This entry is going to revolve around some struggles that Tex has had for most of his life, which are a large part of the reason why we chose homeschooling for him in the first place. Along with a diagnosis of mild Sensory Perception Disorder which makes certain activities and concepts more challenging for Tex, he also has a certain, shall we say, lack of social graces which can make interacting with others a little awkward and confusing. Tex is not at his ease when dealing with new social situations, he struggles with wanting to be funny and "cool" and it just not coming naturally to him, and he is often unsure of what people expect from him and how to convey his own very rigid expectations to others. We have a lot of fits and arguments at home due to these issues, and it is exhausting for the whole family. Not that Tex isn't a fabulous and wonderful child, he IS, he just also happens to be very emotionally challenging. I've gone back and forth lately over whether he actually needs to see some kind of therapist to help him with his anxiety and frustration, but eventually (with the help of the less-inclined-to-tinker Daddy-O) decided that what he needs is time and closer guidance. Which is all well and good considering that intra-and interpersonal relationships are kind of my bag (degree in Social Work), but still, it's different when it's my own child I'm trying to walk through these delicate situations, which usually involve (you guessed it) ME! And I challenge any therapist out there to be calm and constructive when their client is whacking them with a lightsaber.
After a particularly hurtful battle last week I went to the bookstore seeking comfort and assistance. I browsed the Parenting section thinking "they haven't written the book yet for the kind of hell I'm in, knowing I have the skills to help my child and having no idea how to put them into practice", when voila! I came across The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene. "Explosive, yes, that fits," I thought, flipping through the book. I saw enough that first night to warrant bringing the book home, and it is just exactly what I needed. I've long felt that having children should be much more like learning to live with a roommate than it should be like training a pet, so Greene's Collaborative Problem Solving routine is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for to help us find a mutually satisfying solution to the big issues we face in our home. No "I'm the parent and I pay the bills so we do it my way" because A) frankly, making that stick is more trouble than it's worth and B) it doesn't really teach my kids the kind of life lessons I'd want them to retain, anyway. I want my kids to believe that they CAN change their situation in life, in ways that are effective and considerate of others, and I realize that in order for them to have that belief they need to see it in motion and even practice it themselves. So I'm excited to have a new resource helping us help Tex as he navigates the social minefields coming his way.
I had a fun moment watching Tex play and show off his understanding of math concepts. The kids were playing restaurant and Tex asked me for my order, I gave it, and he was ringing up my total when I said "wait, wait, I have a coupon!" Without even batting an eye (because he knows his Mommy and her love of coupons) he said "okay, ma'am, your coupon is for 50% off, your total was 4 dollars, and 50% is half, so half of four is two. You owe me two dollars, ma'am." I mean, come ON!! I know it's basic, but the kid goes from percentages, to fractions, to division with perfect understanding of what those concepts are! And he's not even 8 years old!
Oh, one other thing we've been enjoying lately is that I'm reading Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief to the boys and Tex is now all interested in Greek mythology. He even told me the other day that he'd like to learn Greek so that he could read the myths, but was pretty stoked when I told him the libraries will have books of Greek/Roman mythology written just for kids his age, instead. He really enjoyed looking at the Greek section of a giant encyclopedia of mythology he found on our shelves, but it was more an index of characters and creatures than a collection of the stories. It will be nice to have my memory refreshed, since I keep confusing Ariadne with Arachne, and Perseus with Theseus, and can never remember which names are Greek and which are Roman! Plus I have a comic book of The Odyssey I'd love to whip out. ;-P
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Design Central
Oh, Tex and his grandiose plans. He's had them since he was born, I think, and reality never does quite live up to his expectations, but he keeps plugging away. I've been fascinated to watch the evolution of several projects this week.
There was the allosaurus we made last year, with the crushed-aluminum foil skeleton and heavy, baked-on polymer clay. The foil would crush closer together every time we squeezed more clay on, leaving air pockets and saggy clay that eventually drooped off the form. Tex tried again using a foil skeleton and a lighter plastic clay, this time making a velociraptor, but the air-dry clay shrunk where it wasn't well-smoothed and revealed gaps. Finally, two days ago we constructed a skeleton out of wire coat hangers. I did the grunt work, of course, bending and snipping the wires according to Tex's specifications and holding the frame steady while he worked clay onto it and shaped it into a velociraptor. He gave the velociraptor teeth, a pattern to his skin, a bumpy ridge on his tail, a curved second toe-claw, and three feathery plumes on his head. Even the positioning had to be precise, with the tail acting as a cantilever to the beast's head so that his whole spine was almost parallel to the ground. This kid knows what he is doing! And I am happy to report that after two days' drying time Tex's velociraptor is standing upright on his own power as well as having a flawless complexion with no gaps! Can't wait to see how this guy is going to be painted in the next couple of days.
Tex also has an abiding interest in costuming. No surprise given his backstage-crew parents, but it has taken forms I never would have suspected before having children. In the last few years we have made together: a dilophosaurus costume, complete with painted long-johns, sculpted foam head, and Jurassic Park-style neck frill; an oviraptor costume, using a balaclava as the basis for the head and adding a feathered back ridge and tail to the dilophosaurus long johns; and an unfinished R2D2 that sits in the corner of my room awaiting inspiration. We have now begun the long process of designing and creating next Halloween's costume!!! I suppose I should be happy that we've moved off dinosaurs but finding out my next challenge is going to be a robot by the name of General Grievous, from Star Wars Episode III, sort of made me long for a functioning pterodactyl costume order. But we must press on...
So Tex spent much of last week or so Googling "General Grievous" images to find the form he'd prefer and angles that allowed us to get a good look at how things really go together. Then he and I took a trip to the home improvement store yesterday. We investigated plumbing fixtures, tubes, wires, pipes, dowels, tried things on, speculated on form vs. function, and finally walked out with the makings of two matching lightsabers: two 9" turned table legs for the handles, to be painted in a pattern of silver and black, and a 1 1/2" dowel to be cut in half, painted green, and used for the blades. The costume itself is going to take a lot more work and trial-and-error. There were some great plumbing parts that we think we can use as the basis for the feet, then use copper tubing wrapped in black duct tape to form the metal toes. The arms and legs will be the biggest challenge, while the face we're confident can be made from pieces of PVC pipe cut into semi-circles and glued together before painting. A cloak will most certainly be used to great effect. At this point I'm just happy Tex decided to settle for two-armed mode instead of four-armed, but even there I don't want to hold my breath! One thing is for sure, we will probably use all 9 of the months he's allotted us.
In the meantime we have a smaller costuming goal: wings. Tex wanted to dress up as some Transformer from Beast Wars today, and this guy apparently has eagle wings. The closest thing we have in this house is Monkeygirl's pink fairy wings. Definitely not beast-ish. So again we bust out the wire coat hangers, the wire cutters, the last of our stash of brown pleather, and a boatload of craft glue. Tex designed the wings himself, explained it to his poor, old Mother's tired brain over and over until I got it (he finally had to get out the string, cut it, and have us both pretend to be wings connected by the string in the way he wanted before I understood), and consoled me when I completely mucked it up by forgetting to make the wings in mirror images so that the right side of the fabric would face out. He even found the solution: making the wings smaller so that I could cut the correct mirror from one and then trim the other to match.
And lest you think that we're all makeup and show tunes around here, I have more reading progress to report. Tonight at bedtime (historically Tex's worst time for trying to read, and who can blame him after a long day?) I was reading aloud from Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt when out of the blue Tex took over and read a few sentences, without hesitation and with perfect comprehension: "Anakin and R2-D2 fly together in a spaceship," "Yoda is one of the most powerful Jedi. He is small but very strong and wise," and "He is big, bad, and cruel, but his son, Rotta, loves him!" Whew, it's just nice for me as a mom to know that all those crazy letters on the page are starting to make easy sense to him now, and that he's gaining in confidence every time he reads successfully.
There was the allosaurus we made last year, with the crushed-aluminum foil skeleton and heavy, baked-on polymer clay. The foil would crush closer together every time we squeezed more clay on, leaving air pockets and saggy clay that eventually drooped off the form. Tex tried again using a foil skeleton and a lighter plastic clay, this time making a velociraptor, but the air-dry clay shrunk where it wasn't well-smoothed and revealed gaps. Finally, two days ago we constructed a skeleton out of wire coat hangers. I did the grunt work, of course, bending and snipping the wires according to Tex's specifications and holding the frame steady while he worked clay onto it and shaped it into a velociraptor. He gave the velociraptor teeth, a pattern to his skin, a bumpy ridge on his tail, a curved second toe-claw, and three feathery plumes on his head. Even the positioning had to be precise, with the tail acting as a cantilever to the beast's head so that his whole spine was almost parallel to the ground. This kid knows what he is doing! And I am happy to report that after two days' drying time Tex's velociraptor is standing upright on his own power as well as having a flawless complexion with no gaps! Can't wait to see how this guy is going to be painted in the next couple of days.
Tex also has an abiding interest in costuming. No surprise given his backstage-crew parents, but it has taken forms I never would have suspected before having children. In the last few years we have made together: a dilophosaurus costume, complete with painted long-johns, sculpted foam head, and Jurassic Park-style neck frill; an oviraptor costume, using a balaclava as the basis for the head and adding a feathered back ridge and tail to the dilophosaurus long johns; and an unfinished R2D2 that sits in the corner of my room awaiting inspiration. We have now begun the long process of designing and creating next Halloween's costume!!! I suppose I should be happy that we've moved off dinosaurs but finding out my next challenge is going to be a robot by the name of General Grievous, from Star Wars Episode III, sort of made me long for a functioning pterodactyl costume order. But we must press on...
So Tex spent much of last week or so Googling "General Grievous" images to find the form he'd prefer and angles that allowed us to get a good look at how things really go together. Then he and I took a trip to the home improvement store yesterday. We investigated plumbing fixtures, tubes, wires, pipes, dowels, tried things on, speculated on form vs. function, and finally walked out with the makings of two matching lightsabers: two 9" turned table legs for the handles, to be painted in a pattern of silver and black, and a 1 1/2" dowel to be cut in half, painted green, and used for the blades. The costume itself is going to take a lot more work and trial-and-error. There were some great plumbing parts that we think we can use as the basis for the feet, then use copper tubing wrapped in black duct tape to form the metal toes. The arms and legs will be the biggest challenge, while the face we're confident can be made from pieces of PVC pipe cut into semi-circles and glued together before painting. A cloak will most certainly be used to great effect. At this point I'm just happy Tex decided to settle for two-armed mode instead of four-armed, but even there I don't want to hold my breath! One thing is for sure, we will probably use all 9 of the months he's allotted us.
In the meantime we have a smaller costuming goal: wings. Tex wanted to dress up as some Transformer from Beast Wars today, and this guy apparently has eagle wings. The closest thing we have in this house is Monkeygirl's pink fairy wings. Definitely not beast-ish. So again we bust out the wire coat hangers, the wire cutters, the last of our stash of brown pleather, and a boatload of craft glue. Tex designed the wings himself, explained it to his poor, old Mother's tired brain over and over until I got it (he finally had to get out the string, cut it, and have us both pretend to be wings connected by the string in the way he wanted before I understood), and consoled me when I completely mucked it up by forgetting to make the wings in mirror images so that the right side of the fabric would face out. He even found the solution: making the wings smaller so that I could cut the correct mirror from one and then trim the other to match.
And lest you think that we're all makeup and show tunes around here, I have more reading progress to report. Tonight at bedtime (historically Tex's worst time for trying to read, and who can blame him after a long day?) I was reading aloud from Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt when out of the blue Tex took over and read a few sentences, without hesitation and with perfect comprehension: "Anakin and R2-D2 fly together in a spaceship," "Yoda is one of the most powerful Jedi. He is small but very strong and wise," and "He is big, bad, and cruel, but his son, Rotta, loves him!" Whew, it's just nice for me as a mom to know that all those crazy letters on the page are starting to make easy sense to him now, and that he's gaining in confidence every time he reads successfully.
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