Rinkydink Mum

“They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told.” Parents and Children, pg. 263

But let them have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times, heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales in which they are never roughly pulled up by the impossible-even where all is impossible, and they know it, and yet believe.” Home Education, page 152

“The children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other persons, in other times—a delightful double existence; and this joy they will find, for the most part, in their story-books” Home Education, page 153

 

When I first started looking into Charlotte Mason, I approached her works cautiously. I had found online that many of the enthusiasts of her writing were also enthusiastic about religion, specifically Christianity, and it seemed that a lot of the online chatter and ways people spoke of both Charlotte Mason and of their faith is that there is no room for debate of accuracy, authenticity, or truth. Beliefs that are stated as authoritative, factual statements like “Jesus is the way” or “the Bible is the word of God” are phrases that always set my spidey-senses tingling, and so when I saw that language being used in forums related to Charlotte Mason, I recoiled. While I have no issues with their beliefs and I do share some similar beliefs with this online community, I’ll admit that as a pretty skeptical person, I am skeptical of people who are not skeptical. I was unfairly biased against Charlotte Mason in the beginning because so many of her most enthusiastic supporters are people who don’t share my beliefs and I was worried that I could not trust their judgment. This bias was wrong, but it was there. But still, I was intrigued, so I kept reading.

I agreed with Charlotte Mason’s writings that all books are not created equally and we owe it to our children to fill their minds with great ideas and great literary language. The Bible is a book that is filled with great ideas and great literary language, but I do not believe it is the living book (as so many CM adherents say). So I was curious whether or not I would be able to read what other Charlotte Mason enthusiasts deemed “living books” and come to the same conclusions that they did. I was worried that the living books recommended would be ones published by Christian publishers with a specific worldview and agenda.

I knew right off the bat that I would not always agree with some of the books, as some people recommended books for science that disputed evolution (and they recommended them specifically on this basis) – but I would give it a shot and see if there were any that came highly recommended at my local library.

And I was impressed. There were a lot of books on recommended living book lists that I had never heard of, but there were many that I had as a child, that I love and consider exemplary. Books like:

And so I started checking out some books that I hadn’t heard of, that were more obscure, and I loved those too! None of them had the “agenda” that I feared.

Some books that I discovered through these book lists that are now among my favourites are:

Sheep in a Jeep – Nancy Shaw

(Good for Toddlers)

Make Way for Ducklings -Robert McCloskey

The Burgess Animal Books for Children – Thornton Burgess

Each Peach Pear Plum – Janet and Allan Ahlberg

(Good for Toddlers)

Miss Rumphius – Barbara Cooney

Pagoo – Hollings C. Hollings

A Child’s History of the World – V.M. Hillyer

Inspired by what I read, I headed to the library one Sunday afternoon. Could I identify a living book for myself out of a pile? First, a refresher, what is a living book?

What is a Living Book? Emily Kiser, podcast host of A Delectable Education, uses an acronym (L-I-V-I-N-G) to describe Living Books:

L: Literary Power

I : Ideas

V: Virtuous

I : Inspiring

N: Narrative

G: Generational

Books are “living” when they are written in literary language that isn’t dumbed down for children. They have big ideas that gives readers something to think about, wonder, imagine or ponder long after the story is over. The characters are not perfect but try to make the right choices, or there are consequences for poor choices. In short, they are virtuous. Living books are written by authors who are passionate and inspired by their subject and their enthusiasm flows from page to reader. Living books are narrative in that you can read them and then easily tell back what you read. They flow and are often written as a story. Lastly, living books are generational – they are the books that have been loved by your parents and your grandparents. They are books that adults and children enjoy reading together.

I walked over to the children’s biography section at my local library and I pulled down every single biography written about Charles Darwin (about 12 books in all) and I started reading. Why Charles Darwin? I figured if there was some truth to Living Books – there would be some written on every subject imaginable. And maybe, since I had the anti-evolutionists running around in the back of my mind, I wanted to make a point to see if I could find my worldview in a living book too.

Many of them began,

“Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire….” and I felt my mind gracefully swing shut. Boring. “Okay next”, I said, quickly closing the book.

And then I came upon one that began, “No one ever said, “Don’t Touch!” in the house where Charles Darwin grew up. And there was so much to touch, because the Darwin household was a scramble of children, odd pets, and wonderful books.”

I kept reading.

“Charles’ mother, Susannah Darwin, raised fancy pigeons known for their beauty and tameness. Dr. Robert Darwin, Charles’ father, was an immense man who weighed 336 pounds. He would drive all over the countryside to visit his patients in a single-seat carriage stuffed with snacks. When he returned from a long day of house calls, his six children would swirl about the huge man like little moons orbiting Jupiter.”

Starts to paint a picture of Charles’ childhood, doesn’t it? Makes him seem kind of relatable, doesn’t it?

This one was my second favourite Charles Darwin biography I read that day. It was called “One beetle too many : the extraordinary adventures of Charles Darwin” by Kathryn Lasky.

My favourite that I read that day began,

“Charles Darwin was too late. His life’s work had been wasted. The exploration of the black land and its mysteries, the years of research, the endless sifting of fact after fact now seemed to count for nothing.

It had been twenty-three years since Darwin, naturalist and future country gentleman, had started his great hunt for the truth. And he was sure he had found it. If only he had managed to finish the book he was writing! If only he had been less painstaking, less anxious to address every possible argument or objection – but it was too late to do things differently now. A rival had arrived at the truth as well: a rival who would soon tell the world what he had discovered. A rival who had, ironically, come to Darwin for friendship and help. As Darwin, stooped and grim-faced, plodded on his midday walk, he knew he was facing the greatest crisis of his life.”

“Charles Darwin, Visionary Behind the Theory of Evolution” by Anna Sproule, written for a slightly older juvenile audience, completely captivated me. It wasn’t just another dry biography that portrayed someone two-dimensionally. Darwin’s life, his motivations, his thoughts, his struggles were written about in such a way that I felt like I was his good friend. I read all 60 pages in one sitting. And I left the library, my mind whirring, eager to find more literary gems.

A second skepticism I had about living books was that a lot of the books in the recommended book lists were old. Like 50+ years old. This is fine for fiction, but for non-fiction? I was concerned. I’ve grown up in a world where technology is obsolete within five years and where libraries cull books older than ten, citing that the information is dated. Sure, research is progressing and we are learning new things all the time – but what have we really discovered about geology or ants or in the past 40 years that is relevant to a child’s education? Is it really dated?

I did another experiment. I ordered online a book that many Charlotte Mason enthusiasts cite as a living science book for learning about Earth. It is called “All About the Planet Earth” by Patricia Lauber and it was published… in 1962. Again, I was skeptical – how could I rely on the information found in a book about the earth published before man even went to the moon!

The book was written in response to the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58 during which more than 60,000 scientists from all over the world worked together to make progress on some of their burning questions about planet earth.

I was skeptical that I would learn much of anything from this book. I was worried I would learn a lot of misinformation or disproven theories. But you know what? This book was fascinating to read. I normally don’t sit down on a Friday night and read a book about continent formation or the earth’s crust – but man, I was into this book! And you know what? I was so intrigued by what I was reading, and it was explained so well that I understood enough to ask further questions, I was able to (and keen to) Google what had happened in the world of earth sciences since 1962 (some, but not much). I read up on it for hours. This book held the lighter fluid I needed to think of earth sciences for more than a single second. It gave me relatable ideas that I could chew on and think about.

Now, many months later, I still think of this passage whenever we go swimming, go the aquarium, go to the beach, fly in an airplane…just a lot actually:

“As you read this, a column of air weighing about half a ton is resting on the top of your head. Similar columns rest on the heads of everybody else in the world. That fact comes as a surprise to most people because we do not feel this great weight pressing on our heads. The reason is that our bodies are made to live under air pressure  – and could not live without it. Just as some fish are made to live at the bottom of the seas, so men are made to live at the bottom of an ocean of air.” (All About the Planet Earth, Patricia Lauber, p. 81)

And so, I began to believe in the power of living books to capture the imagination and to teach without “teaching”.

Now, when I choose books for DK, I choose them with intentionality. I don’t want to be a snob about it…but at the same time, there is only so much time, and I want to spend it reading great books instead of just mediocre, cotton-candyesque ones that are painful to read over and over and over again to a young child.

DK has a remarkable appetite for books and a really great attention span for being read to at two years old. When he likes a book, he will sit through the whole thing. When he doesn’t like it, he will close the book and say, “no no no no no”. A lot of the time whether he likes a book or not depends entirely on whether there are cars, trucks or trains in the illustrations, but I do find it remarkable that through reading him high quality books that don’t talk down to him, he will sit and focus and listen for at least 30 minutes, but when I read him “Cow Takes a Bow” or even a simple board book about trucks, he closes it, says, “No, no, no, no” and runs away. Maybe there’s something about the way I’m reading it  that’s tipping him off to not liking a particular book, or maybe there really is something to trusting in his comprehension and not reading him books that belittle him.

I’m glad I didn’t let my original preconceptions of “Christian homeschoolers” or “dated books” prevent me from learning more about Living Books and bringing them into my home. I don’t know if Living Books are “the answer” to children’s literacy and interest in reading – perhaps it is better to read anything as opposed to nothing. But I do know that I choose to feed DK a healthy diet of foods full of nutritional value so that his body grows and he has energy throughout his day (although admittedly he does not always eat the lovely feast I spread before him…ahhhh toddlers, that’s another story), so why wouldn’t I feed his mind a “healthy diet of rich ideas” as well?

Just some food for thought…

 

I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been down a deep, dark rabbit hole of inquiry – pretty much one of my favourite things outside of writing.

One of my guilty pleasures is this podcast called, “At Home”. I’m honestly not sure why I love it so much. The four women who host the podcast are quite different from me. First of all, they are evangelical Christians. Second, they all have multiple school-aged children. Third, they homeschool. I don’t know why I enjoy it, maybe it’s because I have a secret dream to host a podcast someday, or maybe it’s my ever-burning desire to be in a girl-band, or maybe it’s just my love of good conversation with good friends around a kitchen table – but I love listening to these four women. They are strong, they are thoughtful, they are devoted, capable, hard-working moms, and they are friends.

I’ve listened to their ideas and opinions on cleaning products, sibling rivalry, poetry, travel, meal planning and more; but none has sent me off on a new avenue of inquiry quite like their episode on Charlotte Mason.

Charlotte Mason…ahhh where even to start? She was a teacher, a school founder, a homeschool curriculum developer, a writer, an editor, a devout Christian, and an educational philosopher. Oh, and she lived over a hundred years ago, the bulk of her life’s work published between 1890 and 1920.

When I tell my friends that I’ve been fascinated by the writings of this woman, they mostly look at me with trepidation. “Oh dear, what kind of kool-aid has Heather been drinking?” Okay well bear with me while I elucidate exactly what strikes me so about her writing.

1. Charlotte Mason believed that children are born persons.

Children are not blank slates upon which we impress different templates. They are born whole beings, with feelings, fears, likes, and dislikes. They deserve respect for their personhood for where they are developmentally just as any other person. This seems like a pretty obvious notion these days – of course children are persons most of us would say – but honestly I’m not so sure that we actually practice that in our parenting and our schools. How often we refer to “the baby”! How quickly we are encouraged to dismiss our child’s cries for us in the night in the interest of “sleep training”. How often we tweet with the hashtag #reasonmykidiscrying that, while making light of the complexities of parenting, does nothing to recognize the child’s opinions or desires as legitimate to them (as ridiculous and as frustrating as they may seem to us). I mean sometimes I have to laugh at the absurdity of toddler emotions or else I’d cry – but on the whole I think I agree with Mason that it’s important to respect my kid’s emotions, as over-the-top as they may be.

2. Charlotte Mason believed that “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.”

By this she meant that children need to be educated in their own natural environment (a positive, loving, curious, and challenging one), with good habits (learning for the sake of satisfying curiosity and doing things “right” as opposed to “regurgitating memorized facts because the teacher said to”) and reading living books to inspire living, breathing ideas for their whole lives.

She wrote, “Our aim in education is to give a full life. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking – the strain would be too great – but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest.”

3. Charlotte Mason believed in teaching living ideas and through living books.

Not all books are created equal. I guess I always kind of knew that – I’ve definitely struggled through some books and raced through others. But I kind of had this notion that if a book was published it must have been vetted and it must be good, right? It doesn’t matter what you read, as long as you read, right? I no longer think this is the case. There is a HUGE difference in quality in children’s (and adult) literature published today. A lot of it has no plot or characters and is mostly designed with bright colours to grab a kid’s attention and entertain, to compete with all the excitement that comes on screens. But there aren’t necessarily any big ideas for them to chew on, to think about. Many books don’t inspire them to learn more, to ask questions, to put themselves in the shoes of another, or develop their focus/attention span.

Living books can be both fiction or non-fiction. They are usually written by one person (as opposed to a committee or publishing team) who has passion for the subject. They don’t talk down to children but use high quality language (not just “see spot run”) that is enchanting to read. They are the books that you probably still have from your childhood gathering dust in the basement. Pull them out! Share them with your kids! They are the books you hugged, the books your mother hugged, the books your grandfather hugged. They taught you facts about the world without you even being aware you were learning.

Charlotte Mason wrote, “They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in their lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told.” (Vol. 2, p. 263).

Once I cottoned on to the idea of living books, I aimed to only provide DK with the best quality books in our home (although admittedly this is partly for my own sanity – reading Disney’s Cars Best Buddies might actually kill me), as it is my view that as a parent I should expose DK to the best the world has to offer. I was absolutely surprised when I discovered that he has an enormous appetite for reading when the books are actually well written (go figure).

Some of DK’s favourite books right now are:

• Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
• Motor Goose by Rebecca Colby
• Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems
• Boy + Bot by Ame Dyckman
• I love Bugs! by Emma Dodd
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• Bears and a Birthday by Shirley Parenteau
• Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
• The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone
• A House is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman
• The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper
• If you Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff
• Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw
• Red is Best by Kathy Stinson
• The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
• Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne

He also likes Disney Cars Best Buddies, but just like candy, I don’t read that to him every day because there’s so much out there that is better to feast upon!

4. Charlotte Mason believed in the importance of child’s play, particularly outdoor play.

I would not say I am an outdoorsy person; I’m not a big fan of hiking up mountains, I don’t like swimming in the ocean, I don’t like the greasiness of suncreen on my skin but I burn like bacon without it. However, when DK was born, he would sleep in the stroller as long as it was moving outside, so we went for walks. A lot of walks. I began to need a walk in the fresh air every day just as I needed my coffee. Around this time, I read Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods and I became convicted that the childhood I wanted for DK included time to run freely outside among the plants and the animals that we have lived among for all of humanity and not one hunched over a computer monitor lost in a virtual world.

I want DK to be a child for as long as possible. My childhood was wonderful but I still feel like it was over too quickly. There are so many outside pressures these days, especially in Silicon Valley, to race ahead, read early, to be a code-writing prodigy at 3, to have a leveled-up World of Warcraft character at 4. I don’t want to talk down to him, but I also don’t want him to abandon his childish ways and be too comfortable in the adult world.

I particularly resonated with her philosophy when I read,

“In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.”

Yes. Yes. Let me repeat that: “Perhaps a mother’s first duty is to secure for them a quiet growing time….the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.”

DK will have the rest of his childhood once he’s in school to sit inside hunched over a computer screen. He will have the rest of his adulthood to go to work every day and likely sit inside at a desk hunched over a computer screen. So why would I rush it?

The quote above reminds me of one of my early memories. I was about 5 and I had just spent the entire day playing with neighbourhood children in our townhouse courtyard. We had a water fight and I blew my first bubble with Bubbalicious Strawberry bubblegum. The sun was cooling off and kids were going inside for their suppers. I lay outside in a hammock we kids had made from construction fencing thinking, “This was the best day of my life”. I remember never wanting to forget it. It was the best day.

I don’t remember my best day of television. I remember a lot of wonderful days outside playing freely with my friends. I want memories like that for DK too, and because of the high-tech culture we live in with basically any show or game he wants available at the swipe of a finger, we have to be even more diligent with carving away time away from our gadgets.

5. Charlotte Mason believed in short lessons, no grades, and free afternoons.

I am a self-proclaimed school nerd. I loved school. Of the characters I’ve read of in books, I identify the most with Hermione Granger – a bookworm who’s biggest fear is failing her exams. I love learning and I loved the structured box and safety of school. But I wonder if I’d be better at math if I hadn’t been given grades at all, but just left to plug away at it. The thing is about a lot of learning, you either get it, or you don’t. What does it matter if you score 75% on a math test, suggesting you understood 75% of the material before moving on to the next rung on the math ladder? Wouldn’t it be better if we let our kids move at their own pace and understand 100% of it before moving on? If we expected comprehension, then grades wouldn’t matter. Grades suggest an ideal and a contest with others. But learning should be for the sake of learning, not to compare with others.

I also like how Charlotte Mason advocated for short lessons to avoid the mind-wanderings and need to repeat and re-learn when attention drifts. It does seem more efficient if you give 100% of your focus and attention to the subject when you are learning it for a short amount of time than 40% of your focus and attention when learning the subject over a much longer period.

~

So much of stay at home motherhood seems to be a slog. It’s a lot of sweeping the floor and composting food scraps your kid spat out. It’s dealing with a lot of tears (most of them not mine), it’s changing a lot of diapers. Society these days seems to prize the working mother who can do it all (does she even exist?) and I’ll admit I have struggled with “being just a mom” and not working outside the home. Charlotte Mason’s writings have truly inspired me that it is indeed a high calling. She has lifted up the importance of motherhood, and even though she lived over a hundred years ago, she has showed me that I can do things differently for my kids.

Silicon Valley is like one endless suburb. Big Head in the aptly named show, “Silicon Valley” said it best when he wondered, “Why is this place so expensive? It’s such a shithole…”

Okay, a shithole is a bit strong of a word – because the weather is amazing and there are thousands of fun family-friendly activities you can do around here within an hour’s drive from your front door. But it is an endless, expensive suburb.

Surprisingly for such a sea of single-story residences, there is a lot of open space reserved for nature. It’s a wonderful spot for hiking, cycling, sailing, climbing, horseback riding, and kitesurfing. But even more surprisingly, natural environments here are not very child-friendly – at least for newcomers it seems that way.

Perhaps it is the lengthly list of horrifying predators your kid can encounter in the open space preserves around here: ticks with lyme disease, poisonous black widow spiders, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, and poison oak are EVERYWHERE.

Growing up in the City of Calgary, my friends and I would ride our bikes to “the ravine”, a natural creek-way that ran through the centre of our subdivision. We would build forts from fallen branches and sticks. We would skip rocks across the creek. We would run with our dogs off-leash, weaving together strands of sweetgrass, and come home covered in mud.

Some summers, my family would vacation at my grandparent’s cabin on a lake in Newfoundland. My brother and I would play in the sawdust piles from chopping wood for the stove, wander through “our trails” in the woods, build forts, dig up potatoes in the garden, swim in the lake, and pick wildflowers. We would be outside from breakfast until after supper. My grandma would heat up water on the woodstove for our baths.

Some day, I’d love for DK to have similar childhood experiences immersed in nature, making his home in the woods. Right now we can’t even afford to buy a primary residence, let alone a summer cabin – but a girl can dream.

Lately I’ve been fascinated by literature about children’s experiences in nature, diving into: “There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather” by Linda Akeson McGurk, “Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators” by David Sobel, “Hands on Nature” by Jenepher Lingelbach and Lisa Purcell,  “Last Child in the Woods”; “The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder” and “Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life”, all three by Richard Louv. I plan to do reviews of each of these books on this blog – so check back for more details about each book in the coming weeks.

A common theme that runs through each of these works is the importance of unstructured childhood play in nature and how little of it children get these days.

In “Last Child in the Woods”, Richard Louv writes, ““In the United States, children are spending less time playing outside – or in any unstructured way. From 1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children nine to twelve who spent time in such outside activities as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play, and gardening.” (p. 34) At the same time, there has been a drastic increase in the number of clinically obese children, with one in six children in the USA fitting that descriptor (CDC 2018).

We are told to limit screen time and do more exercise – but what kind of exercise? Where? One 2014 survey found that 68% of American parents do not think children aged nine and under should be allowed to play unsupervised at playgrounds and 43% want a law preventing children aged 12 and under from playing unsupervised at playgrounds (McGurk 2017).

There is only so much time for organized sports in a day – but going to the park for thirty minutes before supper is do-able. And while organized sports do teach many things – teamwork, hand-eye coordination – I would argue that running around on a man-made soccer field hardly conjures a sense of kinship with our natural world.

So where do I go from here? I believe in the importance of nature-based play for DK’s childhood – but at the same time, a mountain lion killing a deer mere feet from a trail that I frequent with DK is a little close for comfort.

I asked in my local mom’s group – what did people do as children who were born and raised in the Bay Area? And their answers re-assured me – they ran and played without worry.

• Mountain lion attacks on people are rare (there have been fourteen mountain lion attacks on people in California since 1986, only three of which were fatal. Of the fourteen victims of attacks, five were children). Mountain lions are notoriously evasive. It is rare to even see one. Keep your toddlers close, don’t go out at dawn and dusk and you’re unlikely to be affected.
• Rattlesnakes are only really a problem when they are surprised by a silent hiker who steps on them – which children rarely are. The bigger risk is that I drop dead from cardiac arrest if I see one – I am so phobic of snakes. As researchers at the University of Florida put it, “The chances of dying from a venomous snakebite in the United States is nearly zero, because we have available, high-quality medical care in the U.S. Fewer than one in 37,500 people are bitten by venomous snakes in the U.S. each year (7-8,000 bites per year), and only one in 50 million people will die from snakebite (5-6 fatalities per year)…you are nine times more likely to die from being struck by lightning than to die of venomous snakebite.”
• Black widow spiders are fearful of people and while they are reputed to be the most venomous spider in North America – their venom is rarely fatal to humans. Black widow spiders are not hanging around on every leaf waiting for DK to come near them – they are seriously introverted recluses who hang out in dark, dry shelters like rodent holes, hollow stumps and shed eaves, generally areas that I discourage DK from sticking his hands. So, it is unlikely that DK will even come in contact with one if one should be around, and if he does – it is unlikely he will get bit unless he provokes it. Additionally, it’s only the females who have poisonous venom, and even then – a bite these days with access to medical care and anti-venom is unlikely to result in death.
• Tick bites are not ideal – but it is clear when you have a tick bite as their bodies will be visibly burrowing into the skin (k, I know I’m trying to reassure people here, but let’s take a moment to say, THE HORROR!!!!), so while DK getting bit by a tick would suck – it’s treatable and we can send the tick for testing for presence of lyme disease and drug treatment, if necessary. The Mayo Clinic writes, “Only a minority of blacklegged tick bites leads to Lyme disease. The longer the tick remains attached to your skin, the greater your risk of getting the disease. Lyme infection is unlikely if the tick is attached for less than 36 to 48 hours.”
• Poison Oak. What can I say? It’s everywhere. It has clusters of three leaves – but sometimes five, but sometimes seven, but once seventeen. It is green, but sometimes yellow and sometimes red. Sometimes the leaves are shiny. It sometimes has berries. It sometimes has white flowers.  It sometimes doesn’t have leaves – but the leafless stems will give you a rash just the same. Basically – it’s always a nightmare for a parent of a wandering toddler. I don’t really know what to say other than I expect someone in my family to get a rash from poison oak at some point. It is not fatal. It is itchy and treatable and I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Maybe I’ll buy the child who gets a contact rash a special trophy or medal of honour to lighten the mood and make it feel more like an accomplishment of a well-lived life.

I guess what it all boils down to is I’m not going to prevent my son from experiencing unstructured play in nature. I’m going to *hopefully* teach him to be aware of his surroundings, announce his presence to the surrounding critters, check for ticks, and stay away from plants with three leaves, or five, or seven…oh what the hell, never mind, I’ll start polishing that trophy.

I always thought I hated poetry. Figuring it out in school was tedious: “What did the author mean in this verse?”, “What are 5 reasons the author chose the word “blue” in this stanza?” As a teenager, it was cool to like music and the lyrics of rap songs, but reading poetry was for losers. 🤷🏻‍♀️ And so I declared to hate poetry to be one with my peers and it wasn’t until I was in my late 20s that I picked up a poetry anthology and said with each page I turned, “ooh I love that poem.”

For Christmas this year, my mother-in-law gave me a copy of a most beloved book of poetry that her father gave her and that I have read from almost every time I have visited their home. I’ve taken it out many times from the library and am glad to finally have my own copy.

I have poured over many of its poems, but one poem that has particularly resonated with me lately is Like Mother, Like Son by Margaret Johnston Grafflin.

Do you know that your soul is of my soul such a part,
That you seem to be fibre and core of my heart?
None other can pain me as you, dear, can do,
None other can please me or praise me as you.

Remember the world will be quick with its blame
If shadow or stain ever darken your name.
“Like mother, like son” is a saying so true
The world will judge largely the “mother” by you.

By yours then the task, if task it shall be,
To force the proud world to do homage to me.
Be sure it will say, when its verdict you’ve won,
“She reaped as she sowed. Lo! This is her son.”

To me, this poem is both uplifting and stressful. I love the sentiment to send my son out into the world to do good and make me proud. I strive to be the kind of mother who fills her son’s soul with generosity, goodness, humility, kindness, and love. But then the stress of it sinks in – what if, because of the world we live in and in spite of my best efforts – he grows up to be a miserable, angry, greedy man?

In Silicon Valley, especially among the high-tech circles, I notice there is a lot of emphasis on pre-school. When DK was ten months old, other moms were asking me which preschools I’d toured.

“But he’s only ten months old…” I’d respond.

“I’ve toured seven, and I’ve got my name on the waitlist at six of them,” one mom told me.

“But she’s only a year old!”

“If you want the right preschool, you have to get your name on the list now,”

“That’s insane.”

“Maybe. But if you want to get into the right private school, you need the right preschool. And forget Stanford without the right private school,” she said matter-of-factly.

Stanford?! My son couldn’t even use a spoon yet. I was stressed enough about his interest in learning to walk, let alone heaping on the pressure of an ivy league admission.

The thing with high-tech families in Silicon Valley is that often at least one parent is ivy league educated – so the pressure to raise a child who achieves at least an ivy league education is very real, and the pressure on teens in this area “to force the proud world to do homage to me” is intense, even culminating in a devastating suicide cluster a couple years ago.

It brings to mind another poem in this anthology, “Making a Man” by Nixon Waterman.

Hurry the baby as fast as you can,
Hurry him, worry him, make him a man.
Off with his baby clothes, get him in pants,
Feed him on brain foods and make him advance.
Hustle him, soon as he’s able to walk,
Into a grammar school; cram him with talk.
Fill his poor head full of figures and facts,
Keep on a-jamming them in till it cracks.
Once boys grew up at a rational rate,
Now we develop a man while you wait,
Rush him through college, compel him to grab
Of every known subject a dip and a dab.
Get him in business and after the cash,
All by the time he can grow a mustache.
Let him forget he was ever a boy,
Make gold his god and its jingle his joy.
Keep him a-hustling and clean out of breath,
Until he wins – nervous prostration and death.

I’m not saying an ivy-league education is not valuable or worth pursuing – but it’s not  something I’d trade DK’s childhood for.

While I think the sentiment of pride in your children’s achievements is nice in Grafflin’s poem – I think the pressure she speaks of is very dangerous, both for the mother and for the son. I do not want DK to feel like my happiness is dependent upon his success. I do, however, hope he is a moral and just human being. My challenge as a mother will be to listen to my thoughts above and let DK be DK – not hover, not manipulate, not try to mold him like playdough, as described by Mary O’Donnell in Promise.I try not to cast too much shade.

I try not to cast too much shade.
Sin would be
to use the excuse
of her growth in my womb,
to imagine her as a limb of myself.
She is her own tree,
late-winter’s indomitable shoot.
She takes cupfuls of sun.

I stand well clear
as the branches stretch
like flutes playing allegros.
Not for anything
would I poison her
with an act of possession,
conceal her from the woodsman
whose task is to make room for all.

It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse. We could have been on a plane, for instance, on Christmas Eve at 3 pm when the first eruption occurred; vomit bursting out of my son’s mouth onto the floor.

“Uhhh Heather, DK just barfed,” said my husband.

“Like a lot?”

“Yeah”

“Ohhhhhh nooooo.” Time stopped for a second and my mind zoomed in to macro-focus on my son’s mouth and shirt.

Yeah. It was a lot. Fuck.

It was Christmas Eve at my family’s house – we alternate every year and this year was my year. We had old friends coming over in a couple of hours for supper. I had been helping in the kitchen for much of the day. And now….the next 24 hours flashed before me as ones sitting with DK, covered in vomit. Whyyyyy?!?!

We moved to get the old towels, strip him down, wipe him off. And then another explosion – this time my husband completely covered.

Okay. So really not good. 2 bouts of barf in 20 minutes. Not good.

This was DKs first stomach bug. My own stomach flipped when I realized that the day before we had been at a family reunion hosted at a community centre in a small agricultural town in rural Alberta, and while the place seemed very clean and DK had the time of his life scampering around with his toys, there was very possibly traces of farm animal feces on people’s shoes who came into the hall….the bug was probably related and maybe I shouldn’t have been so lenient letting him explore every nook and cranny. But then again, you can’t protect your child from every bug. It happens.

Thirty minutes later, another stomach attack. I’m trying to remember what the BRAT diet is, and how many wet diapers he’s supposed to have, how to make sure he doesn’t get dehydrated, how to get barf out of the carpet, and how to protect myself from getting hit. Thankfully I was at my parents house and my mom knew what to do.

And so for the next 12 hours, I nursed DK on demand, held him close while he puked back up most of what I fed to him, cleaned him off, gave him some sips of water, and watched Winnie the Pooh as he fell asleep. Our Christmas Eve dinner guests hardly saw me.

Thankfully, although I didn’t know it at the time, (at the time I was in tears from exhaustion and having to change my shirt again) he started feeling better around 4 am, fell asleep for a few hours and aside from being tired, was back to his usual happy self by mid-morning, keeping down breastmilk, apple sauce and saltines, ready to open presents, and play with some new toys.

So yeah, it could have been so much worse.

Update: A friend of mine who is a family doctor commented that norovirus is the likely culprit as it was just barf (not also diarrhea – thank God!) and resolved pretty quickly.