Boys

Hank has three of his old school [old skool] buddies over today. Among other activities, they spent some time shrieking the dumbest questions they could think of at Hank's magic eight ball: Will we blow up in one second? Will the Magic 8-ball blow up? Are we in heaven?

I had a flashback to about a month ago when my iPhone 4G in the mail, and Tad and his friend Rowell experimented with Siri by asking it (her?) the silliest questions they could think of: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Does your dog bite?

Coincidence? I think not.

Get into the escape pod!

Dan is playing with his friend R. Star Wars, of course. The two of them are under heavy fire from storm troopers who have boarded the ship.

R: Chioom! Chioom-chioom! Get in the escape pod first! I'll hold 'em off!
D: No, you get in first!
R: No, you get in!
D: No! You get in!
R: No, you!
D: Fine! (gets into the couch-and-blanket fort/escape pod)Okay, I'm in! Get in, Captain!
R: No, not yet!
D: Get in, already!
R: No!
D: Come on! Get in!
R: Okay, I'm getting in! (the fort collapses) Ahh! The pod is damaged!
D: Get out!

Boys and nonfiction

They say that boys and men respond better to nonfiction than to fiction. Probably true, overall. As a volunteer at Dan's school library, I've seen far more boys than girls in the nonfiction section. On the other hand, it's not like they're a bunch of history buffs or science nerds. They're checking out books from exactly one category: Legos. And sometimes Lego Star Wars, that insanely popular combination of two already insanely popular brands. Sports, cars, wars, and drawing tie for a very distant 3rd place. If Star Wars counted as nonfiction--and judging by the number of Star Wars encyclopedias out there, it might as well be--it would be right up there with Legos. So maybe there are some latent nerds in the bunch.

And then there's my boy, who enjoys nothing better than a good story. I do love that about him.

Still, he also devours those Lego and Star Wars reference books. What is it about boys and men and their fanatic trivia-hungry little brains? I suppose there must be girls who are checking out horse books and real-life princess books (I hate to stereotype, but I haven't seen a single second-grade girl check out a sports book or a Lego book). Somehow, though, it's just not the same.

Read a discussion of this issue here, at an online teacher forum.

Rat-a-tat-tat late at night wit my gat

Probably Dan's second-favorite Christmas present after the Wii was a pair of Dart Tag Fury Fire Nerf guns (they're sold in pairs). I settled on these for three reasons:

1) With a pair of guns you can play with a friend (or a little brother),
2) they're not as big, badass, or scary-looking as some of the other Nerf guns out there, and
3) thank the Lord for small mercies, they were the ones that Dan wanted.

What convinced him that he wanted the Fury Fire set was this ridiculous commercial, which he happened to click on when I was surfing the Nerf website way back in November or maybe even October. His jaw dropped and he launched his Fury Fire for Christmas campaign right then and there. Luckily, he didn't see any other commercials.

So I got him the guns and looked forward to watching him open the present at Christmas. It went just as I had hoped it would:

Present distributor: Dan, this one's for you.
DAN: I think I know what this is! (ripripriprip) Yes! Awe-some! Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad! Johnny! Johnny, look! Fury Fire guns!

He didn't mind sharing the second gun with Johnny; in fact, he was happy to let Johnny take one.  Six-year-old cousin W got a Nerf gun (different model) from his parents too, so as not to be left out. All three little boys were pleased, cute, and eminently photo-worthy.

But the kicker was this: the big boy cousins (ages 17 and 23), were, um, a teeny bit jealous. Or maybe just nostalgic, who knows. So on a Wal-Mart run the next day, some kind aunties and uncles bought three more guns (Nerf, of course--not real guns, which were also available for purchase). And all seven cousins, ages 3 to 23, had a lovely Nerf gun war in the lofts at Aunt 'T's house.

Who knew? And yet, really. Is anyone surprised? I don't think so.

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen...

Today was a particularly difficult day with Dan, full of tantrums and defiance and rudeness. And at one point he shouted at me, as he sometimes does when he gets in trouble for this kind of stuff, "I'm stupid! That's why I do this stuff!" No, you're not. "Yes, I am! I'm the stupidest person in the world! I don't know anything!"

Later, when I tried to ask him about the "stupid" business, he insisted that he feels like he really is stupid, and that there's all kinds of stuff ("like, school stuff, like math") he should know and be able to do, and he doesn't or can't. Which is patently untrue, but he wasn't listening. But just the other night, he had a nightmare that left him panicky, speechless and nauseous; the nightmare had been about feeling stupid and like his head was full of wrong answers.

 So I worried my way through the evening about raising an out-of-control child with anxiety and self-esteem issues.

As I tucked him into bed tonight, I whispered, "I know that you're really trying hard to be good. But it's hard sometimes, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"But I know you're trying," I said, adding, "And I'm trying hard to be a good mom. It's hard for me, too."

He nodded again. Then he spoke. "You know the other night, Mom, when I said I was dumb?"

"You mean that nightmare you had?"

"I think it was because people were like, "What's 564 + 655? Give us the answer in five seconds, or else we'll shoot you!"

"You were getting really hard problems, and you couldn't answer them?"

"Uh-huh."

"Maybe you feel like you're being asked to do something that's too hard for you."

A thoughtful nod.

Magic

In the Open Space Preserve near our house, there is a secret place off the beaten path. My friend J and her boys led us to it a little while ago. You veer off the path and follow this ploughed-up mess of dirt down and around a bend until you see this:

And if you're paying attention, you can see a little opening in the brush:








But it's little. You have to make yourself small, like a child, in order to pass through...

...into this magical place:

More Boys with Guns

Something I've been wanting to post for a while: over Memorial Day weekend, we went camping with a couple of other families and I looked over one afternoon after a hike and a swim, and saw this:

Teaching TZ to breathe

I've tried a few times in the past to get a hopped-up TZ to calm down by stopping and breathing. Sit still. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply, three big breaths. This hasn't worked even a little bit, because he has just ended up panting and/or giggling.

Inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh, I tried one more time a couple of weeks ago. TZ was all silly and wound up and not-listening, very close to being just plain old rude and disrespectful. So I took him into his room and had him breathe, unsuccessfully. Staring desperately out the window, I had a moment of clarity.

"Come here to the window."
"What?" Bouncy, giggly, squirmy.
"Look at this tree. Tell me everything you see."
"Okay. A trunk and some leaves. Are we done?"
"No. Now count the leaves on that twig right there."
"Umm... Twelve. No, thirteen. No... Twelve. Or maybe sixteen."

Waldorf Day

TZ spent Sunday night in the bathroom "upchucking" (new vocab courtesy of his 2nd grade friends), so Monday was a recovery day. I've been feeling a little disgruntled with the school system lately and fantasizing about sending the boys to the Waldorf school down the street, or homeschooling them, so we had a quasi-Waldorf-inspired-homeschool day: a little watercolor painting, a little gardening (domestic and renegade--relevant post to come soon), a little baking. TZ read the cookie recipe and did some measuring math (how many half cups in 2-1/2 cups of flour?), and we took a few cookies to school yesterday for his "real" teacher.

Guess What?

Chicken butt!
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-hahahahaha!

Guess what?
Chicken butt!
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-hahahahaha!

Guess what?
Chicken butt!
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-hahahahaha!

Guess what?
Chicken butt!

Guess what?
Chicken butt!

Etc. ad nauseum.

Why I love living in CA (some show-off photos)

It's expensive to live here, and the budget is a mess, but here's what we did on a couple of our weekends this past month:

Beach fun on March 28, at Sea Cliff in Capitola, CA:




Two weeks later, in Truckee, CA:






Kinda hard to beat.

Easter bunnies and Tummy-aches

Poor K woke up feeling so icky this morning that he didn't want to get out of his crib. Even when TZ framed it as, "Hey, K, do you want to go and look for candy with me?" my poor baby could only mumble miserably, "I'm too sick." So we knew he wasn't faking it. After three more hours of sleep, he woke up, had a waffle, and was almost his usual self for the rest of the day.

I myself am feeling not-so-great after a day of stuffing Easter chocolates into my mouth when the kids weren't looking.

And finally, it turns out that my firstborn has been up to quite a lot during the weeks leading up to Easter:

Ain't no party like a Jedi party...unless you're a girl?

And there was one there. Not only was she the only girl, but she didn't know anyone but TZ and one other boy--and both of them were too battle-crazed to pay much attention to her.

My wonderful "niece", HH, held her own in the "keep the balloon in the air" game, but respectfully declined to run the Jedi training obstacle course, which involved doing battle with Sith baddies on the way out and back. She rode her bike/starfighter through the slalom course in the street, but at the end of the party, as a Sith-Jedi battle raged around her, she sat and patiently worked out a coded message that was supposed to have warned the Jedi of the Sith attack (the Sith were miscued and came out to fight before the code was broken, much to my dismay and the Jedis' delight--they were getting bored with the code and starting to wander off).

I am not sure what her take on the whole thing was. I think she enjoyed herself. The other mothers-of-sons saw her during the final battle, smiled, and said, "They're just different, aren't they?"

On the other hand, once HH was done with the code, she and her sister took up their lightsabers and attacked their daddy with great zeal, so maybe it was just a matter of whom she knew.

Ain't no party like a Jedi party

Now I know why people have their children's birthday parties at places other than home.

Two hours of mayhem, with breaks for cake and one game which required kids to be silent. Because it was all outside, and because the only food we served was cake and juice, there wasn't much mess to clean up, but I was not prepared for the astronomical levels of frenzied energy that seven little boys with pool-noodle lightsabers can generate. After the party, I was (and continue to be) exhausted.

Birthday boy, birthday cake, and letting go.

TZ turned seven today. At this very moment seven years ago, I was at the hospital, begging to be allowed to push the little bugger out--having forgotten to call the midwife before we left the house, we had to wait at the hospital for her to arrive before I was allowed to push. I look at my growing-up baby now and I can hardly believe that he's the same being that was squished up in my uterus that night.

He's not, really. The fetus would not have gone with me to Baskin-Robbins today and ordered the awful spray-painted-blue-with-red-trim Star Wars ice cream cake featuring Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader figurines brandishing lightsabers at each other for his birthday party two days hence. The fetus, still subject to my own hopes and dreams, would have grown up into a boy who clapped his hands with delight when I offered to bake him a cake in the shape of an astronaut, or maybe his favorite vegetable.

More on testing, boys, and race

The Center on Education Policy published a report this week on standardized test score trends in every state from the early 2000's through the 2008 school year. Their big takeaway: an achievement gap between girls and boys (the girls being the winners). Anyone who's read recent boy-literature (Raising Cain; Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson; The Trouble With Boys; a Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do, by Newsweek writer Peg Tyre, about which more later; and stacks of other similar books) knows about this somewhat unexpected, and yet somehow unsurprising trend. Everyone knows that boys hate school and girls, well, don't hate it.

What the CEP found was that across the board, boys are trailing girls in reading, and girls are catching up to boys in math. Oddly enough, they describe this as "good news for girls, but troubling news for boys."

Boy Fun

Yesterday, TZ and his across-the-street friend TM did a little Jedi training in the empty lot next to TM's house. There was something so 1950's about it--just substitute popguns or toy rifles for the light sabers, and there we'd be in Mayberry. The boys eventually abandoned their weapons for hockey sticks and began mining for...rocks, I guess. Then TM slipped and fell into a huge mud puddle and went home (he hates getting dirty). TZ, left to his own devices, became Captain Rex/Anakin leading his men against an army of battle droids (see video).








Captain Rex asks for ice cream

Boys and guns and all of that

Clone warrior with awesome blaster (cue TZ panting)

When TZ's mania for guns, war, and other unacceptable problem-solving tools becomes too distressing, I go to good ol' Google and poke around for something that will shed a little light on the issue. What I found this time was a great blog called Blogging 'Bout Boys and an article by Maya Gotz entitled Media and the Make Believe World of Boys and Girls.

The blog, as you might guess, is about boys--parenting boys, to be specific, and according to its author, ain't nothin' you can do 'bout that heat-packin' rapscallion, except to remember that he's also a sweet little boy. Which is the gist of what most Mothers of Older Boys have told me.

I keep thinking, "But you haven't seen my boy in action." Not that he's special, but he kind of is. He's not just interested in something--he's obsessed. It used to be firefighters--anyone else have a son who was a firefighter for Halloween for four years in a row? Granted, the final year (2008) was a transition year--he wanted to be Darth Vader, but I said no, so he went with his backup costume. In 2009, he begged for weeks to be allowed to have a clone trooper costume, and I finally relented.

But back to obsession. For years it was firefighters all day long--except for Rock Star, his other obsession (you play rock star by blasting blink-182 and playing air guitar or pillow drums.) And now it's Star Wars and Clone Wars. All the time. All the time. All...The...Time. Am I making myself quite clear?

Well, okay, sometimes it's United States Marines. With occasional breaks for fart and butt jokes.

TZ plays a hybrid character: part Clone Captain Rex (cool uniform and awesome blaster) and part Anakin (cool hair, mastery of the Force, and awesome light saber); he switches off in terms of which character's role he is actually taking. Combining attributes of power from different characters is typical boy play, according to Maya Gotz, the author of Media and the Make Believe, etc. Boys also tend to lift plots, characters, and setting wholesale from the media source, whereas girls modify their characters, plots, and settings to fit their fantasies. The princesses and fairies end up far more empowered in little-girl fantasy than in the original media. Which is encouraging if you're the mother of a girl, but what about me? I suppose it's nice to know that TZ is typical. Still, living in an imaginary battle zone drives me nuts sometimes.

Toppings or no toppings?

The boys are downstairs blasting the Star Wars soundtrack and having sword fights with Daddy, hopped up on Girl Scout cookies. I had expressly forbidden RT to bring them into the house (the cookies, not the boys) because a) I don't like them, and b) I eat them anyway until I'm sick. But a group of enterprising girls set up shop outside the sanctuary at church, and RT bought a few boxes and told the boys they could have one of each kind when they got home. Which put me, as always, in the position of being the mean witch who spoils all the fun. I've been trying to loosen up, so I went with my Nice Mommy persona and let it go today. And had quite a few cookies myself. Blech.

The thing is, I don't want my little guys to feel entitled to all the extras all the time, be it sweets, television, toys, what have you. Whereas RT worries that they'll feel deprived if they don't get the extras. Same ol', same ol', same ol' story. Case in point: TZ had a tantrum the other night because I made an executive decision to go to Los Altos Creamery--new and wonderful and yummy. He wanted to go to Miyo for frozen yogurt because, he insisted, he liked frozen yogurt better. Which is such a crock. He likes Miyo because he gets way more creamy goodness (you get to serve yourself) and two toppings instead of zero. RT actually used to let him get four until I had a tantrum of my own.

I called TZ's bluff and he folded right away, and then demanded--demanded--that if we had to get ice cream, he be allowed to get toppings. See what I mean about feeling entitled to the extras? Maybe it's mean, but this is where I draw the line. Because what's wrong with ice cream without toppings? Since when is that not enough? Why should a kid think he deserves more?

In the car, after threatening to stay home and then caving, and having lost the topping battle, my little darling snarled, "If I don't get toppings, then I get to have a sprinkle cone." Again with the attitude. I can't stand that.

Of course, once we arrived at the Creamery (which stayed open extra late for us--that's how great they are) and TZ got a few licks of his cone, all was well again.

Once we find it, we never let go.

So said our pediatrician to a friend of mine regarding her three-year-old son's apparent obsession with his little penis.

Skip to our house, two nights ago, just as the boys had cleared the table and were sitting down to dessert. K was at his place and ready to dig in when TZ arrived in the kitchen, smirking. "Lookit!" he said, and pulled up his shirt to reveal his penis dangling over the waistband of his sagging pants. This is a trick that K discovered a few weeks ago, one day at the store as he waited for me to make a purchase. As a baby and a toddler, TZ never really used his, er, equipment as a plaything, but K is constantly finding new ways to enjoy his.

"Ah," said I, "Just like K," and indulged him with a half-laugh. "Now pull your pants up and sit down for your dessert."

Riiiight.

Instead, TZ waddled into the dining room and showed a delighted K what he had done. Within seconds, K's penis was out, too, and the two of them were shrieking with laughter, and hootin' and hollerin' and carryin' on, as one of my Southern sister-in-law's Southern bridesmaids once said, like all get out.

Brainy, liberal, I-understand-my-boys me tried to let them have their fun, but a few seconds later, control-freak, why-can't-they-be-more-like-girls me could stand it no longer and started trying to get them to behave. Another few seconds of ineffectual admonishments, and I finally shouted, "Okay, that's enough. I'm coming to the table now, and if I see a penis, I'm going to eat your treats."

Even as I said it, I marveled at how absurd it sounded. They tucked themselves back into their pants in a hurry as I approached the table, and I half wondered what weird sexual lesson they would learn from this moment and reveal to their therapists in the future. But they kept giggling, and I had to join them. "You two are a couple of goofballs," I told them. No pun intended.