Too Young?

When we renewed our membership to the Brookfield Zoo this year, we decided to upgrade to the Supporting Member level. We did this for two reasons - dolphin show tickets add up and Medium wanted to attend the lecture series. All in all it's a great bargain and supports a wonderful organization.

Medium and I went to a lecture on polar bears the other night. I'm guessing she was the youngest in attendance, but this isn't something unusual and isn't something that bothers her. She enjoys lectures. Two polar bear experts with Polar Bears International explained how the bears live, mate, hunt and die in the wild. We learned a lot about these great animals, and a lot about how climate change is affecting their habitat and threatening their existence. We learned about trends in climate change, saw the data and the global effects of green house gas emissions.

We saw a friend on the way out, who expressed alarm that Medium may be too young to hear the dire predictions. This is the same friend whose testimonial about the lecture series prompted Medium to want to upgrade our membership level, so we were not at all offended by her genuine concern. Honestly, I knew the topic in advance, we read the blurb together and agreed we wanted to to. It never occurred to me to consider Medium to be too young.

Medium has always been an old soul. She reads voraciously - fiction appropriate for her age level and interests, non-fiction all over the map. She has many interests and pursues them at her own pace. We talked out it on the way home. We agreed that some of the images were a bit strong, after all, hunting is not pretty. We both wished we didn't know about cannibalism in the polar bear population, but that we can't just thing of them as cute cartoon animals. She knows about climate change, this child, she's read and learned much about the dire predictions for our future. I could no more shield her from this doom and gloom than I could prevent my children from playing video games. That is to say, I suppose I could shield her, but feel it would be a disservice to limit her explorations of the world around her.

We are looking forward to the next lecture night.

Xtreme Fun

Sometimes, we just have too much fun.

I saw a billboard for Xtreme Trampoline on my many trips to and from St. Charles during conference planning. I thought it might be fun and went to the website, found the group rates, arranged a date, sent the call out to homeschoolers and pretty much forgot about it.

When it hit on the calendar, the kids were pretty excited. When we got there, they were in heaven. 2 hours of non-stop jumping, bouncing, flipping and playing with friends. Because they opened early for us crazy homeschoolers, we had the place all to ourselves. I'm guessing there were 40 people there, most of them knew each other. It was like a giant party. Dodge ball on trampolines! Doing flips into a foam block pool! Bouncing off the walls, literally!

Next time I am enforcing a deodorant requirement for the kids in my vehicle.

Schooly

OK, so I don't have kids in school and am not really aware of the complications and issues that arise in that situation. Lately, though, I have been channeling my inner 1970's era stay-at-home mom.

The last two weeks we have had early morning field trips to programs at the College of DuPage. Early morning means we had to plan to leave by 8:45 and hit pavement by no later than 9:00. This was a major problem for my family. Significantly worse than getting to the library by 11 a.m. when it is five minutes away, although some weeks even that takes herculean effort. Thanks to homeschooling, most of the time my kids can sleep until they are no longer tired. Most days that means 12 to 13 hours after they go to bed. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. It's a healthy set-up. Upsetting the system is nearly catastrophic. Luckily, the field trips have been worth the upheaval.

We also have had our first ever report card for Large, now age 12. This came a few months ago, but was only significant to me. Large has been taking classes in ballet and jazz at the Academy of the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. He received straight A's. It was meaningless to him, the only accomplishment he feels is in his own improvement and the enjoyment he receives from his classes. He would have felt the same way about himself had he received straight C's or D's.

With my Mom, however, I have had both the call from the Principal and the Nurse's office. My mother is not a child and is not treated like one. I received a call from her Assisted Living facility telling me she was a security risk because she tried to take a walk with another resident and got lost. It felt very much like I imagine the calls to the parents who's kid punched another kid on the bus feels like. (Hey, wait. That was me in the 8th grade!) Except that in addition to breaking the rules, they were mostly concerned about my Mom's safety and well-being. I suppose that could be the same case in schools, but tend to believe it is not. The Assisted Living folks were really concerned that she could just wander off and get lost. I know it all came about because I was gone for four days and wasn't able to take her out for walks. In a school setting, probably, the whole issue would have been about the rule infraction.

When I got a call from the nurse because my mother still does not feel up to a full meal because of a head cold, it was like all the times my mother was called when one of us had thrown up at school. Except that my mother is a frail elderly adult, not a child with a stomach bug. Kids with a fever or vomiting at school are a threat to everyone else. An elderly person with a cold is primarly a threat only to herself.

Through much negotiating, with assistance from my brother and paying someone to take her for walks, we were able to secure my mother her freedom again. And now we will work out a system to get her some cold medicine to ease her discomfort. I will get her more groceries. Life will be good again, spring will come and illness will pass.

My kids will continue to get the sleep they need. They will continue to feel about themselves what they do and not take much notice of outside evaluation. They know what they are good at and what they like to do. When they were younger at park district programs, they couldn't understand why the instructor gave them candy for a correct answer. Now they just think that grown-ups are weird with school-aged kids, unless the adults are homeschooling parents.

I, on the other hand, have been reliving my nightmares of sitting outside the Principal's office preparing a passionate speech about my justifications for slugging the brute on the bus. Trust me, it was a good speech

Learning Styles

As is usual on Saturdays this year, Large has ballet and jazz classes at the Academy of the Joffrey Ballet. He loves them. I have been enjoying the 3 hours of uninterrupted time to work on the InHome Conference. Three hours of being interrupted only be text messages is a wondrous thing to a busy mom.

With the conference just past a week ago, Medium and I decided to do something we had been wanting to do for some time. We went to the Art Institute, purchased an audio tour and immersed ourselves in the John Marin watercolor exhibit. We spent an enjoyable hour looking at the paintings and listening to the explanations on the headsets. We had seen the exhibit a few weeks earlier and wanted to learn more. Medium loves this sort of thing. A few weeks ago we breezed in for a quick lunchtime lecture on the Chagall windows. She was by far the youngest in the crowd and listened intently to the lecturer. She is the reason we purchased a higher level membership at the Brookfield Zoo, because the lecture series will be free for us. She reads every sign in museum exhibits.

My boys may have been interested in the audio tour, although probably not for the entire duration. They also learn a lot from museum exhibits, but in different ways. It is nice to be able to take one child, addressing their needs as individuals whenever possible. At the same time as our visit to the Art Institute, Large was pursuing his passion for dance and Small was showing his Grandma the delights of the Children's Garden at the Morton Arboretum.

We are very lucky indeed.

The Wringer

My family has been through the wringer lately. And we've come out safely on the other side. I've been thinking of just how many times we have been through this wringer in the past few years, how difficult some of our more private moments have been and how we wished our lives to be different when we were in the middle of them. Yet, somehow we always come out on the other side. Worn out a bit, but dusting ourselves off and ready for more.

Whatever it has been - illness and death, adult sibling near-warfare, foundation shattering questioning of our life's path - we have come out whole, as a family. We go through it together, although sometimes in different ways and from different vantage points. We come out together.

My children experience life differently than I did at their ages. My parents shielded us from the "real" world, from disagreements and difficulties. My parents also were in a new country, with no siblings, parents or other relatives anywhere near them. Perhaps because I didn't have a model for how to deal with life on the outside of the insular family, perhaps because we homeschool and have chosen to spend the majority of our time with our children, my kids have gone through the wringer with me.

I think they are stronger for it. They understand financial distress in a real way - not just in "we can't afford that" terminology, but in an understanding of the family's debt to income ratio, our comfort level with risk, and our long range goals. They have a better understanding of old age, illness and death. Most of all, they know that the world isn't going to come to an end each time a roadblock is thrown in their path. They know they will come out of a difficult time, perhaps changed or scarred, but they will emerge on the other side. I think I was in my later 30s when I truly understood that.