darts and other missile weapons was again cast upon them. And when stones came tumbling down perpendicularly upon their heads, and, as it were, the whole wall shot out arrows at them, they retired. And now, again, as they were going off, arrows and darts of a longer range inflicted a great slaughter among them, and their ships were driven one against another; while they themselves were not able to retaliate in any way. For Archimedes had provided and fixed most of his engines immediately under the wall; whence the Romans, seeing that indefinite mischief overwhelmed them from no visible means, began to think they were fighting with the gods.

Yet Marcellus escaped unhurt, and deriding his own artificers and engineers, "What," said he, "must we give up fighting with this geometrical Briareus, who plays pitch-and-toss with our ships, and, with the multitude of darts which he showers at a single moment upon us, really outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?" And, doubtless, the rest of the Syracusans were but the body of Archimedes's designs, one soul moving and governing all; for, laying aside all other arms, with this alone they infested the Romans and protected themselves. In fine, when such terror had seized upon the Romans, that, if they did but see a little rope or a piece of wood from the wall, instantly crying out, that there it was again, Archimedes was about to let fly some engine at them, they turned their backs and fled, Marcellus desisted from conflicts and assaults, putting all his hope in a long siege.

The book included an illustration of Roman soldiers flinching and running away from a dangling rope-end.  Charming!

I find myself looking forward to studying history along with my kids perhaps more than any other major homeschooling subject, perhaps because it's the one where my own education is the most lacking.   We'll be looking together at the books and materials, and the sources will be our teachers.  It really drives home to me the truth that, to homeschool effectively, it's less important that you know a lot about it when you begin than that you can get excited about it and that you know where to go for what you need.

And another thing -- it's nice to have some idea about what the subject can teach you about the nature of knowledge, about the human experience of living in the world, about your general world view.  I think I'd like Oscar to carry away from his study of history the realization that you don't have to rely on tertiary sources and secondhand accounts -- often you can go to the source.  That you can read about historical figures, or you can read what those people produced themselves.  That different witnesses record different things about the same event, and it's partly because they saw different things, partly because they remembered different things, partly because they decided different things were important, and maybe even because both of them are lying about some of it.  That people make the same mistakes over and over again in new ways.  That whatever the context, everyone makes choices, has a chance to affect something that happens later, however small and short-lived. 

Now that it is in my brain, I fear someday I might say this out loud.

What she said.

Vocabulary quiz.

Courtesy of Defective Yeti.  I get an A-:

abjure abrogate abstemious acumen antebellum auspicious belie bellicose bowdlerize chicanery chromosome churlish circumlocution circumnavigate deciduous deleterious diffident enervate enfranchise epiphany equinox euro evanescent expurgate facetious

fatuous feckless fiduciary filibuster gamete gauche gerrymander hegemony hemoglobin homogeneous hubris hypotenuse impeach incognito incontrovertible inculcate infrastructure interpolate irony jejune kinetic kowtow laissez faire lexicon loquacious

lugubrious metamorphosis mitosis moiety nanotechnology nihilism nomenclature nonsectarian notarize obsequious oligarchy omnipotent orthography oxidize parabola paradigm parameter pecuniary photosynthesis plagiarize plasma polymer precipitous quasar quotidian

recapitulate reciprocal reparation respiration sanguine soliloquy subjugate suffragist supercilious tautology taxonomy tectonic tempestuous thermodynamics totalitarian unctuous usurp vacuous vehement vortex winnow wrought xenophobe yeoman ziggurat

I knew the words in green; I did not know the words in red. In total, I knew 90 of 100.

It's graded on the honor system.  Take the quiz, based on "100 words every high school graduate should know," according to the American Heritage Dictionary,  here.

Fusion cuisine.

My kids and I were the only customers in the Middle Eastern restaurant in the middle of uptown.  The teenaged boy behind the counter had just brought us our falafel lunch special.   In walked a young woman in jeans and a pretty headscarf.  She was carrying a large paper bag by the handles.  She walked behind the counter, where she and the boy exchanged a few words ("Was that Spanish?" asked Oscar.  "No, something else," I told him).  An aproned man, an older woman, and a younger teenage boy came out of the kitchen and greeted her.

The young woman pulled out of her bag, one by one, half a dozen steaming-hot "everything" bagels from the bagel place up the street.  The family sliced the bagels in half, piled them high with gyros meat and yogurt sauce from the restaurant's steam table, wrapped the sandwiches in squares of foil pulled from the box behind the counter, and devoured them standing up.

The falafel was good, but I wanted some of that...

Iconography.

Adoro Te Devote explains the iconography of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

In this icon, the lamb, the Child Jesus, is being held in his mother's arms. Stop for a moment, and consider this image, note the lines, note the expressions, note the eyes...especially the eyes - of each person.

The Archangel Gabriel (who first appeared to Mary with the invitation from God) holds the Cross and the nails which signified the death of Christ, which were, of couse, the instruments leading to his Redemption. The Archangel Michael holds the sword that pierced his side, and the spear holding the sponge that wet his lips as he hung experiencing deep, physical and spiritual thirst those three hours upon the cross in abject misery. Jesus as a child in this image, was so striken by the view of these instruments of torture, these tools of his death, that he ran immediately to his Mother, so quickly that he nearly lost one of his sandals.

There's a picture and more explanation at her post.  If you're not familiar with this icon, and you'd like to be, take a look.  I'd like to know more about iconography, but haven't had time to read more than bits and pieces here and there.